07-29-2013, 05:57 AM
3. Awakening.
The Yale dean of students eagerly shook Jon's hand. “Congratulations on your achievement. I never heard in my days of a graduate student earning his law degree and being admitted to the Bar in just one year.”
Jon smiled politely behind his bespectacled eyes. Emotion could be a weapon, or a potential vulnerability. Best not to let his face show that he knew the dean of students to be a classic case of nepotism, inept at much more beyond signing his trademark name upon which he made his living.
Unwilling to play the victim any longer, Jon now knew many secrets, and they became currency to him to save, or barter against, or sell.
Nine months ago
Jon's arrival at Yale was unremarkable. As his abductor had promised, he had been admitted to the school's graduate program as a law student without questions. It was a bit odd that there was never any question about payment for tuition, or lodging or even meals at the cafeteria. He did not care to push the subject too much, if Yale was going to give the milk for free, why should he argue? Better keep his savings his.
Noah Crow's Eye had also been honest about the existence of Dr. Kevin Anderson and his expertise in Native American folklore. Shortly after enrolling, he met with Dr. Anderson, but the meeting didn't play out as Jon had expected.
Jon walked into Dr. Anderson's office and found a gaunt middle-aged man with long silver hair lying on the ground unclothed amongst an array of symbols chalked into the linoleum floor. The man had placed large crystals upon his head, chest and abdomen. Jon felt slightly embarassed for the man, and coughed politely.
“Oh, yes, how are you?” Dr. Anderson said with all the pomp of a routine physician's visit, all the while lying there with crystals suspended upon his naked body.
I am not doing this, he thought. “Sorry, wrong office, have a good day,” he said, and turned to leave.
“No, wait ---” Jon had already shut the door when he heard the man scream “I KNOW YOU ARE AFLLICTED!”
Bloody hell. Seriously? Jon cursed Noah for what he must have revealed. There was no trust in this world today.
Jon took a breath. He was really tired of others having the initiative on him...it made him feel powerless. As if his small frame hadn't been enough to do so throughout his teenage and early adult years. He walked back into the office, shut the door behind himself, locked it, and regarded the naked man: “I will speak with you...but I demand you stop lying on the ground like a fool and put on some clothes first.”
***
Dr. Kevin Anderson had a rational explanation for lying on the ground unclothed with crystals draped around himself. He was attempting to recreate an Ojibwa healing ritual so he could better describe it in a paper he was writing: “Crystals are described as having healing, stabling power, but when you get down to it, no one knows why they came to be known as so in mythology,” he told Jon. Jon allowed as it was an explanation, certainly. It did little to quell his concerns over the man's sanity.
Dr. Anderson had other interesting “breakthroughs” to share. He had through years of research gathered a number of Native American myths authenticated to be predating written literature in the Western world.
“What my specialty is,” Dr. Anderson described to Jon, “Is to find roots of the oldest spoken tales in Native American lore, and to match them with similar tales of different tribes – such as Cherokee and Inuit, for example – and search for still older. Vis-a-vis cross-referencing, I've believed I have managed to record tales more than twelve thousand years old.”
Jon took notice at that claim. “That would be twice as old as recorded history .What do those tales say?”
Dr. Anderson threw up his hands. “Not much useful, to be sure. Reconstructed by meta-analysis and supercomputing it is mostly 'There was gods. They did stuff. Then God shat and made world.' I am paraphrasing. But what I did find in my journey back might be useful to you.”
“How?”
“I have an inkling that our mutual friend Noah Crow's Eye is right in that the...Pandemic...is of a spiritual origin. I am sure you would want to know about that?”
Jon kept his face blank. Inside his heart fluttered. Could he trust this hippie lunatic character not to blab to the wrong person? WHO would have him quarantined in hours, and his name would go on a list, and if Noah hadn't been lying he would become a target. He hoped he wasn't just being played for a fool again. “Go on.”
“There are many similarities among various tribal ancient rituals. Rain dances, hunting dances, what have you. I am convinced they all originated from a single source, an ancient attempt to commune with the Great Spirit.”
Really. His own tribe had its stories about the Great Spirit, and how one could become one with it. He leaned forward in the office chair and folded his arms together. “Tell me something I do not know about my own people.”
