I storm into the Jungle.

“Front and center,” I call out. “Now.”

The Aspects arrive: Jade, Anne, Harley, Tabitha, Demi, Night, Esther. They all watch me silently. They’ve formed a half circle in front of me, and they all look uncomfortable, and some of them look scared.

I’m so angry and frustrated that I shift from being myself to being the white Huntress. But I leave the white glass hunting knife in the sheath on my thigh.

I am pacing and I can’t take their silence. I shift and close and Esther, and smack her across the face. Then I take her shoulders and shake her hard.

“This is your fault!” I yell. “Stop it. Just stop it now.” I let her go and she drops to her knees in the dust in tears.

Esther is sobbing, and has one hand over her cheek and the other over the rest of her face. The others keep watching me. I am crying. I take my knife from its sheath and spin to throw it behind me, out into the thick jungle.

Night begins to sing.

Her voice is low and the song is wordless, but it is beautiful. Her song is heartache. It is misery so sweet and sacred that it reminds me that emotion is not bad or good. Just an indicator of what you want and don’t want.

I want to take Night in my arms and cuddle her. But she is not the one that needs love right now. I go over to Esther and sit cross-legged next to her. Her sobs are muffled to not interfere with the music, but each one still shakes her delicate frame. I pull her into my lap and hold her close. She leans into me with more trust than I deserve.

“Help,” I say to the others. “I don’t know what to do or what I want anymore.”

Night stops singing. They all move and shift now. Esther isn’t crying anymore.

“Screw everyone else,” Anne advises. “Do whatever you want. Perfection only looks good on statues.”

Harley raises an eyebrow. “She has a point. A crude one, but…well. You never did like the idea of making something ugly to make something beautiful. You have to throw a bunch of really ugly pots before you learn the skill to make pretty ones.”

“If I know what’s best for me,” I say tiredly, “then why does everyone all seek to tell me that my way isn’t the way that’s best for me?”

“What if they aren’t?” Jade asks.

“You mean,” –each word is become more and more of an effort to say–”what if they are just expressing their points of view to be helpful but not trying to change my mind?”

Jade nodded. “What if.”

“Then why express them at all? Who is that helping?”

“To be fair,” Tabitha points out, “you did mention it to them. Inviting their input.”

“If I don’t mention and share things, then I am being closed and apparently hurting people with my aloofness,” I growl. “When will people be f*ing satified?”

“Never,” Harley says with crisp precision.

“When will I be satisfied?”

The silence is hurtful, and full of things I know and can’t deal with. I will be satisfied when I choose to be. I am painfully weary of self-examination, of struggling with issues, of learning so many important things about life and not even being able to see happy. Wisdom has not made me wiser.

“Really, this much thinking can’t be good for a person. Why am I doing this again?”

“You’re not thinking. You’re conjuring. And it *is* good for you.” Harley and I are up on the ridge, looking out over the Jungle. The house in the clearing below the ridge is gone.

“Where did our house go?”

“Our house,” Harley says, “not yours. You’ve never lived in it, nor do you have any need to. Don’t you remember what it was?”

I did. It was a cute little house I had seen for sale in Ojai, years ago now, when I wanted to somehow go back to school. While I still might go back to school, I won’t do it living alone in a tiny little house in the woods. That path was gone.

“So it was kind of silly to keep living in it, wasn’t it?” Harley asks.

“But it was cute.” I frown. “Can’t I use it as a blueprint?”

“Things you give your attention to matter,” she says. “And things all have the meanings you assign to them. You assigned a life path to that house. One you ended up not taking. It’s not a blueprint for a domicile. It’s a blueprint for lack of closure, of regret, of living in the past.”

“I don’t feel any of those things,” I say. Harley looks at me. “Not often.”

