Long before kings ruled with iron and priests with scripture, the old world whispered of Morgan. She was not always the wicked sorceress of later tales—no, in the beginning, she was something far older, far wilder. The Celts knew her as Modron, daughter of the earth, a goddess of healing waters and sacred springs. They said she could walk between worlds, her voice the wind in the oaks, her laughter the ripple of a hidden stream.
When the Romans came, and then the Christians, the stories changed. The scribes who wrote of King Arthur could not erase her—she was too powerful, too deeply woven into the land’s memory—but they could reshape her. The benevolent enchantress became a witch. The healer became a poisoner. The goddess became a temptress.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tales, she was still noble—Morgan of Avalon, a wise woman who tended Arthur’s wounds with herbs and magic. But as the years ed, the monks and poets darkened her name. By the time Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, she was Arthur’s treacherous half-sister, a woman who studied dark arts, who seduced knights, who plotted the downfall of Camelot itself.
Yet even in these twisted tales, whispers of her ancient power remained. She was said to command Mari-Morgans, the Breton water spirits who lured men to drown in moonlit pools. Some said she ruled a hidden kingdom beneath the waves, or a fairy palace atop Mount Etna, where the air shimmered with illusions. Others claimed she walked the misty hills of Wales, a phantom in green silk, her eyes holding secrets older than the standing stones.
And then there was Avalon. Always Avalon. The lost island of apples, where the dead did not rot and wounds did not fester. Even as the Church condemned her, they could not strip her of this last sanctuary. For Avalon was beyond their reach—a dream of the world as it once was, before steel and crosses and burning scrolls.
Was she truly evil? Or was she something else—a force too vast, too untamed, for the new world’s narrow laws? The bards could not agree. Some painted her as a demon. Others, in quieter moments, ed the healer, the goddess, the woman who once stood between the living and the dead, holding back the dark with nothing but her will.
Perhaps both were true. Perhaps Morgan was never meant to be understood—only feared, or loved, or mourned.
And perhaps, even now, she waits. Not in crumbling castles or dusty books, but in the deep woods, in the hush before dawn, in the space between a breath and a heartbeat.
Listening.
Watching.
ing.
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