86 - Pete brings me back.
joneworlds@mailbox.org

Well, I  did my three day  fast buried underground
in a car,  just like we planned it.  Done said all
my  prayers,  poured  out  all my  water,  all  of
that.  I sure  had some  weird waking  dreams down
there, and maybe I'll write those down one day.

Anyways, after  the three  days are up,  they come
back to  dig me  out. Lucky  for me  they finished
digging down  enough to  get the car's  door open,
before it happened.

It  must  have  been  a  dragon,  and  a  big  one
too. Just  as I'm about to  get out of the  car, I
hear  this  big BOOM  and  a  whoosh. And  all  my
brothers and sisters of  service are screaming and
scrambling out  of the hole and  running for their
lives. By the  time I'm able to get up  and out of
the hole, they're all  scattered and gone, and all
around me the  brush is on fire.  And our off-road
flatbed truck is upside down and burning too.

I'm disoriented  and I barely even  know where I'm
at. I guess I stumble  down an embankment and find
the highway. I'm just  standing there, blinking in
the  afternoon sun,  no idea  what to  do, when  a
pickup truck comes along.  It pulls over, and what
do you know, it's my old friend Pete from Braxon.

And  he's  staring  at  me  out  the  drivers-side
window, and he's  like, Jone, is that  you? I'm so
out of it and my memory  is so foggy, that I don't
even recognize him yet.  I just sort of squint and
nod a  bit. And he's  all like, what the  hell are
you wearing,  what happened to your  hair?  I just
shrug and shake  my head.  Then he's  like, get in
the goddamn  truck. And I  just kind of  wobble on
over,  get in,  and we  drive away.  By late  that
night, we're back in Braxon. I been back about two
days by now, and you  know already my memories are
growing back. Isn't that weird.

I sure got lucky there. Turns out, Pete had driven
up  north for  a job.  Some of  the chieftains  up
there banded  together to repair the  highway, and
had put out word there'd  be work. But by the time
he got  there, someone had already  gone and stole
all  the  catalytic  converters out  of  the  dump
trucks,  and someone  else had  made off  with the
graders,  so  the  whole  thing  kind  of  fizzled
out. And  he was driving  back home when  he found
me.

Anyways, that's how I left my cult and got back to
my old town-home here on Braxon land. On one hand,
I guess it's not so great that I committed both my
mortal body and my eternal  soul to the service of
mother Gaia,  but then  abandoned my  brothers and
sisters,  condemning both  myself and  everyone on
earth to a slow horrifying doom of poison, floods,
and  transmogrification into  feeble-minded fungal
monstrosities.  (At least  that's what they always
told me would  happen if I deserted.)   But on the
other hand,  it sure  feels good  to be  back home
again.