Dr. Anderson blushed a bit. “Yes, certainly. Um. Not intending to show disrespect to your heritage or what you know of it. Now, it seems that even in recent history, the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas, some form of these rituals were still practiced that link back to ancient, common stories. The battle of Tippecanoe for example about 230 years ago. Tecumseh told his braves they would be bullet proof when they met the Americans on the field of battle. Now of course it didn't work. What interests me in the story is the connection between the rituals used by him and why almost the exact same ritual is described in Inuit lore, when the two tribes could not have possibly had any communication...I know I am rambling. My point is, one, all tribal legends contain a belief in a common Great Spirit that flows through everything, and two, certain components of these myths are the same in all these stories. They all had origins from some singular reference older than even myth.”
Jon sighed in his chair. He could connect the dots along the man's meandering path well enough; the roots of medicine in myth were long distant and common and what survives of the old stories were, like the Native man himself, remnants that connected with that singular distant past. But something was missing. “What are you not telling me? What does this have to do with being afflicted?”
Dr. Anderson looked down at his desk and shuffled through some notes. “Oh. Symptoms much like the Pandemic are referenced, vaguely, in old lore. This is also part of the common mythologic pathway. They were people believed to have been touched by the gods.”
Exasperated, his patience run out, Jon stood and threw his hands up. “Why didn't you just say that to begin with instead of prattling on as such?”
Dr. Anderson stiffened. Apparently the doctor had a little backbone. “Fine. You want me to get right to the point? The native peoples had true medicine but the use was lost back in prehistory. The ability was lost as those touched by the gods died in various ways, including being hunted down. The memories survived in the myth, but the ability was lost and the various tribes forgot that and for probably thousands of years had shaman and other medicine men who followed a true pathway to the Great Spirit as described in myth but lacked the ability. Understand?”
Jon nodded. “You believe I am touched by the gods...I have the ability these false medicine men lacked, and that my people's stories and myths will teach me how.”
Dr. Anderson nodded. “Well, yes, if any of these things do really exist, of course.” He bit his lip and opened up his desk, rummaging through a drawer. “I wonder...” He pulled something out and put it on his desk – a black teardrop-shaped stone apparently crafted out of smooth obsidian. It curled in a half-circle with the leading edge tapered to a curling point. “It is always ice-cold. This was found in an ancient Iroquois settlement not far from here. There is no explanation for how it got there and those tribes lacked both volcanic rock and the ability to craft it. But watch --” he stood the teardrop stone upon its delicate curl and it balanced there, upside down on the desk, almost impossibly. “The only rationale to it doing so is the way it was crafted was so that the center of balance is all in the long tail. Doesn't feel that way, though. Here.”
He handed the object to Jon. It was smooth, all in one piece and felt neither like rock, metal or glass. And Dr. Anderson was right in that the weight seemed more upon the fatter end of the teardrop.
But he was wrong about one thing. “Ice cold, you say?” He felt heat, and almost a subtle vibration, coming from the stone. Something resonated within him and the object. “It's warm. Almost hot.”
The doctor blinked. “Let me see.” He took the stone back and his eyes widened. “Interesting. And now it's cold again. Fascinating. I must study this further –“
And tell the academics what – that it got hot when I touched it? Jon reached across the desk and took the teardrop out of the doctor's hand. It grew warm to his touch. “Why don't you let me take it and see what I can learn?”
“That's university property and probably priceless.”
“It was sitting in your desk drawer, doctor.” Jon locked his eyes with the doctor's. “No one needs to know about this. Anything of my visit. It could be dangerous if the wrong people heard of it.”
“But-”
Jon stared with greater intensity. He had to make the man believe he had to keep his mouth shut! He had to! “Understand? Don't tell a soul. You will forget this conversation. You will forget your conversation about me with Noah Crow's Eye. I only met with you because of my interest in learning more of my ancestors.”
The doctor blinked and drew back. For a moment he was silent. “So, how else can I be of help to you? I can see you are quite interested in learning about your ancestral roots.”
