Orkney Isles, July 2022
There is a place that is so foreign it redefines the meaning of the word. Somewhere that leaves the seasons raging on with no victor and that gives a life immortal to everything except us. We claimed the land to reap it. We broke the cycle to tame it. We didn’t deserve its gift, so we were left to fight against the flow.
It is a land where the seas seem to breathe, and where monsters creep from the depths and out from the barrows. There is so much that goes unseen where the faeries still walk.
But sadly, I saw none of it.
Not the Sea Mither against the waves nor the Nuckelavee in the night. I didn’t even see the twinkle of fairy dust, just the pollen that drifted from the pastures and stuck to every part of me. A month of magic from behind a glass pane.
Though a step away from magic, whilst on the isles of Orkney, I found that I don’t really take pictures if I don’t have a need to. A few photos of the crags and of the coast, maybe a selfie when the horizon was just right, but other than that, my time went uncatalogued. Now I didn’t get to glimpse the Fey of Isles, but if I did, you’d likely not get to see them through my lens because I’d have likely left it behind.
Without intention, I am rather forgetful, and in height of summer, I have allergies. It’s never the best combination; spending the month somewhere so fantastical but somewhere that is also so enveloped by nature. When you do get the chance to walk the trails and feel the ocean breeze, it is somewhere that is truly magical.
So if you ever get the chance, do it. Go and walk amongst the living, the truly living. Feel the world’s heartbeat and hear its voice without the static that fills the concrete streets that seem to grow each and every day. Maybe you’ll get the chance to see the Queene or perhaps her children. Maybe you’ll get to see the tides change in the war that has twisted the four seasons forever into one. Or maybe you’ll just remember to bring a camera to take pictures of the splendid hills and magnificent waves. Whatever it might be, don’t wait for the magic because it’s waiting on the isles for you.
