Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens

It is time to take a step forward, not in surrender, not in forgiveness, but in something more dangerous. In reclamation. Before the star can shine its healing upon our hero.
She is leaving The Devil’s shadow behind, but that does not mean the sound of his voice in her head has faded. It’s the chains worn for too long that leave their mark. The Devil does not vanish simply because she has refused him. He lingers in the corners of her mind, in the spaces where rage still burns, whispers are fading but she can still hear him, Do not forget.
But Temperance has also left her mark, and her winsome is present in this moment of duality. And as the river flows beside our hero’s path, standing at the river’s edge, watching the endless pouring of the elements into another, silent but ever moving. She has not purified herself in its waters, nor has she allowed it to wash away what she has endured. She does not want to be clean. She wants to be whole.

And so, what comes next is not a resolution. It is not peace. It is a journey. The world does not bend itself to make things right for those who have been wronged. She will need to descend into the underworld. Not in search of vengeance. No, she is wiser than that now. Vengeance is just another chain, another story that keeps her bound to those who hurt her. But she seeks something else: power. Not over others, but over herself.
To find and claim it, she must walk into the maze of her own mind, into the caverns of her own making. The wounds are there, waiting. The memories. The ghosts. And something else. Something she might not even recognise. Something forgotten. The truth of who she was before they tried to break her.

There will be trials. There always are. The Devil is not gone, only watching, waiting for her to falter. As the Serpent coiling around her and within, whispering in a voice that is both hers and not hers:
“You have the power to make them feel what they made you feel. You have only to strike.”
Our hero knows this voice well. It was with her in exile, in the nights when she longed to become a storm. She understands that this voice is not the enemy. It is a part of her.

She remembers the lessons of Temperance. She does not kill the Serpent. She does not banish it. She listens. She understands. Then she takes it in her hands and places it on her shoulder and around her throat, not as a chain but as a friend of her own choosing. A reminder. A weapon if she ever needs it.

And Somewhere, beyond the underworld, beyond the journey, someone is waiting to meet our hero. Not a saviour. She has no need for those. Not a god. She will not kneel. A guide, perhaps. A mirror. A shadow self.
She is slowly growing into the Awenyddion. The inspired one. The poet-prophet. The one who sings songs that weave reality into being. Our hero has always been a creature of defiance, of fire and storm. But there is another kind of power, the kind that does not rage but creates. The Awenyddion does not ask anyone to change. Only to speak and to give shape to what she has learned. To turn exile into creation and embody the alchemy of life.

A choice will be made, but which one will it be? Will she remain the storm, forever untamed but forever alone? Or will she step into the world as the storyteller, the myth maker, the one who will carve her truth into the paintings of history?

The answer is hers alone. But the wind is already carrying her name.

Elke T.B. Stevens 16/02/25