Was this man going to actually pretend he had literally forgotten the conversation? That was fine as far as Jon was concerned, he could play along. “Just tell the librarians to give me access to the old manuscripts.” He stood up and shook the doctor's hand. “You've been a great help.” With that, he left the doctor's office, teardrop stone in his pocket.
(Jon now has in his possession a surviving object of the Power crafted in a previous Age. It has no other known use apart from growing warm when he holds it and can hold itself erect when balanced upside down. It was ice cold in the hands of Dr. Anderson, a non-channeler. )
Fall quickly turned to winter in New Haven. Snow came early this year in Connecticut. Jon threw himself into his studies, both academic and...extracurricular. He found himself able to move quickly through the mundane coursework that came with obtaining a law degree, and was often able to convince his professors to award credit early, thus freeing him up to move ahead to still other courses.
He knew he didn't have much time. Events in the world were developing rapidly. America was becoming increasingly polarized in its politics and attitudes toward the CCD, which seemed to have no limit to its powers to expand. Conditions for citizens in the United States continued to become more severe as the economic recession crunched the middle class and rolled over the less fortunate. Among the natives, talk continued about what to do about protecting their lands from interlopers and swindlers. The tribes were lacking advocates able to compel the court systems to make the executive branch do something about repeated intrusions, squatters, cheats in energy and mineral agreements, home invasions... A Seminole tribe in Florida had actually been forced off their land by the state through exercise of eminent domain law. It was relocation all over again. Fed up, the Gathering of Nations convened and formed the Council of Native Americans, tasked with approaching the federal government and demanding the treaties be honored and to pursue other alternatives if that failed.
Jon knew he didn't have much time in other ways. Four days after meeting with Dr. Anderson Jon was attending a lecture on English Common Law and its variant as applied in CCD territory when his vision blurred. He tried to rub his eyes and realized he couldn't lift his arm. The strength had completely left all his muscles. He realized with terror he was sitting in the middle of a lecture hall packed with 200 other people and he was completely paralyzed. Eyes wide open, he stared forward at the professor and pretended to act normal, hoping no one noticed anything odd. Thankfully, the lecture was almost two hours long and by the time it was done Jon could move again, with none the wiser. The professor even complimented Jon afterward on his attentiveness.
Night and day, day and night, he studied. No time for friends right now. No time for parties and no time for girls. He relentlessly pursued his studies, attending dozens of lectures a week. At night he lay down to sleep and walked the Spirit World. With practice and careful meditation entering and departing was becoming much easier. He found out quickly that when walking the Spirit World his thoughts could change his surroundings, his clothing and even his appearance. He could even think about a place he wanted to be and be there. It took concentration to maintain any change but became very useful. With a thought he could create a board and diagram a legal argument faster than he could write, or find the exact book he was looking for simply by thinking himself there.
The Spirit World appeared to be a mirror image of the waking world with the exception that things moved around a lot bore little reflection. He couldn't find food, and he rarely saw any other people for longer than a glimpse. Books in libraries were hardly touched anymore, and were usually where he found them. Professors' notes for the lectures they were preparing to give the next morning were often apt to change as he held them in his hands. He searched for anything he could find of use to move faster. If he could learn the entirety of the course material for a class in the first week and convince the professor he may as well move on, that was all for the best. If he could stump the professor on the first day by throwing back his legal arguments with carefully crafted answers, even better. It wasn't cheating, not when he really was learning. Well, he wasn't cheating himself out of a real education, anyway.
Always, his spirit guide was present, in the form of a coyote. Sometimes Jon wondered if the spirit guide was just a reflection of himself.
It took Jon about a week to realize his body wasn't getting any rest while he walked the Spirit World. He pressed on anyways. The human body can function for a surprisingly long time on minimal sleep, if the will is there to drive it. By the end of the fall semseter Jon had completed enough coursework to apply to write his Master's thesis. He'd completed three years of education in three months.
Amidst his frantic pace of learning, Jon explored further the myths of his people. There were ancient manuscripts in libraries all over the world for his picking. He quickly dismissed much of the ritualistic dancing and chanting as hokum and looked instead to what they were trying to summon, and what they were trying to accomplish. There were base elements at play that came up every time: fire, wind, earth and water. Four directions, four elements, four spirits, intertwining with the Great Spirit at its center. An old, old legend that described “threads that form the Great Spirit woven through all things, that flows through all things.”
