This is the next installment of the Wisdom of the Sisterhood adventures. Find previous issues here->
Dearest Magical Friends, Besties, Chaos Cousins, and Whoever Keeps Mailing Me Unsolicited “7-Figure Funnel” Scrolls,
I am writing to you from Spain.
Yes. Spain.
Do not ask why, because I tried asking me and I just blinked a lot and then ate a cookie like it was an answer.
Here’s what happened.
You know how I was going to rest? Like a responsible creature? Like a dragon-fae adult Doxie who doesn’t treat “summer break” like an invitation to do something unhinged?
Anyway.
When the universe places an order for you with express shipping, you pack your snacks and go.
So I did.
The teleportation muffin coughed up Spain like a hairball of destiny, and I landed in a ditch beside a dusty road under a sun that clearly had unresolved anger.
Moogie the stuffed bat-cow was tangled in my tail.
And a woman in hiking boots was laughing at me with the warm confidence of someone who has survived at least one spiritual reckoning and possibly several PTA meetings.
“You must be Ophelia,” she said.
“I was promised snacks,” I replied, because introductions are hard and hunger is honest.
She handed me a fig.
This is how I met Debby.
Now, I assumed Debby had summoned me for something dramatic. A curse. A treasure map. A dragon duel. A business intervention.
Instead she said, “Welcome to the Camino.”
“I LOVE HORSEBACK RIDING,” I shouted, whipping my head around to locate the adorable beasts.
Debby stared at me like she was watching a tiny weather system form.
“No, not a Palomino. The Camino de Santiago. It’s a walking pilgrimage.”
I looked down at my feet.
They looked back at me like, Oh no. Not this again.
“Is there a starting line?” I asked, scanning the landscape for a ribbon to burst through heroically.
“No,” she said. “That’s the point.” (That sentence should come with a warning label.)
Then she helped me out of the ditch—very kindly, despite the fact I had twigs in my horns—and we started walking. Not because a bell rang. Not because someone announced, “LET THE SACRED JOURNEY BEGIN.” We just… angled in a direction and proceeded to fall forward and catch ourselves.
The road didn’t care about me. Which was rude. Olive trees leaned into the breeze like they’d seen a thousand melodramatic pilgrimages and were not impressed.
Up ahead, I saw a small group of women walking together—sun-warmed, quiet, like they belonged to the road.
“Who are they?” I whispered.
“Pilgrims,” Debby said.
“Are we pilgrims?”
“If you’re walking, you are.”
That seemed suspiciously inclusive.
Now listen. The first two days were ordinary in a way that made me itch. People were just… walking. Sweating. Drinking water. Being present. No one tried to monetize the moment. No one put a ring light on a rock.
I kept waiting for the twist.
The Camino, apparently, is allergic to spectacle. It prefers quiet violence: blisters, introspection, and the slow unpeeling of your protective armor of lies, assumptions and expectations.
Debby walked like someone who had once carried too much and finally set it down.
On the third day we stopped in a village so tiny it felt like it might apologize for existing. There was a stone fountain in the square with a peeing cherub that spurted intermittently like it needed it’s prostate checked, a café with exactly one round table and three chairs that wobbled on the uneven stones like they were auditioning for a teeter-totter competition, and one very judgmental cat.
Debby was talking to another woman who had a notebook clutched like it was either a baby or a grenade.
“I think I’m going to remove chapter three,” the woman said.
Debby’s eyebrows lifted. “Why?”
“It’s too much,” the woman said. “Too honest.”
Debby shrugged like this was the easiest thing in the world. Like she was suggesting a different brand of tea.
“Put it in anyway,” she said. “It’s actually my favorite part. I’d love to see more like that.”
Friends. The air shifted. Not dramatically, like thunder. More like… the world quietly made room.
The very judgmental cat leap down of her perch, picked up something sitting in the dirt and brought it over to me. I reached out to take it, brushed the dirt away and found I was looking at a beautiful card with a shimmering picture of a butterfly on it. A light breeze blew across it and revealed the words “When you own your voice, you don’t just change your life—you change the world.”
I wasn’t quite sure why, but it felt important so I tucked it away in my satchel, giving Moogie a pat on the head while I was at it.
Next week: my brain gets cracked open like an egg, I’m haunted by a pile of scrolls, and no one apologizes for existing.
With snacks, suspicious optimism, and mild teleportation concerns,
Ophelia 🌈
Pilgrim (not the funny hat kind) | Scone Traveler | Truth Card Holder
