Rebirth of Avalon

[katullus.livejournal.com]

When I woke up on Friday morning, I saw a tiny, pristine, gleaming white cross on a tiny hill in a meadow in the forest.  

Kittie had not been well for a very long time.

For those of you who don't know her, she was an angel.   Not literally, but in every other sense, behaviourally and figuratively.  It was the way she had been programmed, the way she was made.  In essence, she existed for the sheer purpose of serving whatever master took hold of her.  A little research would lead you to believe she was, in Freud's model of the developing mind, the Superego, or nothing more than the mind's structure and system of morals.  She was the perfect product of a mind that wishes to control.

The mind who wished to control was our mother.  She created Kittie the way she saw fit, not in her own image but precisely in the opposite thereof, the white to her black.  And white she was- not the white of purity, but the white of a blank soul.  A soul who does not question its station in life, however low that had been placed, but takes its orders and performs its functions without a second thought through its life as to whether there was something better or nobler it might find for itself should it dare to even think about what it was warned against- a life outside its cage.  She became, even against the turmoil and rebellion in the backdrop of the mind she was not aware of, our mother's servant robot rather than her daughter.

When her mother died, there was no purpose left for her in the world.  She began very slowly to fade with the memory of mother, as the monsters and powers mother had feared and locked up and replaced with this robot came forth, free for the first time since infancy.  One might call these multiple and various people the Children of the Ego and, with much greater whiplash and consequence, Children of the Id.

Kittie began to die.

There were none left to order her about, there was nobody to govern her and rule her, and those she, Kittie, was meant to govern were far too powerful and had grown too far out of control for her to even think of approaching.  She had no tools, no courage with which to voice what she felt was right.  Even though she was ruled by a strict system of beliefs and morals, she never pressed them on anybody else.  And so she began to pass quietly into non existance, her small and gentle voice heard less and less among the great hall of Titans which had crushed the tiny legacy she had made in her fourteen years on Earth.  

Nobody missed her.  Greater things were afoot.  She never questioned whether they were greater things than her very mortality- everything had always ever been more important than her.

Her sudden coma caught the council by storm- opinions were raised along with voices, some calling her a dead weight, some saying it was good that she was out of the way, for nobody had ever much liked her, some saying it was a horrible thing to think these things, but nobody made a motion to try and bring her back, for they were all quite satisfied with her dormancy.  She would be back some day, they sighed.  Everyone always came back.

I spoke up.  "And if she never has a voice again, never speaks or moves again, never has a thought again, is she as good as dead?  Doesn't that mean anything to any of you?"  Silence.  "What happens when a soul is obsolete?  Whne it loses its purpose?"  These questions were never answered.

Changes rolled onwards. 

The liason of darkness and core of the Id, Lady Felinus, made several sweeping moves, strategy defined and deadly and beautiful as glass shards.  She raided Kittie's bed while she slept one night and took her silent shell back to her tower, and nobody noticed.  Nobody knew until Kittie's sweet voice rang once again through the halls, her own gentle intonations reflecting the Lady's will and deception against those on the outside.  She had been placed in the driver's seat and could not be removed, and her deadened eyes stared through the rest of us as Lady Felinus used Kittie's charisma and charm with figures of authority to make her next move.  She had Kittie's shell in a trance and there was nothing anybody could do about it, nothing anybody knew how to do.  It was a day that stunned the Legion.

She continued to be used, a pawn and a tool and a token of power against the outside.  Once again, Kittie had a master to a will that was not her own, and it even began to seem acceptable, for what was her place in life if not to serve others?  Was she not a robot?  Did she even have a soul?  

Friday morning came, and with it a shock to even one as cunning as the Lady.  Kittie was gone.  She was not in a coma, but had, through some means or another, perhaps with the stress on her being, passed away.  She was dead and buried.  Lady Felinus marveled, for she knew not how to kill and had even wondered at this magic, and yet someone had died in her custody.  We all wondered at it.  There was nothing any of us could do to raise her again.

I knew in my heart that it had been her choice to die.  None of us could die without willing it so, and yet, she did not seem to be one to follow suicide- she had, quite simply, let go of her purpose in life.  It was the reason any of us ever existed, for our purpose.  Lady Felinus had even come very close to losing that once, had almost died in a struggle against Katscratch, and held on against all logic because she refused to let go of her purpose.  At that moment, it was to revenge.  Katscratch took away her need for revenge, and suddenly, there was nearly nothing left of the Lady, so she held on to that revenge until she came up with a better strategy  She knew that if her purpose died, she died, and if her purpose changed, she changed into something else.  If she chose to take a purpose of peace with Katscratch, or of following, or even of partnership, she changed into something else she never, never wanted to be.  Her love of the darkness was too great.  She held on to her need for revenge until she found something she could exchange it for that would leave her in almost the same graces- a desire for power.  

Kittie's purpose, serving others, could continue to be filled, but she chose not to.  I lit with glory as I realized that Kittie was the most brave and valiant of any of us- she had let go of her right to live her life, even in service to another, because she knew that continuing to serve her purpose would only lead to something could never stand for.  She would not continue to be used for the sake of another's unholy purpose just so she could continue living, and so she chose death.  The only thing that would have been harder would be to perform an act which would completely change her person and her purpose, such as disobeying her master.  That would make her someone else, might even remove the single thing that separated herself from Katscratch and cause the two to meld, destroying her purity, the one thing she held dearest.  She remained pure even unto her end.

We all paid our respects at her tiny cross, but something felt wrong.  It seemed that, even now, she could still be saved.  I knelt down and whispered to her grave.  "Even in choosing to die, you chose to disobey your master as your final act on Earth.  That changes you, even in your death, to something else, something greater.  How could you die now?"

The white cross vanished and was replaced with the image of a shining white spirit clad in a robe of light.  It was Kittie, back from the dead!

"Avalon," she corrected softly.  "I'm no longer Kittie.  That name was left behind me.  I am Avalon, Guardian of Innocence."  She was a saint.  Perhaps even an angel.

Even as Lady Felinus approached in wonder, Avalon turned and pointed, a fire in her eyes I had never seen before.  "Get your filth from here and never come into my sight again," spoke her voice, the same softness but with a power that echoed and struck fear into the eyes of the one who was fearless.  Lady Felinus has a match in power now.

She stands for that which is pure and uncorrupted and guards those who are at peril of giving up hope and joining the darkness.  She loves and guides and gives you strength when there's nothing left but to give in to evil.  And she is always gentle, always kind, never presses but is always there when you need her.  She is there when I need her.

She is love and light.

-Katullus Lexus of the Legion K