“Maybe not at all would be better,” she says. “If you want something, want it. If you don’t want something, don’t want it. Don’t worry over proper. Expect delays, but don’t expect roadblocks. There’s always a way through. To anything. Because in every moment you are choosing how to live the next moment. One sentence from now you could decide to become a hairdresser. You could thank your colleagues at work very much for their time, say goodbye, and drive to the Paul Mitchell salon and begin. You could open up a bed and breakfast in Cincinnati. Learn to surf in Costa Rica for a year. You can plan or not plan. Decide and change your mind over and back again. But don’t regret and wish. Decide and do.

“C’mon,” she says. “The Jungle is immense. We’ve barely even started.”

“Mercy,” I say, throwing myself down in the Conversation Tent.

Darzee cracks a lazy eye. “You give up?” She’s all snuggled in with Balthazar. It’s a warm, lazy day.

“I’m done in,” I acknowledge.

“Well, you’d have to be,” Harley says. “Going on like you have been for way too long.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re insufferable?” I ask her. Harley is my worse-if-wiser-self, and also is the sole keeper of any and all creativity that I might ever possess.

“Often. Though usually it’s Anne saying it. Speaking of, is there any particular reason you’ve been letting her have her head lately?”

“I’m tired, Harley,” I say.

“Interesting,” Harley says.

I want to wring her neck.

“Play nice,” Darzee warns before I open my mouth. I close it and temper my thought.

“I think I need a better understanding of the Strength card,” I begin as an opening gambit. Harley waves my words away with her hand, as if they were a foul odor.

“You want to talk philosphy, talk to Jade,” she says. “Or perhaps Oracle.”

“I *want*,” I say through gritted teeth, “to reconcile all the bits of my life into something that makes me happy, not frustrated.”

“Then rebuild your crown,” Harley says. She pours herself a cup of tea. I watch the dark, dark amber liquid slip into her cup. Everything feels misty and slow, like a dream. I reach up to my forehead to touch it. My crown is gone.”

“When did that happen?” I ask.

“When you decided that you know best,” Harley says.

“Darzee?”

“You have been a little hard to get through to, as of late,” Darzee says.

“The crown was a good idea,” Harley says, as if commenting on the weather, “but you never followed it through to explore. A queen can’t effectively rule her kingdom without knowing the ins and outs of it, and knowing what her subjects need.”

“I’m a princess,” I correct. “Not a queen.”

“My little Peter Pan,” Balthazar says fondly.

I sit up. “Am I loosing the Oasis?”

Harley looks guilty, and in a rare gesture, reaches out and touches my arm. “No. No. Not that.”

“I’m so tired,” I piece together, “because I’ve broken the crown.” Fighting myself. Again and again. I hadn’t been doing a good job of making any part of myself happy; of fulfilling my own needs.

“I don’t know what to do next,” I say.

“I know,” Harley replies. “That’s why I’m here.”

I am standing in the Conversation Tent in the Oasis.

The Tent is an Arabian tent bigger than most living rooms. Three of its four sides are rolled up, letting in the sun and the wind. The Conversation Tent is, in actuality, outside the walls of the Oasis and therefore has a beautiful, unhindered view of the ocean in the distance. And because it is magic, the Tent cannot be seen from outside the Oasis; one has to approach it from the path inside the Oasis walls or one will never find it at all.

A medium-sized firepit made of glazed tile sits in the middle of the Tent, and inviting couches and cushions ring the backside of the fire, positioned out to admire the view. There is usually tea to be had as well, because we are civilized, here in the Oasis.

Today I am standing in the shade of the Conversation Tent. I lean against a tent pole and look down at the cowering, mewling thing that lays writhing on the hot sand.

She knows her minutes are numbered. I feel badly for her. I swear she senses it. The mewling stops, and the writhing. She sits up and smooths her pinafore. She has long, straight black hair and bangs. Her face looks like a putty mask of a goblin’s face. Her features are only partly human, and her mouth is twisted into a permanent sneer.

