🌈Accidental Pilgrim (not the funny hat kind) (part 2)

The Truth you're trying not to face will always rise to the surface.

🧭 Explore the Project | 🛒 Shop the Books | 🔮 Buy the Deck

---

This is the next installment of the Wisdom of the Sisterhood adventures. Find previous issues here->

---

My Friends and Fellow Travelers,

Last week I left you just after a very judgmental cat, living in a small village in Spain, gave me a beautiful card with a shimmering picture of a butterfly on it. Further inspection revealed the words, “When you own your voice, you don’t just change your life—you change the world.”

This week, we resume the act of continuously falling forward and catching ourselves. I really do recommend you grow some wings, they are a far more graceful way to travel, and also, much more fun.

Anyway, Debbie, myself and the other ladies started walking again, and I shuffled up beside the author because I am incapable of minding my own business.

“What are you writing?” I asked, attempting to sound casual and failing spectacularly.

“My story,” she said.

I waited for the exciting part.

She added, “It’s not glamorous.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment like a polite gremlin. “Then why are you writing it?”

She hesitated, then said, very softly, “Because I survived things people don’t like to hear about. And every time I say them out loud, someone else breathes differently. Like they’ve been holding it too.”

That was… inconveniently beautiful.

“Oh!” I said, finally getting it. “So now that you’re on the other side, living your happily ever after, you’re telling people how you got there!”

And then she said something that cracked my brain open like an egg:

“Not quite. I kept thinking I had to be finished. Like I had to arrive somewhere before I was allowed to write about how I got here. And I don’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere. I’m just me. Just living each day, waiting for the next shoe to drop. But then, I met Debby. She helped me to understand that I don’t have to arrive as some mythical pinnacle. I don’t have to be finished, polished, done. I just have to have lived and learned something that someone else hasn’t yet.” She laughed then. “Debby actually said, I’ll never forget this, she said, ‘You’re not done until you’re dead and it’s a lot harder to write a book when you’re dead.’”

We walked in silence after that, but my brain was loud. Because I have stories too. Stacks of them. Hoards. Half-written scrolls shoved into drawers labeled:

• “Later”

• “When I’m Better”

• “When I’m Less Weird”

• “When I’m Successful”

When I think about sharing them, they feel too much like standing in the middle of the road without my shoes. (Remind me to tell you about that nightmare sometime!)

I looked over at the woman next to me. She didn’t look armored. She looked tired, sweaty, and little bit sunburned.

Day six arrived like a slap.
Hot pavement. No shade. Trucks screaming past like destiny had a deadline.
One of the women started limping.

“You okay?” someone asked.

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

Debby stopped walking.

“No,” she said gently. “You’re not.”

There was no edge to it. No judgment. Just a firmness that said, ‘Un-god you dastardly peddlers of oppression! I refuse to participate in the ancient ritual of women pretending they’re fine while their bodies scream.’

The limping woman tried to wave it off. “It’s nothing. I don’t want to slow everyone down.”

Debby set her pack down.

“We’re not in a race,” she said. “And you’re not a burden.”

And then something wild happened.

---

Your reading the words, but you’re missing out on the rest of the pictures from my travels and even a few short video clips!

🧭 Explore the Project | 🛒 Shop the Books | 📖 View Sample Book

---

Three other women set their packs down too.
No speech. No manifesto. No “This Is A Movement.”
Just: Okay. We’re resting now.

I watched it like a magic trick. Like Debby had cast a spell called Permission, and it settled over the entire group in an instant.

One woman peeled off her socks and started tending blisters with the focused tenderness of a battlefield medic.

Another rubbed her hip like it had personally betrayed her.

A third lay down in the tiny scrap of shade and fell asleep within two minutes, which honestly? Iconic.

I, too, sat down. Because I am extremely brave when a group is already doing something brave.

Someone passed around almonds.
Nobody apologized.
Nobody explained.
Nobody talked.

Moogie licked sunscreen off my elbow.

I don’t know why. He’s a stuffed bat-cow. He does not require nourishment. He is made of felt and misplaced confidence. Yet there he was, tongue out, tasting SPF 50 like he was reviewing it for a dairy blog.

I stared at him.
Debby stared at him.

The napping woman snorted awake and said, “Am I dreaming? Or is that… alive?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, because admitting you’ve brought an animate plush into a sacred pilgrimage is a social risk.

Moogie burped.
A tiny puff of glitter came out.
Everyone froze.

It drifted on the wind like a cursed dandelion.

And that’s when I learned something important about the Camino:
The truth you’re trying not to face will always rise to the surface.

The glitter puff drifted toward the road.
The road… reacted.
Not metaphorically. Literally.

The dust on the path began to lift in delicate curls, like it was inhaling. The pebbles shivered. A low hum rose from the ground—subtle, almost polite—like the earth was clearing its throat.

Debby blinked.
I blinked back.

The author whispered, “I think I need electrolytes. I think I’m hallucinating. This isn’t normal.”

“No,” Debby said, very calmly. “But neither is Ophelia.”

Correct. Thank you. Finally, someone recognizes my brand value.

I should probably explain: I had been trying very hard to be normal this whole trip. I had been doing human walking. I had been keeping my magic folded up like a travel umbrella. But apparently the Camino has rules about authenticity and gets offended when you pretend.

So when Debby stopped the group and made rest contagious…

…and when everyone just… accepted it…

…and when nobody apologized for being who they were and needing what they needed…

…something in the world loosened.

And my magic—being chaos-aligned and deeply opportunistic—popped its head up like, Oh! We’re being honest now? Great! I will participate.

The ground hummed again.

