Ripleigh Go Bragh

Ripleigh Go Bragh
Connemara stallion Ripleigh Go Bragh

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Write It Forward- Baba Yaga


The Write It Forward Game:
I'll provide the start- you write it forward!
250 words maximum please.
End in the middle of sentence...
You can follow any thread - take the story anywhere you like!
Use your own photos if you are a photographer or painter!
Please provide a link so people can see what you are doing on your own sites and share the game on FB/Twitter/Linkedin etc. The more people we get playing the more likely they will look at your site- let's build a huge playground together!

PLEASE HIT "reply' UNDER THE POST OF THE STORY YOU WISH TO CONTINUE.  You can see how I've responded and continued the story below each of the comments below.

***BE SURE TO LET THE PERSON TO WHOM REPLIED KNOW YOU DID SO BY PASTING YOUR LAST LINE AND A LINK TO THIS SITE ON THEIR FB PAGE.***
paste: "Write It Forward @ http://coreeqlifecoach.blogspot.com/

Contact me if you have any feedback or questions.

THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME PLAY WITH YOU! :)

BABA YAGA:
Baby Yaga lay in her crib listening to the deep voices of men and the snufflings of dogs on her rooftop.  The one room cottage was dark with only one strong, dust-moted beam of light shining through the arched window in the door.  She was warm enough since her Muma Pădurii had wrapped her tightly in a red, white and yellow wool blanket shortly before she left to go to the market.  It scratched her chin and smelled of creosote and onions but it also smelled of Muma. 

Then again, Baba Yaga lay in her bed, two hundred years after the great snowstorm, wrapped tightly in a wool blanket that smelled of chicken soup and garlic.   Her bones ached and she wondered how it could be that this ancient body could be the same body that she had been born with.  She remembered the looseness of her limbs as they pushed against the swaddling blanket, the fullness of hair and lips, and the delight her eyes took in the shadows that outlined the room.  With a dry crackling sound, she shifted on her cot, scaring the mice that lived in the old bed straw.  One hundred years ago today...

18 comments:

  1. Testing this out...

    Baba Yaga learned that the village where she lived was in the way of a proposed dam. Everyone was going to have to leave unless someone could find a way to convince the Lord of the Manor to change his plans. The villagers few lots to determine who would go. Baba Yaga, who was at that time...

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    1. still popular with all the young lads as she hadn't developed the bad case of chin hairs yet, decided to go to the woods to visit her ancient mother, the herbalist. Her idea was...

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  3. One hundred years ago today….
    Was the day a stranger entered the life of Baba’s mother. Baba’s mother was the only daughter of the village’s seer and had been promised at birth in marriage to the kings only son. What would soon take place would forever change the course of the baba’s family history of seers. The blood line between the royal family and that of the seers had been kept pure for as far back as thousands of years. Even to the beginning according to the local legend and tradition.
    Baba was not meant to be. No un-pure child had ever been known to exist within the two family lines until the stranger arrived. It was a closely guarded secret that only Baba’s mother knew about, not even the stranger knew that the child Baba was of his blood.
    The gods were angry with Baba’s mother and had stripped her of her seer abilities. As a young seer while learning to use her abilities her teacher had continually warned her of……..

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    1. the dangers of letting others get too close to her. "Watch for them that want to know your history" said her teacher as she boiled newt toes with ginger roots and flipped the barbecuing camel heels. "If they learn of what you're made, they will want to take it from you and use it for..."

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    4. If they learn of what you’re made, they will want to take it from you and use it for……
      Personal gain and evil. Should that happen, thee...”
      “But how can others take my powers as a seer? Is not this gift of clairvoyance and power I posses only given to those of the pure blood of our ancestors?”
      “Baba, Baba…young child” her teacher Moll the nagual spoke with a sad sigh and paused for a long moment from stirring the newt toes and ginger roots. “There is much you have to learn, and much I have to teach you. But you are yet young still, and not yet ready for certain knowledge and truths of yourself and of our ways. These truths and knowledge shall be revealed to you in the time that is right. In the time when you are stronger, and wiser in our ways.”
      Moll then reached into the skinned pouch with a rawhide string that hung from her neck. Pulled out a pinch of rear herbs, sprinkled them into the pot and began slowly stirring once again.
      She quickly looked up with a concerned look as a dozen ravens all cawing loudly flew over the trees tops above.
      “Quickly my child. We've not much time……”


      (Apologies for the deleted comments I did not realize I was signed into my old Google blog)

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    5. "Quickly my child. We've not much time..."

