I honestly have no idea where this came from or why, it just is.

Please note that the following document may contain potentially triggering content. This is not Ao3 and I will not be tagging everything but this content could range from sexual assault, sexual situations in general, lots and lots of kinks, talk of killing people or dead people such as family members, and more. If you are triggered by these things to a point that reading them would be detrimental to your physical and/or mental health I suggest you skip reading anything I have written in this document or others for your own safety. If you are the sort who reads something you disagree with/that offends you/whatever and you feel the need become the Purity Brigade please don't bother - I've been down that road enough to know not to engage, so you will get nothing out of me except a block and a report for harassment.

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Pisces

I heard it calling before I had the words to express what it was. A wilderness, so vast and wild that my heart could never hope to contain it. The world grew out of me, its roots seeping from my flesh to envelop me in blackness before I looked up to see dappled moonlight through the trees. A deep thrumming, thumping, as if the ground below me had a heartbeat.

Through the trees I saw only the most fleeting glimpses of creatures I could not comprehend. I followed them, though, through the thick trunks and gnarled undergrowth. To the glacial lake, where that sound was even closer than it had ever been. Weeping, crying, calling for help.

I went to keel by the shore and held out my hands for the face that came to me, a serpent’s head emerging from the depths to settle itself in my embrace. Deep, heavy breaths and rows of sharp teeth, but they were mine. I felt it fall into me, filling the hole in my chest where the roots had been. A settled power, its memories merging with mine. I slipped into those cold waters, taking its place, taking its command. Mine.

Aquarius

As I slept I felt it beneath my bed. Slow and creeping at first, growing bolder as it began to climb my walls. Juniper, an odd plant. The berries that grew on it were a pallid blue, almost seeming to be a darker color with a thin coat of white painted over it.

I looked and saw movement. Frosted glass muting whatever was there. But I knew, and my mind tickled with folk tales about taking care of such things in exchange for being able to see the future. I could not tell from whence the branches came, but I knew how to tend to them. I left out water so they could drink, opened my windows so they could feed and send their messages to the winds.

Soon the berries dropped. Nicely, in a bowl I had left out to collect them. I brewed them into tea and drank deeply of the scent, sitting down on my bed before the world began to shift around me. I saw great evil, and I watched as it destroyed everything we held dear. I watched the others fall, saw my own dead body mangled and burning among them.

But the future is not set in stone, and what the Juniper showed me was only the most probable path. There was time to change things, to warn the others, to make plans. If we hoped to defeat the evil we would need more, but I knew we could do it. Our world depended on it.

Capricorn

The crows cawed, and I reached into my pocket to pull out a handful of birdseed. I laid the pile on a nearby fence post and moved away to sit, watching the midnight birds flock to it. I couldn’t help but to think about what Aquarius had said, pulled from my thoughts as more birds fled from a nearby tree.

I looked up to their formation, and somewhere in those silhouettes against the grey sky I saw it too. I saw evil, and our world in flames. The calling of the crows pulled me again, and I stood swiftly as I looked at the figure in the distance. It was both human and not, and my first thought was to run.

Through the fields and the forests until I returned home, the crows trailing me every step of the way. I heard them, I followed them as they led me on a path of safety from the things I saw lurking. When I was safe I set out more for my guardians, taking to heart that they had seen fit to warn me and help me along the way. Food as my way of saying a thanks to them, drawing more to my house as protection. Whatever those things were, at least for now I was safe…

Sagittarius

I had never been able to fight like the others, this body of mine too weak to allow it. But I dreamed, I saw that shed and I knew I had to go there. Capricorn let me stay with her for a while as I gathered what I needed for the road ahead. She offered to come, but I knew that I needed to go alone.

Soon I set out, through the fields and forests until at long last it was there; rotting, abandoned, calling to me. The door fell apart as I touched it, and inside I saw the gift that my ancestors had left for me – a tangle of oak branches that covered a curled up body. My body. My healthy body.

I laid atop the branches, letting them pull me in as my flesh melded with what they had spent so long protecting. My eyes flashed open as the tangle opened up like a flower in bloom. I sat up, and the relief washed over me in a flood of tears. I was not in pain for the first time I could remember. I could stand without difficulty, breathe easy, and even scream without hurting myself.