Jon studied the obsidian teardrop-shaped object he'd obtained from Dr. Anderson. It did nothing that he could see but grow warm in his hands. When he held it, he could feel a resonance. What was this thing?
Toward the end of November, Jon took a solitary trip to the wilderness. After what had happened when he had been attacked by Kigatilik, he wanted to be careful when delving into medicine. He hiked for three miles and found a secluded spot near some oak trees and a small stream. He prepared a small fire and sat down to meditate. The presence of Earth, Fire, Wind and Air should help him focus and call upon the elements.
Jon opened himself up, as if to the Spirit World, but kept himself anchored in the waking world by thought. He fed his emotions into the fire before him and welcomed its heat. Drifting in his own consciousness, he welcomed the awareness of the wind around him, and cloaked himself within. The rushing water nearby soothed his ears, and he welcomed that, as well. He felt the ground pulsating beneath him, the strength of the Earth filling him. His own heartbeat fed into the mix of the elemental symphony.
He could feel the clouds above him as they whirled and passed by. He could feel each flicker of flame dance as it consumed the dried sticks. The stream, racing by. The earth, below him. So solid, yet it seemed he could sink into it and become a part of it. There was wet earth and air pockets right beneath him. All he needed to do was reach out and –
Crack.
The fall brought Jon back to consciousness. Fortunately, it wasn't far, only about eight feet. He opened his eyes and saw that a sinkhole had formed right where he had been sitting. The rent in the earth had altered the flow of the stream, and it was rapidly filling the hole, drenching him with cold water.
Jon clawed his way to the precipice of the hole, hiked back to his truck and drove back to his dorm. He decided that night that he needed to make sure he got more actual sleep before attempting such a thing again. Which he would. And he did.
Winter gave way to spring. Jon had completed his Master's thesis. Entitled “Federal Malfeasance: an examination of federal treatment of its treaties with the Native Americans, and its citizens,” it described Native American tribal agreements with the United States and the failures of the United States to enforce its own terms in the agreements. Additionally, as legal citizens, the rights of due process were being summarily denied, largely through ignorance of Federal justices of the legal obligations that rested with the United States as agreed to by treaty. His thesis concluded that the inaction of the federal government constituted breach of treaty and violation of its own laws. It was published in late April, and received much attention from various civil rights groups, including the Council of Native Americans (CNA).
Jon continued his trips to the wilderness. He began to find through his exercises that he could...do things at will. On one venture he managed to start a fire without flame. It had taken many attempts but eventually flames roared to light upon his bundle of sticks gathered before him. Yet another time he swore he actually made it rain. No dancing needed, he just felt his way into the clouds and gathered them properly, gently nudging this way and that.
Other things, he found, he was able to do as well. The dean of the Yale School of Law met with Jon in early May and told Jon he was in no way going to be allowed to graduate law school in one year. Never mind that he had completed the necessary graduate studies and published a thesis lauded as frontier work in a new era, never mind that he was expected to graduate Egregia Cum Laude from a school that didn't ever bestow an honor that high.
Jon didn't have time to waste in acadamia. Political strife continued in the United States. The CNA were actually debating whether it would be wise, or even possible, to send a diplomatic mission to the CCD. Minutemen rallies were happening everywhere, including on the campus. On the newsweb, rising political star Nick Trano championed what was essentially a return to a Cold War state of relations with regard to the CCD. It was obvious a conflict was coming
“Just let me graduate,” Jon told the dean, and he opened his third eye and felt the Great Spirit wrap around himself and the dean. The dean approved it right there.
The symptoms hadn't come upon Jon for quite some time.
Present Day
Jon took his Juris Doctorate diploma in hand and walked out of the university hall. The time for being acted upon was past. Now was the time to act.
Three days later, he filed a federal law suit against the State of Florida on behalf of the Council of Native Americans protesting the removal of Seminoles from their reservation.
The coyote had been let loose upon the world.
(Jon has now learned a degree of control over the Power. He can now consciously channel. His skill level has increased.)
Edited by Jon Little Bird, Jul 29 2013, 06:37 AM.
