Convocation Act 1

Title: Convocation
Rating: NC-17 (adult readers) due to S.L.V
Spoilers: Some spoilers for S1-4
Summary: Wraith Hives gather in a system under the protection of Atlantis and when Ronon returns with refugees, the team has no choice but to investigate. Meanwhile, Beckett returns from Michael with a treatment that could save Keller and discovers the disturbing truth behind her condition - a truth that Michael had diagnosed, and Haddad, still facing issues of her own, had guessed. When matters come to a head, who will be left standing?
Disclaimer: MGM own Stargate: Atlantis. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no revenue is being made from copyright material. No infrigement intended.

Act 1 now available.

Author's Note: Look guys, the rating says it all, but I'll spell it out. This contains explicit scenes. Many thanks gospikey for hard work in Beta.

Previous Episodes:
Harm's Way (1), Chain of Command (2), Enmity, (3), Mantle, (4), In Truth... Freedom, (5), Letting Go, (6), Beyond the Third, (7), Deliverance, (8), No Way Back, (9) Apostasy, (10) Crossing Lines, (11) and Revelation (12) can be accessed here.

Shifting Focus

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

To direct the mind towards the basic unity of
all things and to divert it from the seizing of
differences - therein lies bliss.
--Tejo Bindu Upanishad

...the heart can feel what joins us with everything or replay its many cuts.

(from 9th May)

Today was a day of ups and downs, of universal togetherness and separations. I started out the day feeling very positive, working with a joined consciousness to wash and rebuild a new playground for the ratties, enjoying what I was doing. There was contact from my beta, the chapter was ready, there were people far distant contacting me and I replied. I felt truly connected... for a while.

Then suddenly everything switched - I started feeling a bit like a punchbag, or whipping post. The messages I was getting on LJ and facebook were pointed and I read them (for no reason, I might add), as if they had been written with an angry tone, or in irritation. That I'd somehow done something wrong.

Then something Mir said hurt.

Then someone pointed out that the way I was viewing things was a negative way of looking at it, and I should see it as closure rather than viewing it with suspicion.

And then, and then and then...

Walking round the grocery store, I stopped. This was ridiculous - why was I feeling this way - why were these things that happened, these comments that were made separating me from dwelling within the sense of peace and togetherness that I was, for the most part, feeling? What could I do to to have my heart focus on the communion and not on the cuts. I recognise that the recent communication I'd had threw me for a loop, and I felt old patterns - perhaps that was a part of it.

Just when I think I'm free of the weight of that negativity, it crops up again. Maybe Gaile was right after all, but it's hard to just let it go when there is so much baggage that I'm still carrying.

I made a promise to myself to live only in love and quiet harmony for the rest of the day and for the most part I think I did. I want that to continue...it will.

(for all that it might take a little while to deal with the remaining fall out from messages out of the blue).

(no subject)

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

All tempest has,
like a navel,
a hole in its middle,
through which
a gull can fly,
in silence.
--Fourteenth-century Japanese, Anonymous

...this nameless voice tells us that at the heart of all struggle there is a peaceful enduring centre, if we can only reach it.

It is the reaching of it that is the both the challenge and the surrender. Right now I feel like I'm walking into the winds of the storm. Everything around me is twisting and blowing, very little feels stable, secure. I question whether this is just another ripple from the re initiation... the way things become unsettled afterwards... universe settling into a new pattern - change.

But there are so many things I don't know. Too much that I don't understand... and it's all flying around me like leaves in a storm, and it's frightening. I need to find the centre and turn to face the questions, even those that have no answers.

Guess I should just be more accepting.