Sufficiently Advanced Witchcraft is Indistinguishable from Chores Part 4:
It’s Wednesday evening and Mr Stag is out of the house to teach his Kali class. That means it’s time for me to take care of my Otherworldly responsibilities. I prefer to do this when he isn’t home, or when he is asleep, it feels bad to sit in the same room and block him out for an indeterminate amount of time, so I schedule this work for times when that won’t be an issue.
I toss a pillow on the floor in front of my shrines and my working altar, it’s not enough to prevent pain - not with my CRPS the way it has been lately - but it’s better than nothing. (Some degree of discomfort is the point, it's about sacrifice after all.) I adjust the lights the way I like them, the overhead lights off, lamps on, LED candles on, and light my incense. I settle my trance veil on my head, start my playlist, and settle into my spot.
Then I’m out of my body, and in the Otherworlds. I slip into my Otherworldly form as easily as putting in a pair of well worn boots. I go through my “flight check list”:
I look at my hands: the left is plump and living the right is skeletal and decayed
I look at my feet: the same. One living one dead, a ladder of mushrooms climb up my right calf.
I check my equipment: My birchbark cloak, my bramble bow and quiver of rosewood arrows, my hunting horn is at my hip, my antlered crown rests on my head.
I’m all present and correct, it is time to start my chores.
Border Patrol - the Wildwoods have rambling amorphous borders, they change over time as the forest grows and shrinks. I walk the perimeter of the Wildwoods, looking for changes that are bigger than normal, strangers hanging around on the edge of the woods, anything out of the ordinary. I don’t always do this patrol in my normal form, sometimes it’s faster in my deer form or my wildcat form. I've tried flying it in my kestrel form, but I miss too much from the sky.
Clean Brona’s Well - Brona’s Well is a natural spring in the Forests of the Dead, and it is a place where spirits enter the Otherworlds when they die. This traffic leaves the area around the Well in disarray sometimes and occasionally the Well itself will be polluted with gunk from the material world. It is my duty and honor to clean it and ensure any spirits who have passed through it are guided to where they need to go. Most of my Psychopomp journeys begin here.
Caretaking the Graves of the Mountains of Mourning - I have assistance for this, there are spirits who make a pilgrimage to this region of the Otherworld, and while they are here they spend their time caring for the graves and mausoleums, but as Brona’s Steward it’s my responsibility to manage and oversee the work. I make sure every grave is clean and has a fresh token on it to show that it has been visited.
Community Management - a small community of spirits live in the Wildwoods, mostly members of Oisin’s Wild Hunt. As Steward, I am responsible for the health and happiness of this community, that means I settle arguments, fetch necessary goods from far away, help folks with food, shelter, clothing, tools, whatever they need. No one lives in the Forests of the Dead, and the pilgrims to the Mountains of Mourning are all temporary so they don’t need community management on the same scale, but I try to make sure they are as comfortable as the cloisters they stay in can be made to be.
Messenger - as the Herald of the Forgotten Ones it’s one of my official tasks to run messages between them and any other entities they are formally communicating with as part of the great spiritual diplomacy game. I’m always a useful and interesting choice to send with messages because depending on how knowledgeable the other party is about our business I could be seen to have come in my formal capacity as Herald, my slightly less formal role of Oisin’s wife, or to the truly clueless I’m just a human follower running errands for my gods. I do less and less of this as time goes on and the Forgotten Ones become more established.