The Yale dean of students eagerly shook Jon's hand. “Congratulations on your achievement. I never heard in my days of a graduate student earning his law degree and being admitted to the Bar in just one year.”
Jon smiled politely behind his bespectacled eyes. Emotion could be a weapon, or a potential vulnerability. Best not to let his face show that he knew the dean of students to be a classic case of nepotism, inept at much more beyond signing his trademark name upon which he made his living.
Unwilling to play the victim any longer, Jon now knew many secrets, and they became currency to him to save, or barter against, or sell.
Nine months ago
Jon's arrival at Yale was unremarkable. As his abductor had promised, he had been admitted to the school's graduate program as a law student without questions. It was a bit odd that there was never any question about payment for tuition, or lodging or even meals at the cafeteria. He did not care to push the subject too much, if Yale was going to give the milk for free, why should he argue? Better keep his savings his.
Noah Crow's Eye had also been honest about the existence of Dr. Kevin Anderson and his expertise in Native American folklore. Shortly after enrolling, he met with Dr. Anderson, but the meeting didn't play out as Jon had expected.
Jon walked into Dr. Anderson's office and found a gaunt middle-aged man with long silver hair lying on the ground unclothed amongst an array of symbols chalked into the linoleum floor. The man had placed large crystals upon his head, chest and abdomen. Jon felt slightly embarassed for the man, and coughed politely.
“Oh, yes, how are you?” Dr. Anderson said with all the pomp of a routine physician's visit, all the while lying there with crystals suspended upon his naked body.
I am not doing this, he thought. “Sorry, wrong office, have a good day,” he said, and turned to leave.
“No, wait ---” Jon had already shut the door when he heard the man scream “I KNOW YOU ARE AFLLICTED!”
Bloody hell. Seriously? Jon cursed Noah for what he must have revealed. There was no trust in this world today.
Jon took a breath. He was really tired of others having the initiative on him...it made him feel powerless. As if his small frame hadn't been enough to do so throughout his teenage and early adult years. He walked back into the office, shut the door behind himself, locked it, and regarded the naked man: “I will speak with you...but I demand you stop lying on the ground like a fool and put on some clothes first.”
***
Dr. Kevin Anderson had a rational explanation for lying on the ground unclothed with crystals draped around himself. He was attempting to recreate an Ojibwa healing ritual so he could better describe it in a paper he was writing: “Crystals are described as having healing, stabling power, but when you get down to it, no one knows why they came to be known as so in mythology,” he told Jon. Jon allowed as it was an explanation, certainly. It did little to quell his concerns over the man's sanity.
Dr. Anderson had other interesting “breakthroughs” to share. He had through years of research gathered a number of Native American myths authenticated to be predating written literature in the Western world.
“What my specialty is,” Dr. Anderson described to Jon, “Is to find roots of the oldest spoken tales in Native American lore, and to match them with similar tales of different tribes – such as Cherokee and Inuit, for example – and search for still older. Vis-a-vis cross-referencing, I've believed I have managed to record tales more than twelve thousand years old.”
Jon took notice at that claim. “That would be twice as old as recorded history .What do those tales say?”
Dr. Anderson threw up his hands. “Not much useful, to be sure. Reconstructed by meta-analysis and supercomputing it is mostly 'There was gods. They did stuff. Then God shat and made world.' I am paraphrasing. But what I did find in my journey back might be useful to you.”
“How?”
“I have an inkling that our mutual friend Noah Crow's Eye is right in that the...Pandemic...is of a spiritual origin. I am sure you would want to know about that?”
Jon kept his face blank. Inside his heart fluttered. Could he trust this hippie lunatic character not to blab to the wrong person? WHO would have him quarantined in hours, and his name would go on a list, and if Noah hadn't been lying he would become a target. He hoped he wasn't just being played for a fool again. “Go on.”
“There are many similarities among various tribal ancient rituals. Rain dances, hunting dances, what have you. I am convinced they all originated from a single source, an ancient attempt to commune with the Great Spirit.”
Really. His own tribe had its stories about the Great Spirit, and how one could become one with it. He leaned forward in the office chair and folded his arms together. “Tell me something I do not know about my own people.”
