Once I was given to the Elder Priestess, she became my only mother and taught me everything she knew about living and about the Web. Every night of the full moon she, her only other Priestess daughter and I would fly to a nearby clearing in the forest. Here she focussed her energies, drawing off of her adopted daughter and myself to build a great sphere of light surrounded by flying specks of color that represented all the gods of the Web. Each speck orbited in a single path that seemed both to generate the light within and set its boundaries. The sphere itself seemed as large at the moon overhead, spreading a full stretch of her wings as she floated two spans above the ground. At peace she floated there from the time the last limb of the moon rose into the sky until its first edge sank into the opposite horizon. Always she waited, her mind open and receptive to anything the Goddess might choose to impart upon her. Never in my life did I ever hear the Goddess speak through her.
Between lessons teaching me how to call upon the moonlight and how to heal my sisters through nothing but the power of my mind I had to serve the tribe as all my sisters did, with the one exception already mentioned. I would herd our flock when it was my turn, usually when my season came upon me, to get me away from our encampment and reduce the chance of my attempting to Fly our tod when my need was greatest. Always one of my sisters stayed with me to help with the herding and to do what she could to ease my Need. Frequently I would join the flight sent to gather fish, my own telekinetic strength making the work of gathering the waterlogged and fish-laden net much easier for the rest.
Yes, the Elder Priestess tested me sorely during my years with her, eventually discovering that my strength and power was ten times that of any of my sisters! While they could only lift about three times their own weight while standing on the ground, I learned I could hold ten of them ground-bound as they fought to fly or hold that same ten airborne as they struggled to land. What the ten of them could lift with their combined strength I could lift or sink alone.
Again I was reminded of how different I was from the others, though except for my coloring I looked just like them. While I was much stronger than any of them, that was really the limit of my difference as far as mind-power went. Like them I couldn’t move anything once I lifted it except by pushing or pulling by hand though I did learn how to tip something by increasing the lift on one edge while reducing it on the other. Many a time I caused a container to tumble, spilling its contents onto the ground until I developed the skill and mental dexterity to focus my telekinesis to specific places on the target and use its own inherent strengths and weaknesses to create a much greater effect than the strength used. Because of this strength and dexterity the tribe honored me, calling me the daughter of the Goddess and the Savior of the tribe. Because of this strength and dexterity, some of the tribe feared me and avoided me, calling me a beast and warning against my turning against the tribe and destroying our People.
Two hands and a half of years I learned under the Elder Priestess, the last hand as her equal in the Web and her superior in Healing. This doesn’t mean that I knew more than she in either way, but my delicacy and focus allowed me to clean and cure injuries and diseases that would normally have cost the victim her life. In fact, during that last four years, not one of our tribe died of injury, though the cancers that all the tribe fought as a punishment from the war so many generations before claimed our Eldest, leaving the Elder Priestess as the tribe’s Eldest. The younger Priestess herself was now twice my own age and more given to gathering berries and herding rather than hunting or fishing as she had when I was brought to the Web. The Eldest herself was worried because we had no new kit to replace her when her own time came to an end. Every full moon she prayed to the Goddess that she send us a new tod to replace the elder one and allow the tribe to survive another generation.
