(Prefer to listen? See above. This is me reading The Warriors and the Fairy Children, from Existentially Amused.) Last night,under the full moon,I had a vision. I saw the mothers. All the mothers I knew. We were crossing a desertwith our children on our backs. We were wounded. Bandages wrapped around our arms,our legs,our hearts. Some wounds were ours. Some belonged to our mothers. Some to their mothers. Things handed down so many timeswe couldn’t rememberwho had been hurt first. Behind us, there was war. A world fighting over land,power,control. A world obsessed with winning,producing,having more. A world that had somehow forgottenwhat all of it was for. And we were tired. God, we were tired. But we’d been through so much alreadythat every new explosion behind usfelt almost like— This again? So we adjusted the childrenon our backs, tightened our bandages, and kept walking. We weren’t waitingfor anyone to come save us. We’d stopped waitinga long time ago. There was chaos everywhere, but inside, we had become very quiet. One footin front of the other. Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Maybe that’s what happenswhen you’ve survived enough. You stop fighting every battle. You learn what deservesyour energy. And we knew exactlywhere ours belonged. Get the children to the land. Everything elsewas noise. So we walked. Bruised knees.Bloody feet.Tear-stained faces. Every once in a while,one mother would look at another and give her a nod. I know. Me too. Keep going. If one of us stumbled,another reached out. If someone needed water,we passed it down. If a mother couldn’t carry something anymore,someone else carried it for a while. No speeches. No medals. No one watching. Most of our battleshad always happened that way. In kitchens. In bedrooms. In cars. At two in the morningwith a child asleep beside us. Breaking patternsno one else knew existed. Choosing differently. Againand againand again. No one had called us warriors. Maybe because we weren’twhat warriors were supposed to look like. We weren’t marching toward a battle. We were walking away from one. We didn’t want to conquer anything. We didn’t want anyone beneath us. We weren’t interested in glory. We wanted peace. We wanted somewhere safeto raise our children. And somehow, that had requiredthe fight of our lives. Then I saw my daughter. It was as thoughthe whole vision zoomed in on her. She was on my backlike a little fairy. Light. Unburdened. Her hair blowing behind her,her legs bouncing against my sides. She was laughing. Actually laughing. As though crossing a desertwere some kind of adventure. As though she already knewhow the story ended. She reached her little handsover my shoulders and sprinkled something over me. Fairy dust, maybe. Magic. Whatever it was, for a momentI forgot how tired I was. Keep going, Mama. I carried her body. She carried my spirit. I protected herfrom the weight of the world, and somehow, she protected mefrom becoming hardened by it. She made me laugh. She made me believe. She reminded methere was still magic here, even in the middleof all this rubble. And then I looked around. All the children were like this. Light. Laughing. Unwounded. The mothers were coveredin bandages. The children weren’t. And suddenly, I understood. That was the whole point. We carried the burdens. Not them. We carried the childhood wounds. The shame. The silence. The fear. The things our mothers couldn’t healand their mothers couldn’t heal. We carried themas far as they would ever go. No further. Maybe that’s what made us warriors. Not that we knew how to fight. We knew what was worth protecting. And these children— these ridiculous,laughing,fairy children— were worth crossingevery desert for. There were women ahead of us. Women who had already crossedthis part of the desert. Some were older. Some still carried scars. Some had childrenrunning beside them now. They stood at the edgeof something green, waving us forward. Come. Keep going. You’re almost here. And finally, we could see the land. Green breaking throughthe horizon. Trees. Water. Gardens. Homes gathered togetherinstead of separated. Children moving freelyfrom one open doorto another. Food passed between tables. Someone cooking. Someone teaching. Someone making music. A tired mother asleep beneath a treewhile another woman held her baby. No one asking herwhat she had accomplished that day. No one telling hershe had to earn her rest. No mother doing it all. No child disappearingbetween the cracks. Here, care was not somethingwe squeezed into the hoursafter the important work was done. Care was the important work. Families weren’t builtaround productivity. Life was builtaround families. Children first. Community first. Safety first. Peace first. People before profit. Enough before more. And when one child cried, someone came. Maybe her mother. Maybe another mother. Maybe a grandmother. Maybe someonewho simply happened to be near. But someone came. Again. And again. And again. That was the promiseof this place. There will always be someone. No child left alone. No child left behind. Because we had learnedwhat can happenwhen a child reaches out and finds no one there. How a wound can become a hunger. How a hunger can spend a lifetimelooking for somewhere to belong. How pain, unattended,can travel. So we decidedit would stop here. Not because our childrenwould never hurt. Not because this worldwould be perfect. But because they would neverhave to hurt alone. And years later, our children would readabout the old worldin books. They would learnthat there was once a time when families spentmost of their waking hours apart. When mothers left their childrenbefore the sun came upbecause survival required it. When children were raisedaccording to clocks and adults measured their worthby how much they produced. When people accumulated thingswhile starving for time. When care was undervalued. When women had to provethe importance of workthat had always heldthe world together. Our children would stareat the pages, horrified and fascinated, the way we once readabout strange things humanshad believed were normal. You lived like that? And we would look at one another. The mothers. Older now. Our bandages long gone, our scars still faintly visible. And we would nod. Yes. We did. We would keep the books. We would tell them everything. Because forgettingis how old worldsfind their way back. They would know the history. They would understandwhat happened before them. But historywould feel like history. Not inheritance. They would inherit the story. They would not inherit the wound. And maybe thatwould be our greatest victory. Not defeating anyone. Not standing oversome conquered world. Not being crowned. Just this: Our children climbing downfrom our backs and running. Bare feet through the grass. Laughing. Free. The mothers standing behind them, exhausted, scarred, looking at one another like— Holy s**t. We made it. And finally, we could putour weapons down. Maybe I would sit beneath a tree. Maybe my little fairywould run back, put a flower in my hair, and disappear laughinginto the field again. And I would watch her go. She would knowwhere we came from. But she would never rememberliving there. She would knowwhat wounded us. But she wouldn’t spendher life healing from it. The old worldwould be somethingher mother told her about. And this— the trees, the mothers, the children, the open doors, the hands reachingfor one another— would simply be home. (Thanks for reading! If this stirred something up for you, I’d love to hear what came up. Come tell me in the comments. Get full access to Existentially Amused at lisaormsby.substack.com/subscribe