Dr. Anderson blushed a bit. “Yes, certainly. Um. Not intending to show disrespect to your heritage or what you know of it. Now, it seems that even in recent history, the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas, some form of these rituals were still practiced that link back to ancient, common stories. The battle of Tippecanoe for example about 230 years ago. Tecumseh told his braves they would be bullet proof when they met the Americans on the field of battle. Now of course it didn't work. What interests me in the story is the connection between the rituals used by him and why almost the exact same ritual is described in Inuit lore, when the two tribes could not have possibly had any communication...I know I am rambling. My point is, one, all tribal legends contain a belief in a common Great Spirit that flows through everything, and two, certain components of these myths are the same in all these stories. They all had origins from some singular reference older than even myth.”
Jon sighed in his chair. He could connect the dots along the man's meandering path well enough; the roots of medicine in myth were long distant and common and what survives of the old stories were, like the Native man himself, remnants that connected with that singular distant past. But something was missing. “What are you not telling me? What does this have to do with being afflicted?”
Dr. Anderson looked down at his desk and shuffled through some notes. “Oh. Symptoms much like the Pandemic are referenced, vaguely, in old lore. This is also part of the common mythologic pathway. They were people believed to have been touched by the gods.”
Exasperated, his patience run out, Jon stood and threw his hands up. “Why didn't you just say that to begin with instead of prattling on as such?”
Dr. Anderson stiffened. Apparently the doctor had a little backbone. “Fine. You want me to get right to the point? The native peoples had true medicine but the use was lost back in prehistory. The ability was lost as those touched by the gods died in various ways, including being hunted down. The memories survived in the myth, but the ability was lost and the various tribes forgot that and for probably thousands of years had shaman and other medicine men who followed a true pathway to the Great Spirit as described in myth but lacked the ability. Understand?”
Jon nodded. “You believe I am touched by the gods...I have the ability these false medicine men lacked, and that my people's stories and myths will teach me how.”
Dr. Anderson nodded. “Well, yes, if any of these things do really exist, of course.” He bit his lip and opened up his desk, rummaging through a drawer. “I wonder...” He pulled something out and put it on his desk – a black teardrop-shaped stone apparently crafted out of smooth obsidian. It curled in a half-circle with the leading edge tapered to a curling point. “It is always ice-cold. This was found in an ancient Iroquois settlement not far from here. There is no explanation for how it got there and those tribes lacked both volcanic rock and the ability to craft it. But watch --” he stood the teardrop stone upon its delicate curl and it balanced there, upside down on the desk, almost impossibly. “The only rationale to it doing so is the way it was crafted was so that the center of balance is all in the long tail. Doesn't feel that way, though. Here.”
He handed the object to Jon. It was smooth, all in one piece and felt neither like rock, metal or glass. And Dr. Anderson was right in that the weight seemed more upon the fatter end of the teardrop.
But he was wrong about one thing. “Ice cold, you say?” He felt heat, and almost a subtle vibration, coming from the stone. Something resonated within him and the object. “It's warm. Almost hot.”
The doctor blinked. “Let me see.” He took the stone back and his eyes widened. “Interesting. And now it's cold again. Fascinating. I must study this further –“
And tell the academics what – that it got hot when I touched it? Jon reached across the desk and took the teardrop out of the doctor's hand. It grew warm to his touch. “Why don't you let me take it and see what I can learn?”
“That's university property and probably priceless.”
“It was sitting in your desk drawer, doctor.” Jon locked his eyes with the doctor's. “No one needs to know about this. Anything of my visit. It could be dangerous if the wrong people heard of it.”
“But-”
Jon stared with greater intensity. He had to make the man believe he had to keep his mouth shut! He had to! “Understand? Don't tell a soul. You will forget this conversation. You will forget your conversation about me with Noah Crow's Eye. I only met with you because of my interest in learning more of my ancestors.”
The doctor blinked and drew back. For a moment he was silent. “So, how else can I be of help to you? I can see you are quite interested in learning about your ancestral roots.”