For a while I just sat there, adjusting. Then I picked myself up and began to head back, knowing I would need to explain to everyone else but pushing that to the back of my mind as I just focused on being able to really feel and experience the world in a way I never had before.

Scorpio

In my dreams I saw the otter again. I saw her pups, asleep and dreaming. Their consciousness touched mine, a most simplistic understanding but still understanding. My spectral hands touched them, soothing them, telling them that they would some day come to my service.

Today they came. All three of them, standing at my front door when I opened it and squeaking as they saw me. I threw them the same dead mice I fed my snakes and they happily ate. I reached out and stroked a hand across their backs, feeling the soft fur.

Then I bid them to go, to travel the nearby rivers and keep an eye on everything. In that flowing water I was with them, my mind connected to theirs. We needed the eyes to keep watch, and in return I would provide them a safe harbor and make sure they were fed. Instinctively they knew too that this darkness was bad for them, that their next generation may not be born if they did nothing to step up and help, so they offered themselves willingly to me and I accepted without question.

Libra

I saw myself in my bed. I saw as its branches grew out from under, forming into a humanoid figure that stood beside me in the moonlight. Grass grew through the twisted roots that made its skin, and its hand brushed my face as I shuddered from the damp, sappy touch.

The creature reached up, pulling out a branch from the myriad that grew from its head. Left on my nightstand, then receding into the darkness. The dawn came, and as I woke I found myself reaching for that branch. It wasn’t just something left behind, it was a key. A key to a place I had long forgotten, to a place I knew I could get help. My powers would grow, and I would be able to properly aid everyone else in the upcoming fight.

I left the branch as I stood and prepared for my day. I showered, dressed, ate breakfast and packed coffee to go. Into the forest, into the darkness. I normally would never had gone there, too afraid of being lost, but now I knew my way. I was able to find the grove, and bask in the sunlight that came through the opening of the trees.

There I stood for hours untold, feeling the sunlight absorbing into my skin. The warmth of that, and the coolness of the air that made its way through the trees, melded into me. The weather at my beck and call, the world lending me this power to defeat the oncoming darkness.

Virgo

I saw the fur before I saw it. Left in the trees with claw marks, snagged in brambles, tufts on the ground. Each time I gathered them, using my skills to felt them into little poppets that I carried with me. Whatever it was, I knew that having the pieces of it would bring protection.

The night I heard it howl in the distance I began to hang the poppets from the eyelets in their heads. Around the property, outside the house, and inside my room. The next dusk it came, standing in at the edges of the street lamp in a twisted, wrong way. A gnarled branch, grown crooked and out of shape.

When the rain poured down and the poppets fell apart it approached, but I knew it could not come in. The poppets inside were protected from the elements and would not be so easily destroyed. When the wolves joined in the hunt I knew that the poppets would not stop them, but neither could they breach the house. The windows were boarded up in protection, nailed deep to help prevent them being ripped off. The door was also barricaded, and the poppets hung high where they could not be so easily reached.

That was perhaps the longest dark hours of my life. I sat in fear, listening to the creatures circling, but come the morning they retreated to the darkness of the forest. I had the day to prepare more, to make sure that the creatures would not be able to breach if they came back. I was afraid, but I knew that as long as I kept to my plan I could keep them at by. At least for now.

Leo

I slept, and then I heard it. A sound that rang through blood and bones and flesh and organs, urging me to answer it. I stood, not bothering to dress, leaving through the window so no one else would notice. I walked barefoot over cold soil, through the woods yawning like a maw ready to consume me, and to the corpse of the large cat that lay undisturbed in the night.

Hunger, perhaps, for it was nothing but skin and bone. I reached for it, feeling its still warm fur under my fingers, and watched as its head rose to meet me. Dead eyes stared, hauntingly milky, begging for release. A spirit trapped in a body that could no longer support it. I stared back, and as I did I felt it become me. My hands became paws, my face distorted, my skin sprouted fur. Its body was mine now, its spirit merged into me.

I roamed the night, hunting what I could before the dawn came and I made my way home. Human form returned, back into the window, back into my bed, unaware of the blood that stained my face. Not caring when I heard the neighbors drive up and say something had slaughtered their chickens in the night, ripping right through the fencing around the coop and leaving a bloody mess. I did what I had to do, and I would accept the power the world gave me no matter the cost that came with it.

