“And just what does that mean?”
Lucy sizes you up. She pauses for a while, a corner of her mouth turning up slowly. “Haven't you figured it out yet?"
“It's not every day a girl grows two or three inches and sprouts hair in places where there shouldn’t be!” You stand there defiantly, fists clenched, leaning forward, challenging these women.
Lucy slides her eyes back and forth, checking over the room. She lowers her voice and speaks to you slowly. “And nothing else is going to happen if you don't want it to.” You open your mouth to respond, but Lucy continues on, and you have no choice but to listen, in hopes that she might give you something more solid. “It's the necklace.” Your hands fly to it, fingertips brushing its surface. “Not everyone that finds it actually likes it. Some people just want to be rid of it, and then nothing else happens to them. Not everyone that finds it chooses to wear it. Some people leave it where it is, and nothing else happens to them. Not everyone that finds it returns it. Some take it home, and nothing happens to them.”
Lucy gazes at you again, this time with an appreciative, toothy grin. “Not everyone considers it fitting. You did. Not everyone wears it to bed. You did. Not everyone dreams of being something else, something powerful and wild. You did. That means, but unlike most people, there is something rare and precious inside you. Something that wants out. Something that wants to complete you. An animal spirit, descended from a time when the spirits of the wild were strong, were free. From a time when those spirits answered us. Completed us. Filled us and reshaped us.” As you look at your hands, you can feel the pressure of your own heartbeat throbbing in the flesh of your palms, your fingertips. “Men and women were given a choice long ago. To accept and become part of the earth around them, to honor and respect all the life around them. In return, that life would be returned. Not only to clothe our skins and feed our mouths, but to help us learn. To show us things. To fill the empty spaces. To answer our dreams. Not only to guide us, but to give us great power. To make us more than men. More than women. Much more. So much more.
“In other times, the weakest of these were called medicine men, spirit callers, shamans. Men and women who called the spirits for aid, for visions, for guidance, for many things. These spirits haven’t left, and they grow lonely. Just as we seek companions in the animal world, those animal spirits seek us. They know what we need, even when we bury ourselves in the human world. The Earth knows what we need.
“This change is happening to you because you want it to, because some part of you already seeks the knowledge of the wild. The spirit has answered you, and now it’s flowing into all of your empty spaces, your unfulfilled dreams, your frustrations, your weaknesses, powering you and filling you with what you need to be.”