Was this man going to actually pretend he had literally forgotten the conversation? That was fine as far as Jon was concerned, he could play along. “Just tell the librarians to give me access to the old manuscripts.” He stood up and shook the doctor's hand. “You've been a great help.” With that, he left the doctor's office, teardrop stone in his pocket.
(Jon now has in his possession a surviving object of the Power crafted in a previous Age. It has no other known use apart from growing warm when he holds it and can hold itself erect when balanced upside down. It was ice cold in the hands of Dr. Anderson, a non-channeler. )
Fall quickly turned to winter in New Haven. Snow came early this year in Connecticut. Jon threw himself into his studies, both academic and...extracurricular. He found himself able to move quickly through the mundane coursework that came with obtaining a law degree, and was often able to convince his professors to award credit early, thus freeing him up to move ahead to still other courses.
He knew he didn't have much time. Events in the world were developing rapidly. America was becoming increasingly polarized in its politics and attitudes toward the CCD, which seemed to have no limit to its powers to expand. Conditions for citizens in the United States continued to become more severe as the economic recession crunched the middle class and rolled over the less fortunate. Among the natives, talk continued about what to do about protecting their lands from interlopers and swindlers. The tribes were lacking advocates able to compel the court systems to make the executive branch do something about repeated intrusions, squatters, cheats in energy and mineral agreements, home invasions... A Seminole tribe in Florida had actually been forced off their land by the state through exercise of eminent domain law. It was relocation all over again. Fed up, the Gathering of Nations convened and formed the Council of Native Americans, tasked with approaching the federal government and demanding the treaties be honored and to pursue other alternatives if that failed.
Jon knew he didn't have much time in other ways. Four days after meeting with Dr. Anderson Jon was attending a lecture on English Common Law and its variant as applied in CCD territory when his vision blurred. He tried to rub his eyes and realized he couldn't lift his arm. The strength had completely left all his muscles. He realized with terror he was sitting in the middle of a lecture hall packed with 200 other people and he was completely paralyzed. Eyes wide open, he stared forward at the professor and pretended to act normal, hoping no one noticed anything odd. Thankfully, the lecture was almost two hours long and by the time it was done Jon could move again, with none the wiser. The professor even complimented Jon afterward on his attentiveness.
Night and day, day and night, he studied. No time for friends right now. No time for parties and no time for girls. He relentlessly pursued his studies, attending dozens of lectures a week. At night he lay down to sleep and walked the Spirit World. With practice and careful meditation entering and departing was becoming much easier. He found out quickly that when walking the Spirit World his thoughts could change his surroundings, his clothing and even his appearance. He could even think about a place he wanted to be and be there. It took concentration to maintain any change but became very useful. With a thought he could create a board and diagram a legal argument faster than he could write, or find the exact book he was looking for simply by thinking himself there.
The Spirit World appeared to be a mirror image of the waking world with the exception that things moved around a lot bore little reflection. He couldn't find food, and he rarely saw any other people for longer than a glimpse. Books in libraries were hardly touched anymore, and were usually where he found them. Professors' notes for the lectures they were preparing to give the next morning were often apt to change as he held them in his hands. He searched for anything he could find of use to move faster. If he could learn the entirety of the course material for a class in the first week and convince the professor he may as well move on, that was all for the best. If he could stump the professor on the first day by throwing back his legal arguments with carefully crafted answers, even better. It wasn't cheating, not when he really was learning. Well, he wasn't cheating himself out of a real education, anyway.
Always, his spirit guide was present, in the form of a coyote. Sometimes Jon wondered if the spirit guide was just a reflection of himself.
It took Jon about a week to realize his body wasn't getting any rest while he walked the Spirit World. He pressed on anyways. The human body can function for a surprisingly long time on minimal sleep, if the will is there to drive it. By the end of the fall semseter Jon had completed enough coursework to apply to write his Master's thesis. He'd completed three years of education in three months.
Amidst his frantic pace of learning, Jon explored further the myths of his people. There were ancient manuscripts in libraries all over the world for his picking. He quickly dismissed much of the ritualistic dancing and chanting as hokum and looked instead to what they were trying to summon, and what they were trying to accomplish. There were base elements at play that came up every time: fire, wind, earth and water. Four directions, four elements, four spirits, intertwining with the Great Spirit at its center. An old, old legend that described “threads that form the Great Spirit woven through all things, that flows through all things.”