      Thousands of ravens filled the sky as Moll and Baba Yaga stepped out into the icy Northern wind. Flecks of ice and bits of leaves and twigs cut into her skin as Baba Yaga raised her arm to protect her face. The wind was so strong it pushed her body against the strong thighs of her teacher.
      "The wind has changed. This is an ill omen- I fear I have not much longer to prepare you for the days ahead."
      Moll looked down at Baba Yaga, feeling sorry for the innocent girl. Great powers always come with great burdens. She remembered when she was Baba Yaga's age and a disciple of Flander the Flier. Long had it been since she had last practice her art as a flier. Times had gotten dark since the new religion had come into the valley. Like the dam that would soon destroy the valley, the new god had...

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    6. Like the dam that would soon destroy the valley, the new god had….

      Sworn to punish all who practiced the ancient art of sorcery and other forms of magic. But he first needed to flood the forest, creating a large lake where the center of the vortex lay. Only by building a dam down river could this be done.

      This was the only way Zachiah the new god could forever bind the powers of the nagual bloodline.
      It was the price that was to be paid for Muma Pădurii’s disobedience years before. Muma Pădurii had been warned of the dangers by her teacher and elder Nagual but had still allowed herself to fall in love with the strange visitor and gave birth to a child of un-pure nagual blood.

      Afraid and in fear for the life of herself and family, Muma Padurii confided in her cousin Moll that she was with child and no longer pure. Moll agreed to help Muma Padurii in her plans to secretly leave the valley and run off with the stranger before anyone came of the knowledge the she was with child but the stranger secretly left the valley without taking Muma Padurii with him not reveling where he was journeying to. So Moll….

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  4. Baba had never known anything of her mother's past, or what had happened to her father. When ever she asked her mother, she would say that it was another life time, and that it was not important. Her mother always kept her safe in the forest, but she didnt have any friends, she had her mother to talk to and the animals. She talk with the others in the village, she learnt a long time ago that they didnt understand her love for the animals and would make fun of her, so her only friends were the animals in the forest. That was until the day that the stranger appeared.

    Baba was walking through the forest, when she spotted a man talking to a deer. He was kneeling down so that he was at the same level as the animal, and was talking in a loving way to him and stroking his head. Baba had never seen anyone else talk to the animals this way, and tried to move closer to him, so that she could hear what he was saying, but she stepped on a twig, which startle him and the deer ran away.

    She asked the man what he had said to the deer, and he said that the deer was concerned about what was going to happen. The animals had sensed that something was going to happen, that the dam was going to affect their homes and the man was assuring the deer that they would be ok, that he was here to help.

    Then he informed Baba that he needed to see her mother, that she was very important to this, but Baba could not understand this. How could her mother do anything to stop this, she didnt go into the village, she was just a woman who lived in the forest. This stranger told Baba that there are a lot of things that she did not know, but she would soon find out that her and her mother were going to help the villagers, and the animals and save the forest...

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  5. ...save the forest...

    from the threat of anhiliation.

    Baba took the stranger to see her mother. But when she got to the shack it had disappeared leaving behind only tracks shaped like giant chickens feet. It had raised itself up from the forest floor like a woman lifting her skirts to fly from angry dogs. All that was left was the bone fence and a few twigs from the thatched roof.
    "I was afraid of this. " Said the stranger. "She has been running from me since the day I met her under the..."

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  6. Like the dam that would soon destroy the valley, the new god had….

    Sworn to punish all who practiced the ancient art of sorcery and other forms of magic. But he first needed to flood to the forest, creating a large lake where the center of the vortex lay. Only by building a dam down river could this be done. This was the only way Zachiah the new god could forever bind the powers of the nagual bloodline.
    It was the price that was to be paid for Muma Pădurii’s disobedience years before. Muma Pădurii had been warned of the dangers by her teacher and elder Nagual but had still allowed herself to fall in love with the strange visitor gave birth to a child of un-pure nagual blood.
    Afraid and in fear for the life of herself and family, Muma Padurii confided in her cousin Moll that she was with child and no longer pure. Moll agreed to help Muma Padurii in her plans to secretly leave the valley and run off with the stranger before anyone came of the knowledge the she was with child but the stranger secretly left the valley without taking Muma Padurii with him not reveling where he was journeying to. So Moll….

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    1. the stranger secretly left the valley without taking Muma Padurii with him not reveling where he was journeying to. So Moll….