A small gust of wind spun through us, and—this is not a joke—my satchel unzipped itself and began coughing up items I did not pack.

A tiny scroll unrolled at my feet.

I picked it up.
It read:

PILGRIM STATUS: ACCEPTED

REWARD: ONE (1) TRUTH

I stared at it.
Then, because I’m me, I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen it.

The author leaned over. “What does it say?”

“It’s… nothing,” I lied, holding it behind my back like a child hiding a frog.

The scroll burned gently in my claws until I sighed and read it aloud.

“Reward: one truth.”

Debby nodded like that made perfect sense.
Of course it did. She’s Debby. She probably gets truth rewards in her cereal.

Then the weirdest part:
The scroll changed.
It turned into a little blank card—thick paper, clean edges, the size of an oracle card.

The author gasped. “Did you do that?”

I pointed at Moogie. “He did it.”

Moogie mooed innocently and licked more sunscreen.

The card shimmered once, like it was waiting.

For what?
A truth.
And I suddenly—very inconveniently—understood what it was asking for.
Not a speech. Not a performance. Not a branding statement.

Just… a true sentence.

So I did the bravest thing I could do in front of a group of capable women with barely functioning knees:

I said something small.

“I don’t know what my next chapter is,” I admitted. “And I keep trying to earn the right to know.”

Silence.
Not the awkward kind.
The listening kind.

The card warmed in my claws like a purring animal. And on its surface, ink appeared—slowly, like the truth was being written by the air itself:

Coming home to yourself isn’t some big dramatic moment. It’s just the quiet decision to stop second-guessing what you already know.

I swallowed.

The ground hummed again, but this time, it carried a low voice:

You’ve been straining to find direction, searching for a sign bright enough to drown out the noise. Yet beneath all that effort lives a quieter truth—the one you keep brushing aside because it feels too subtle, too simple, too honest. What you’re seeking isn’t waiting in the distance; it’s rising from within, asking you to stop outrunning your own knowing. Your inner compass has been whispering the way home this whole time.

The humming stopped.

Debby whispered, “The Camino.”

And in that moment, I watched the author’s shoulders drop by half an inch, like she’d been carrying a secret sack of shame and someone had just taken it off her without even touching it.

She reached into her notebook. Flipped to chapter three. And drew a line through the words REMOVE THIS.

Then she wrote above it:

LEAVE IT IN ANYWAY.

The limping woman exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for years.

The woman who’d been snoring sat up and said, “Oh no. I think I’ve been doing life wrong.”

Debby smiled. “You haven’t been doing it wrong. You’ve been doing it the way you were trained.”

We stayed resting for a while longer. Someone found the almonds. Someone else offered electrolyte tablets like they were contraband. Moogie tried to eat one and fizzed gently for ten seconds.

No one apologized for existing.
No one justified needing a pause.

And I watched Debby do something I think is her truest magic:
She made it normal.
She made truth normal.
She made rest normal.

She made “I’m not fine” and “I’m not finished” and “I don’t know yet” feel like allowed sentences.

Eventually we got up and kept walking, because rest isn’t quitting—it’s listening.

When the group reached the place where they’d continue on toward Muxía, Debby hugged me.

Sun-warmed. Salt in the air. A hug that said: you’re allowed to be real here.

“You continuing on?” someone called.

I looked at them—these women walking forward not as martyrs, not as performers, but as actual humans with bodies and stories and blisters.

I felt my satchel on my back becoming uncomfortably warm.
The teleportation muffin was waking up.
I looked down at my new card of wisdom.

Moogie blinked back at me like, Adventure?

I opened my mouth to answer and in that exact moment -

The card in my hand loudly announces:

“UNRESOLVED ARC DETECTED.”

Moogie gasped. Which is impressive for felt.

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

The card called out again:

“PILGRIMAGE COMPLETE. TRANSFERRING TO NEXT ASSIGNMENT.”

Debby did not look surprised. Cheryl must have warned her.

The author clutched her notebook like she might write this down.

The limping woman whispered, “Is this… part of the Camino?”

Debby tilted her head. “It is now.”

By now my Teleportation Muffin felt like it had just been taken out of the oven. It burst out of my satchel and began rotating slowly in midair with an air of corporate bossiness.

The sky ripped open like poorly hemmed curtains and a very annoyed Irish goat falls through screaming, “WRONG DRAGON.”

Fenris. Cheryl’s suspiciously poetic goat. He landed directly on the teleportation muffin. The muffin exploded into scones.

Reality folded.
Moogie saluted.

And before I could make one more dramatic comment about my sunscreen budget—I was sucked sideways into the pastry vortex.

The last thing I heard was Debby calling out:

Then—
pop.

Silence.

The Camino remained.
The women kept walking.

And somewhere far from Spain, I landed face-first on a velvet rug in a place that smelled faintly of roses and expensive decisions.

There was a pause. A teacup clinked.

Someone above me said, very calmly,

“Um, Hi. Can I help you?”

I sat up, still tasting sunscreen and almonds and dirt and looked around. “Oh good,” I said. “You have furniture. This is already an upgrade.” I promptly toppled to my left and was sound asleep by the time my face hit the velvet again.

---

With love, mild whiplash, and a time crumb in my ear,
Ophelia 🌈
Pilgrim (not the funny hat kind) | Scone Traveler | Truth Card Holder

🧭 Explore the Project | 🧙‍♀️ Meet the Sisters | 🔮 Buy the Deck

P. S. Moogie says moo.
P.P.S. If you don’t hear from me soon, assume I’ve been swallowed by a giant monster with a velvet rug camouflaged tongue.
Or a different decade.
Or kidnapped by a crazy Irish Goat with a teleportation problem.

---