“You don’t want to do this,” she says. Her voice is beautiful as birdsong, and as captivating as the sway of a snake. “I’ve only ever tried to help you. Think of all the times I have helped you get what you want, how I have kept your options open. How can you not need me? Think of all the messy situations you’ll get in without me to temper things properly.”

I touch the crown I am wearing on my head. “I need help,” I murmur. Eight brightly-colored gems detach themselves from the rose-gold metalwork and float, as if on a soft breeze about the Tent. In a flash of light, they are all standing there, each Aspect: Oracle, Harley, Anne, Jade, Demi, Tabitha, Esther, and Nightingale.

They watch the misshapen girl, and the girl watches them back.

“It’s about time,” Harley finally says. “I’ve been wanting to kick this bitch’s ass for years.”

“Harley,” I say softly, letting my disapproval seep into my tone. “She could be a sister of yours.”

“I know who my sisters are,” Harley snapped. “Do you?”

“I know you,” the girl says. “I recognize your voice.”

“Yeeeeees,” Harley drags out the word. “You might find it easier”–here she took a deep breath and yelled the rest loudly enough to echo off the far mountains–”to remember when you hear me screaming at you!” Harley’s hands were in fists and her face was red. She whipped around, her multicolor dreadlocks flying.

“Jade,” she said in a quieter voice filled with disgusted warning, “deal with this.”

Jade looked vaguely ill. Oracle came up beside her and squeezed her arm. “It is time,” Oracle said.

Jade came to stand by me. I watched her. I knew what had to be done. Why could I not do it? I *wanted* to do it. Jade rubbed my back consolingly. I shrugged, uneasy to be feeling good about the situation.

“I’m sick of living like this,” I said.

“Bull in a china shop,” the misshapen girl says. “One day without me keeping you firmly neutral, watching what you say and do, figuring out what other people need so you can figure out how to get what you need from them….one day and you’ll have no friends, no family, no loved ones. You’ll tear this whole place apart, looking for my pieces to rebuild me.”

It felt like drowning for me to say: “Or I can just ask. Communicate with people. Stop guessing. Stop hoping, and just know.”

“Rubbish. You know how that works. You ask, and they lie.”

She made so much sense and at the same time was completely, utterly mad.

“Tabitha,” Jade said. For the first time her voice sounded sharp. Tabitha came up on my other side, and with a wonderfully dramatic wave of her arm, a woodchipper appeared next to the Tent.

Night whimpered. Anne put an arm around her. “Don’t worry,” Anne told her. “This is where the fun part begins.”

“No votes for the Sleeping Beauty potion? She’ll be safely asleep and not bothering me for a century.” How could I be so cruel to myself?

“Because someone has outstayed their welcome,” Harley snarled. “She thinks she knows everything and she is one tiny little skill blown way out of proportion. Let her blood water the desert. Let’s start anew with that one.”

“I’ll fight you all,” the girl howled.

Harley sneered. “Of course you won’t,” she said. “That’s not what you do. And trust me, little boil, none of your sweet talk could ever change my mind.”

Oracle stepped out of the Tent. “Shush now,” she said. “Stop, enough. It is time. That is all. It is time.” Oracle began to sing, a beautiful wordless song that snuck through us all, showing us how we were connected to each other, how each of us fit in with the others to make a whole person, and how the girl resisted the effort to bond, and how she attempted at every turn to make us weaker. She turned power into powerlessness, perverted hope into fantasy. She was a constant drain, guaranteeing none of us could have our own full strength, or to fully integrate to strengthen each other.

“It is time,” Oracle sang.

And we descended upon the girl, all the Aspects of myself. We could smell her tears but she held herself stiff and still and did not make a sound as we pitched her bodily into the saw-filled maw. The desert sands ran red, and we held each other and stared empty-eyed at the mess long after the woodchipper had stopped running.

Where we went now, none of us knew. How we moved forward was a mystery. And yet a certainty and stability was growing around us, strengthening and comforting with each passing moment…

“It is time,” Oracle said.