OSO-003
Barista: Julia Morningstar
Date: Feb-1-2020
Receipt: OSO-003
Subject: Otherworld
Eoin’s finally upright! Wobbly, green, and cursing in a dialect I can only assume is half-Irish, half-sea-monster. Daichi gave him a juice box. I think it helped. Maybe not the sugar. Just the absurdity.
Now that we’re all “technically” up right, we’ve decided to head deeper into the grove. Jennifer pointed out the tree at the center... and my mark sparked with warmth when I looked at it. It’s twice the height of the others, with a trunk gnarled like a fist, limbs stretching like it’s trying to remember how to fly. The mist clings to it harder than anywhere else. From here it almost looks like it’s exhaling it. Deep, slow breaths. There’s something… sacred about it. Not holy, exactly. But held. Like the land was willed to grow around it.
I’m not sure what we’ll find when we reach it, but the trees have been parting without argument. It almost feels like an invitation. Or a trap. With this place, maybe both.
Oddly I didn’t get hit with the sickness like the others. Not even a tremble. I pretended I was just holding it together for the sake of everyone else suffering, but… truth is, I never felt it. Not at all. I think it’s the mark. It didn’t glow when we stepped into the Otherworld, but it warmed, like a hearth remembering its flame.
Maybe it’s the mark. Or maybe it’s just… something inherited. From her. I’m… still trying to come to grips with that whole side of myself. I don’t think about it too often, but it’s hard not to when you step through an impossible wound in a dead trickster's chest and come out whole.
Anyway, we are headed toward the tree. Toward the truth this place wants to show us.
Or the one it sees in me.