Cancer

I felt it in my spine. Searching for a way out, moving from one bone to the next, up and down. It spread to my shoulders, breaking flesh and exploding with inky blackness that took the form of wings dripping like wax.

It had been inside me all along, called illness by those that did not understand it. They sought to destroy it, and at the time I did too, but now...Now I could control it. Now it was mine. I spread those wings wide and dove into the darkness. An endless black horizon stretched out before my eyes, allowing me to move freely. I saw the others gaining their powers, one by one, and I knew we were meant for this.

In time I would tire, and the wings could carry me home to rest. In time I would find out what they were truly capable of. We didn’t have much time, but at least we had this. At least we had the powers the world saw fit to grant us, even if it was selfishly only so that it too could survive the coming war.

Gemini

I did not know what to do with the fox that followed me home. It eyes were hazy, like it was infested with rabies or another disease. It sighed a deep, horrible sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It wasn’t right, and I wanted nothing to do with it as it stood outside my back door scratching to be let in.

Only when I finally fell asleep on the couch did I realize what was happening. It was alone and afraid, seeking the comfort of something it deemed as familiar. Why me? I don’t know. But I stood to let it in, patting the couch as it jumped up. I reached around and scratched behind its ears, listening to the happy sounds as it curled up in the warmth.

Soon it was following me everywhere. It jumped in the car when I went to the store, seeming to have an inherent understanding that it could not come in with me and content to curl up and wait. It sat by the door when it wanted to go back outside, and scratched quietly when it wanted to come back in. It slept in my bed with me, content in the crook of my arms as if I were hugging a stuffed animal.

I was never alone as long as it was with me, and I was okay with that. I wanted it there, I sought its comfort as much as it sought mine, and I knew that as long as I kept it fed and happy it would do everything it could to protect me. A powerful ally for the fight ahead, and a valuable friend.

Taurus

My dreams were always lost to me when I woke, replaced with the memories of thousands of animals and a primal longing to return to them. When I was young I never knew what this was, and it was written off as something related to anxiety or depression.

But now? Now I know. My spirit will not be contained in this body when I slumber. It wishes to walk free, to slip in and out of the animals of the world, to absorb their memories and experiences and knowledge, and then to return to imbue that into the physical form it is forced to inhabit.

I have embraced this. I sleep in blissful darkness, and I wake with the memories flooding into me and I accept them. I process them, I practice with them, I tie them into all the similar memories and make one giant experience of it. In this way I understand the world more than others do, in a perspective I don’t think anyone without a similar power can ever come close to. I don’t know how this will help in the coming days, but I know that it will. We are all special, and this world has given us these powers for a reason. That’s all I can hope for.

Aries

The old canal was long stagnant, its waters ceasing to flow when the nearby spring had dried up. The scent was that of rot and decay, the insects now eating away at what was left when the other animals would not.

A slowly rotting corpse, but one made of the very land instead of the body of some creature. There was a beauty in that, in the stench and in the blackness of what water remained. The algae floating on the surface, the few fish and tadpoles that still found a way to survive in that space for as long as they could.

I sat, feeling the wet seep into my clothes and not caring. Eventually I lay down, staring at the grey cloudy sky above as that same cold began to make my skin clammy. The reeds moved, wrapping themselves around me and pulling me in. They lent me their strength, their fire. Their memories of when the place had been so much more vibrant, but also the feeling that they were not mourning what it had become.

Their death was inevitable, just as everything else. They sought only to see it over with, and to be reborn. As they let me go I walked back to town, not caring about being cold or wet. I took the gas canister from my garage meant for the lawn mower, and I returned. I spread the liquid through both banks, through the water, through the vegetation, and then I set it alight as I walked back.

There was beauty to be found there, yes, but there is beauty in rebirth. In the flames that licked the sky as it opened up, the oil unquenchable until it burned out, sliding along the water and spreading further than where I had set it. In the smoke that rose, curling like serpents before dissipating.

No one knew it was me, and they never would. I watched the fire from my back porch like everyone else, well able to fake that I was simply keeping an eye on it and my house in case it came too close. I spoke to my neighbors, just as struck as they were that this had happened. An arsonist, in our area? But the cops wouldn’t have a clue, because there was none left behind and no one saw me. And once I was alone, after the fire had burned through all the fuel it had, I smiled at the blackened remains. Soon more would grow, rising from the ashes of the dead, making a new life out of something that I had put out of its misery. That was enough for me.