I'm learning Quenya :) It was a hard choice, between Quenya and Sindarin. I'm finding it very pleasant so far. Figuring out how to write in Tengwar, too, is hard, but worth it. Tengwar turns any crappy scrawl into calligraphy.
Admittedly, there are plenty more practical languages I could learn. But life is short, and Quenya is beautiful.
This last weekend (which is not actually this last weekend, because I keep a pretty substantial post-buffer) I went camping in the woods with a bunch of pagan friends. By day it was very warm and pleasant, and the woods were green and very inviting. Well, they usually are, but I also usually don't have time to run off and explore.
But given the choice between lazy campfire conversation and woods, I naturally (!) chose woods, and wandered off. I got given a lot of the usual warnings about poison ivy, which is really, I think, just a variant on "don't go into the woods, they're dangerous/fairies live there/you might get eaten by wolves/you might get lost". Which is really all just a variant on "don't go into the woods; you might not come out the same." And of course I didn't come out the same.
I don't really consider myself the nature-y type. I enjoy woods and soil and plants and trees and birds and mushrooms and flowers and moss and all sorts of things, and I'm not afraid of wandering off or getting lost or getting wet or anything like that. But camping is never anything my family ever really did, a garden's one of those things I think a lot about putting together but never do, and I'm very fond of heat and A/C and indoor plumbing and a roof over my head and all those pleasantries.
So I guess I'm surprised by the fact that I took to it so well. Originally I was just planning on heading out into the woods to find the landwights and make offerings (and I did both easily, thankyouverymuch). I wasn't planning on coming back for more. And more. And more. And I wasn't expecting to settle down with my back to the trees, and try to think up or remember names for all these plants I didn't know, and to think of how at home, and relaxed, and inexplicably lucky I felt, that I had the time and ability to sit down and enjoy the forest, and feel that weird creepy kinship with it--unsettling and simultaneously settling.
Before this weekend I'd never really felt elven, but something about wandering through the forest with a walking stick and investigating things, and just settling in and relaxing there, made me feel that way. The skeptic in me is loud right now--elves don't usually have wings and especially not feathered ones, three generations back your family were foresters so maybe that's what you're feeling, and who doesn't enjoy the woods on a nice day? Who knows? Wouldn't it be nice if there were a nice friendly list of symptoms to consult, or if somebody could just look at me and tell me already?
Damn it, I don't need more doubt. Maybe I'll have another look at the sidhe--they seem somewhere between elves and fae, on the big Venn diagram of feyness.
The long and short of it is, I seem to work in a "fey" curent. This doesn't mean that magically I work often with fae--in fact, quite the opposite. I love them too much to work with them in any productive way. In the presence of the fae I'm overwhelmed by love, adoration, yearning, and even a strange sort of jealousy.
No, instead I'm using "current" to describe my own energetic flavor, rather than what I seek out and work within. A lot of otherkin try very hard to justify how they feel, with things like allergies, pointed ears, affinities to animals, anecdotes about children, and the like. I don't really have any scorn toward people like that (except for those who are obviously doing it for attention and validation--they get irritating, honestly, and inhibit intelligent conversation. Elitist of me, maybe, but there you go). But it's not anything I'm really interested in doing myself. Nor am I really interested in how "I always knew..." --I always knew I was strange, different, not like others, but I also always took it for granted that I was kidding myself, and deep down inside I was a perfectly normal human being. Because in a lot of important ways I am. Take me to a doctor and they'll pronounce me a perfectly normal human being, and I know this and accept this. I'm not interested in denying my humanity--I just "know", on a deep, intuitive level, that I'm something fey.
There is, though, one thing that smacks of symptoms about me, in my eyes, and that's my phantom wings. They're large, and feathered--to the point where I've wondered briefly if I'm something more angelic, since "traditionally" fairies, elves, and other things I class as "fey" haven't got feathered wings. But I'm virtually certain--at least, at this point--that my energy "smells" fey. I've considered, for completeness, the possibility of being something angelic, but the underlying important factor of my personal, fey energy has overruled that every time.
But other than that, a fey what? (I use "fey" as an adjective, not as a race of creatures--it's just how I am.) Answer is--I don't know yet. Insufficient data. I've got evidence for fae, evidence for sidhe, evidence for elf, even evidence for peri, and those strange winged bird-women that show up along the Silk Road.
In other words, I don't know. I'm not going to know, I think, anytime soon, and while I keep an eye out I'm not digging at it and forcing it out--I've got a life to live, honestly, and while I'd like to indulge in constant psychic exercises I can't. But I'm not going to jump to any conclusions that I might regret later.
