The seasons pass as they do, and it flows as time moves. Not in a straight line, though we try to force it into one. Time is not singular; and some days move like a train through space, and it does so, with or without us.
Only a year ago, on the equinox in September 2024 the 21st, this year the balance shifts a day later, to the 22nd, I returned to the unforgiving but life-loving cliffs of Orkney. Just as the mystic landscape, the ancient sentinels, the standing stones, wisdom written under the stars, my life is unfolded in ways I could never have planned.
I cannot speak of magic, unless I do, so I will tell my story in the quest that has been and still is. The beauty of magic? It’s the unattainable part, the part that stops trying to explain for “it” and just feels.
It’s the experience, the event, and suddenly a silver lining appears, on a random morning, the little moments where you don’t just hear the music but feel it so much it becomes a sensory experience, beautiful, exciting and transcending. But sometimes these wonderful moments are so overwhelming that life becomes a challenge beyond coping, and the rough seas are not forgiving; they are from other universes and single you out, dragging you to the abyss.
(Some delayed neurodevelopment, such as autism and ADHD, but also dyslexia, comes with its own set of challenges, a whole inner universe.)
10 months, in my little cottage, amazing, almost impossible things have happened in the last year, as kind people “magical aid” have been in the last year, that is how I have learnt evil queens and tyrant kings, not only exist in fairy tales, but exist in the real world, who have lost the ability to experience life but love to play the game.
One could say that in the last two years, I have started to lose a sense of naïve innocence, but more than ever, I understand that the outcome of our quests is sacred beyond rational understanding.
But what does all this mean? I have had vision quests, dream moments, and stories that transcend this lifetime. With that, I’m saying every autistic meltdown in autistic burnout combined with perimenopause is an internal heroic quest regularly, add some PTSD to the mix, and you suddenly understand what all the dragon-filled novels are all about.
I have been travelling the mystery of life without the aid of a map. But we can’t grow in a controlled environment. The absence of direction will teach me to navigate the internal universe I have discovered, because it is a universe, it has oceans, land, desert, weather, I feel every day, and it’s big, it’s a lot for this small frame, but how can one reject the inner world like mine, it will take time and understanding before I can read the map, but surely is it is design by me it is for me right?
Then again, what if the direction is not given? There is a little bit of something, right?
My heart talks about a refuge, it is the place where the small me was safe, but when there are no more shadows, there is no more hiding, as the waves rise from silent water, there is no more smallness.
So I surrender to the knowledge and experience, and see that life is less of a series of possessions and more a collection of events. And the silver fox I’m becoming? It reminds me that becoming is not about losing youth, but deepening into truth.
©️Elke T.B. Stevens 21/09/2025
- Notes From a Time Traveller
- Standing Outside of Life
- Notes from a Time Traveler: An Afternoon Meditation
- AI Hiring, Epistemic Injustice, and the Illusion of Objectivity
- Words Are Not Meaningless.
Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens 
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