The Wanderess

Magic has been around for generations. In most places, it’s said to be difficult, that you must command the magic within you, that only the written spells are proper and powerful. It must be learned in a book, in a classroom, and never mind those who say otherwise.

Some know better though. Some know that magic can guide you just as much as you guide it, and there is nothing more beautiful than when it flows from your fingertips, or your mouth, or wherever and however else it comes to you. They know that magic learned from a book is cold and dead. Paris is the place to go if you are one of these. Whether you join those below in the dark magic of the catacombs, or the street performers above who play with light and color as if it’s their calling, Paris has a place for you.

Yet when someone tells me that they are going to pray for me, genuinely, with nothing but love in their hearts, I just smile and say thank you….

One weekend before my surgery I went and got a facial (let me tell you. if you’ve never had a facial, YOU NEED TO). This was the most relaxing experience I’ve ever had, tbh. But my esthetician and I had been talking sometime during my facial that I was having surgery soon. So, at the end, she asked, “Can I pray for you?”

This put me in a damn weird position because I don’t believe in the “power of prayer” as my aunt calls it. So I had two choices: say yes and just go with it, or say no and look like an ass.

So I told her “Yes” and I suppose I expected her to pray for me at a later date? But she prayed for me, with me, right then and there in the room. And honestly?

I bawled.

Look, I don’t believe in a god. I don’t believe that her attempting to contact an entity would have changed my outcome of my surgery at all. But the sheer fact that this woman, whom I’d known for all of an hour while she did my facial, was willing to take 5 minutes out of her day to sit down and use her faith to help me.

We speak Spanish here, but it went like “Santo Cristo, Santo Fuerte, Santo Inmortal, ten misericordia de nosotros y del mundo entero”. Which translates into asking the Lord for mercy on you and the world.

final version:

And the kid Anna is based off of is actually this sweet peasant girl who is rescuing her best friend whom everyone else thought drowned and whom no one cared for because mirror shards got in his eyes and he only saw beauty in snowflakes while everything else was just disgustingly foul to him. Except he didn’t drown because he was whisked away by the snow queen.

Like this girl gives her shoes to the river to find out he didn’t drown. Her hair ribbons to the birds to find out who took him. Works her hands raw to get to him and has to suffer a mental breakdown because she got SO FUCKING CLOSE to saving him and he won’t even look at her because he wants to solve this puzzle the snow queen gave him.

There was a Soviet animated movie from 1957, that doesn’t brush over any of the things you just listed.

You get Gerda on her journey, meeting all of those people that both hinder her quest and help her, with older women from different regions of northern europe, as well as several princesses who aid her

also the art style and animation is absolutely gorgeous and I always feel like it’s a shame that older Soviet animation is barely recognized around the world 

Underappreciated B99 Moments (suggested by my followers) [85/?]