Oryx Channeled Me
"I need you in my life, my arms, my soul . . . my sunlit skies."
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The lyrics kept running through my mind over and over again. More than the words, there was the feeling of the song. Slow, sad, deep, connected, but desperate somehow. I need you in my life . . . The song was played at Sanctuary of Dance and Paladin and I had danced together to it. I added it to the playlist for Hibiscus's and I's wedding night. They had both danced with me then, close, touching me on both sides. I loved the rare moments when they did that. I wanted that. Maybe that was all the song was about: wanting to feel close to both of them at once.
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Oryx wrote me. She wanted to know what experience I had referred to during our brief visit on the way to the poly-gathering. I wrote back, describing to her the experience I had alluded to, from back in October 2014:
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Oryx,
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You came into the room. It was dark. You sat on the bed beside me. Paladin was on my other side. I was feeling empty and didn't want to talk. I felt angry and isolated.
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You started speaking and you were channeling me. You used the word "idiots," over and over, which I had forgotten I used to say in my mind (and sometimes aloud) when I was ten.
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You moved through my past, making a high-pitched tea-kettle noise you'd never heard me make, but Paladin had heard it before. In the dark he thought it was me making that noise was astonished to discover it was you. The first time I had made that noise was on my fourteenth birthday.
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The level of identification was so strong that I was having trouble telling it was you instead of me. You began describing stomach pain you were having, which reminded me of exactly how I had felt when I was sixteen. You cried, and I felt relief when you cried, but my own face was dry.
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It was like you processed for me when I couldn't process.
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It was one of the most mystical experiences I've ever had.