      ..., who knew she had broken the sacred covenant of friendship between sorcerers, had spent the last fifty years doing penance by giving up flying forever and magic until the day that Muma Padurii forgave her. The high circle of Sage Sorcerers had told her that if she could not repair the damage she had done by betraying Muma Padurii and putting Baba Yaga at risk- then she would die. Her time would end when enough ravens had gathered in the sky to change the flow of the wind from North to South.
      Moll turned to Baba Yaga. "We must find your mother quickly, I've only 9 days left to live. She has told her house to run from me whenever I approach, unless I...

      (I'm glad you're still here, I'm keeping this going even though. Hopefully people will catch on someday.)

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    2. She has told her house to run from me whenever I approach, unless I...

      Could somehow find a way to contact the spirit of Wonderful the witch. Wonderful was the only one that could restore Muma Padurii’s power and purify the blood of Baba Yaga. She was of the highest order of the sorcerers.

      It was wonderful who had put an end to the awful burning times after the black plague swept through Europe wiping out two thirds of the population.

      For three hundred years after the great plague witches, Niguel, and other sorcerers were persecuted. They were hunted, down; tortured, and killed. The people had falsely come to believe witches were the cause of the plague.

      A short time after the Salem witch trials had ended in the great new land, ending the three hundred year persecution, Wonderful passed over. Her body entombed in the high cliffs overlooking the ocean and Shallow cave.

      Her powerful spirit was now the guardian of….

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  7. Her powerful spirit was now the guardian of….

    ... the Cauldron of the Shadows. This cauldron had passed from the third daughter of the third daughter since the Order of Sorcerers had been founded, long before the Neanderthals had stopped walking the Earth. It was said that only the Tears of Wisdom could release the magic of the Cauldron of the Shadows. Wisdom the sorceress had long believed that she was the Wisdom of legend and so she had been entombed in the Shallow cave where her heart's desires had been lost in the wars of...

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  8. Wisdom the sorceress had long believed that she was the Wisdom of legend and so she had been entombed in the Shallow cave where her heart's desires had been lost in the wars of...Expropriation of the sacred lands of the naguals.


    Which has raged on for hundreds of years.

    Because the gods delayed the punishment and forbid Musonius the king from enacting vengeance on Moll for helping Muma Padurii, a Maladaptation of resentment, hatred and rebellion against the gods and naguals grew in the heart of king Musonius.

    Athanasius his son still bitter and angry from his broken heart and the loss of his promised wife Muma Padurii, years earlier; vowed before the kings death bed he would enact his vengeance when the title lord of the manor was passed to him.

    The voices of the whisperers of the past haunted his heart and mind. They whispered building a dam, and flooding the valley, burying deep the vortex, would cut off and weaken the powers of the naguals, sorcerers and other practitioners of magic. Then he would not have to fear their powers and could enact his vengeance and carry out his ethnocide.

    The warm happy comforting glow Baba had been feeling being with, and helping Moll suddenly vanished and a chilling icy cold swept over her freezing her in place at Molls announcement that she would soon be torn from her life. Moll's words sent a wave of terror and fear through Baba. Unable to speak or move Baba Yaga stood steering blankly at Moll with a shocked frightened, puzzled gaze.

    Molls’ worried expression suddenly disappeared and one of a warm loving glow replaced it.
    Looking Baba in the eyes and wearing a warming smile and comforting look, Moll softly consoled Baba.
    “It’s OK child, fear not and let not your heart be troubled, for I will always be with you, even in death, but you must go now. Quickly”

    Baba had been told many times death was not final for nagaul’s but still; tears filled her eyes and began to ooze from the corners of her eyes. Moll relished the large wooden paddle leaving it to rest against the inner rim of the cauldron. Turned and gave Baba a reassuring hug.
    “It’s ok” she said once again. “But you must go now child”
    Then Moll released the child Baba Yaga, wiped the tears from Baba’s cheeks, turned, and began once again stirring the mix with the wooden paddle.


    Baba turned away and……

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  9. Baba turned away and……
    Began to run as fast as she could. Tripping on a branch she began to fall to the ground. It was at the moment she awakened with her heart pounding heavily in her chest struggling to catch her breath.

    A dream? A nightmare? Or were they memories? she could not be sure she could no longer trust her aging mind and often questioned her own sanity.

    As the fast heavy thumping in her chest began to slow and Baba caught her breath she lay quietly in her cot wrapped tightly in her wool blanket. The sound of the men above outside shoveling the snow off the roof of her one room cottage was a welcoming sound.

    Her cottage had been almost completely buried and she had been snowed in for seven day days now. There was a blazing fire in the fireplace which had not been lit for three of the seven because the woods pile outside had also been buried and could not be accessed. But the cottage was now once again warm.

    The latch on the cottage door clicked loudly. The door opened abruptly letting in a chilling cold freezing wind.

    And in walked……



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