Jon studied the obsidian teardrop-shaped object he'd obtained from Dr. Anderson. It did nothing that he could see but grow warm in his hands. When he held it, he could feel a resonance. What was this thing?
Toward the end of November, Jon took a solitary trip to the wilderness. After what had happened when he had been attacked by Kigatilik, he wanted to be careful when delving into medicine. He hiked for three miles and found a secluded spot near some oak trees and a small stream. He prepared a small fire and sat down to meditate. The presence of Earth, Fire, Wind and Air should help him focus and call upon the elements.
Jon opened himself up, as if to the Spirit World, but kept himself anchored in the waking world by thought. He fed his emotions into the fire before him and welcomed its heat. Drifting in his own consciousness, he welcomed the awareness of the wind around him, and cloaked himself within. The rushing water nearby soothed his ears, and he welcomed that, as well. He felt the ground pulsating beneath him, the strength of the Earth filling him. His own heartbeat fed into the mix of the elemental symphony.
He could feel the clouds above him as they whirled and passed by. He could feel each flicker of flame dance as it consumed the dried sticks. The stream, racing by. The earth, below him. So solid, yet it seemed he could sink into it and become a part of it. There was wet earth and air pockets right beneath him. All he needed to do was reach out and –
Crack.
The fall brought Jon back to consciousness. Fortunately, it wasn't far, only about eight feet. He opened his eyes and saw that a sinkhole had formed right where he had been sitting. The rent in the earth had altered the flow of the stream, and it was rapidly filling the hole, drenching him with cold water.
Jon clawed his way to the precipice of the hole, hiked back to his truck and drove back to his dorm. He decided that night that he needed to make sure he got more actual sleep before attempting such a thing again. Which he would. And he did.
Winter gave way to spring. Jon had completed his Master's thesis. Entitled “Federal Malfeasance: an examination of federal treatment of its treaties with the Native Americans, and its citizens,” it described Native American tribal agreements with the United States and the failures of the United States to enforce its own terms in the agreements. Additionally, as legal citizens, the rights of due process were being summarily denied, largely through ignorance of Federal justices of the legal obligations that rested with the United States as agreed to by treaty. His thesis concluded that the inaction of the federal government constituted breach of treaty and violation of its own laws. It was published in late April, and received much attention from various civil rights groups, including the Council of Native Americans (CNA).
Jon continued his trips to the wilderness. He began to find through his exercises that he could...do things at will. On one venture he managed to start a fire without flame. It had taken many attempts but eventually flames roared to light upon his bundle of sticks gathered before him. Yet another time he swore he actually made it rain. No dancing needed, he just felt his way into the clouds and gathered them properly, gently nudging this way and that.
Other things, he found, he was able to do as well. The dean of the Yale School of Law met with Jon in early May and told Jon he was in no way going to be allowed to graduate law school in one year. Never mind that he had completed the necessary graduate studies and published a thesis lauded as frontier work in a new era, never mind that he was expected to graduate Egregia Cum Laude from a school that didn't ever bestow an honor that high.
Jon didn't have time to waste in acadamia. Political strife continued in the United States. The CNA were actually debating whether it would be wise, or even possible, to send a diplomatic mission to the CCD. Minutemen rallies were happening everywhere, including on the campus. On the newsweb, rising political star Nick Trano championed what was essentially a return to a Cold War state of relations with regard to the CCD. It was obvious a conflict was coming
“Just let me graduate,” Jon told the dean, and he opened his third eye and felt the Great Spirit wrap around himself and the dean. The dean approved it right there.
The symptoms hadn't come upon Jon for quite some time.
Present Day
Jon took his Juris Doctorate diploma in hand and walked out of the university hall. The time for being acted upon was past. Now was the time to act.
Three days later, he filed a federal law suit against the State of Florida on behalf of the Council of Native Americans protesting the removal of Seminoles from their reservation.
The coyote had been let loose upon the world.
(Jon has now learned a degree of control over the Power. He can now consciously channel. His skill level has increased.)
Edited by Jon Little Bird, Jul 29 2013, 06:37 AM.