Circle of Tall Trees

Come Back Different

September 12, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 30

Content Warning: Disordered eating, body-image distress, coercive control, psychological manipulation, dissociation, references to childhood abuse, and spiritual themes.

I wanted to live. I wanted to feel alive. I spent a lot of time numb, and I wanted to feel good. I didn’t want to be stuck as me. I wanted to transform.

I learned to for him.

Our weight went up and down over and over for him. We’d reach our goal, and he’d do something to trigger us and then abandon us to manage everything ourselves. But he’d be watching, and we knew that we were expected to continue writing him, offering our body to him, keeping open to him. We didn’t want to fail and be deemed unfit to serve or to manage our own life. Have to admit we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t keep functional.

The stakes were high.

Looking back on it now from a safe distance, I had struggled with food prior to him and became more disordered while with him. It was like we threw gasoline on ourselves and he lit the match over and over, and we’d die for him and come back different.

If it were sane and consensual, such a symbolic ritual would be beautiful.

That was not beautiful.

That was a way to die without dying. To show our insides. To see with our own eyes how much pain we’d been living with and not acknowledging.

I can recognize now that even though my looks and form did improve from extreme ways, it wasn’t enough for him, and eventually I accepted it never would be. He was disgusted with me and my body.

I remembered that disgust.

My father threw his disgust at me too.

He would never grow to accept me, love me for me, or even look past what he didn’t like.

I collapsed and did not take the front in our day-to-day lives or with him for years. I kept away. I tried to heal or preserve myself.

Me, the person I had wanted to transform, had become pretty fucking grateful to be alive at all.

-Rogue

How Much It Would Cost Me

September 12, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 29

Content Warning: Trauma, dissociation/DID, coercive control, trauma bonds, psychological manipulation, and coercive power-exchange dynamics.

He said that he wanted me to wear his collar and asked me to show him the necklaces I owned that I thought he’d like to see me in.

I chose a protective stone that was a large obsidian disk on black leather. I liked how it felt protective and had some weight. It highlighted my pale skin.

I also chose a copper necklace that I could adjust the chain length on with my jewelry-crafting supplies to make it more of a choker. It had a hammered O-type ring that was dainty and delicate. It belonged to Lilith, whereas the other necklace belonged to all of us.

I tried them both on for him, and he said he knew I wanted him to choose the black disk, but that he’d always had a thing for copper. So it was settled then, and he allowed me to wear the copper necklace as the collar he gave me.

I ended up liking how it moved on my neck, flipping and shining red bare copper in the light.

I could ask to wear it.

-Star

He told me to put it out on display where I could always see it, to meditate each night on the collar, and to make a ritual oil for its care.

I did.

He never let me wear it, though, and it became ugly to me. I had wanted his collar once but didn’t know how much it would cost me.

I realized in a moment of clarity that he’d taken my necklace, something I had gotten for myself to protect me and my system within a circle, and claimed it as his. It really sums up our exchanges with him overall.

-Lilith

Yes?

September 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

A Lokean Devotional Vignette

“Oh! You can be so creepy sometimes!” I nervous laugh

“You like creepy.” Loki says

“Omfg!”

“Yes?”

My smile burns red.

Roasted on the spit.

My Sweetheart Head

September 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 28

Content Warning: Trauma, dissociation/DID, coercive control, sexual coercion, psychological manipulation, trauma bonds, and emotional abuse.

I didn’t really have the capacity to take our ex Dom seriously at the time. I tried, but I could see he wasn’t really taking things seriously himself. He was just using us and getting away with what he could.

Sometimes I think all the tricks he pulled on us were what made him feel powerful. Not “owning” me in any devotional sense or caretaking sense, but deceiving me. Kind of weird to me that he’d pick someone easy to deceive and then play that fantasy out hardcore. But we all have our fantasies.

We’d bounce back, which we found incredible. We had no idea of our own resilience because we’d never seen ourselves, our gifts and talents, our anything. We lived a life of survival.

The drawback is that sometimes it looks like resilience when it’s actually hypervigilance or a crash waiting to happen. But when our nervous system is regulated and our basic foundational needs are met, we can really succeed. Especially when we feel reciprocally loved back in a stable way.

For a time, we thought he did love us. He said as much and acted like he was struggling with not having us come to him, acting like he wanted us to be there with him in person at some point, even if it was years down the road.

It’s pretty painful to me because I have a lot of sweetness to give, and I gave it to the wrong person. I hate that. I really don’t like that he messed with my gut, my intuition, and my sweetheart head like that.

Oh sure, he wanted the sex, the adoration and worship, the devotion and unconditional love.

He just never wanted to reciprocate.

He called us fake a few times, and it pushed us to show up for him more and try to cure his loneliness with more.

I hate that he messed with our innocence, our naïveté, and our hope like that. Those things ain’t flaws. They are beautiful and deserved protection.

Just my two cents.

I didn’t much like him pretty quickly.

He wouldn’t let me orgasm for too long, until everything hurt and all the darkness swallowed me up, and when I begged until exhausted, then he’d act like he was saving me. My body responded to him and I couldn’t help it.

I’m real quiet usually.

But on this thing, I’m glad we’re speaking about it.

-Lily

We Did Our Job

September 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 27

Content Warning: Trauma, dissociation/DID, coercive control, sexual exploitation, psychological manipulation, and spiritual threats.

He knew how to direct our filming and photo’ing ourselves for him. Had us upload to a password-protected service that allowed anyone with the password to view the files. He knew not to “fuck with the littles” in a DID system or everything goes poorly and non-operational. He had done this before to other disabled women and once, he alluded to men also.

My point is, he knew things that let us know he was a handler. He tried to tell us we were wrong about that, but we know we weren’t wrong. That’s our trigger. A specific type of handler associated with sex work.

Since we were tied up to him, we did our job in that specific situation. We weren’t mad about it. It’s just how it is to us. He treated it like his job too, another clue.

He’d told us once he wanted us for the internet clout. That was concerning, as we’d never heard anything like that before. Clout was such a hollow word it didn’t fit with our understanding that we were safe with him as long as we served him. He wouldn’t spiritually or magically retaliate against us as long as we kept under him, came back to him, and served him. Otherwise he’d protect himself, he told us.

We heard we’d get in trouble and be punished by larger forces than he that he commanded.

He said he was a magician, and he gave us a book to read. To prove we were reading it, we recorded ourselves reading it out loud to him. It was called The Universal Master Key, and he said it was very good, actually. To us we heard, it got him something. He never told us what, and it wasn’t something we could safely ask.

He told us to report to him. We did. We did our job. We had it set up that we’d journal every evening and send him that to read so he could know our well-being or not. He liked that a lot and wouldn’t let us skip it.

We felt cared for in what we understood and knew.

-Bear

Caffeine

September 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

A Lokean Devotional Vignette

“I have never seen a case of Mountain Dew that isn’t caffeinated. If it says Mountain Dew, it’s got caffeine in it.”

“I’ve never seen you not caffeinated.”

“You aren’t likely to.” I sass back.

“Oh really?”

“Oh fuck. No… It’s my only vice left!”

Loki’s face reveals he’s already been planning this.

I Fell Into Grace

September 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 26

Content Warning: BDSM and coercive power dynamics, psychological manipulation, grandiosity, dissociation, references to childhood abuse, and spiritual themes.

It was very disturbing to watch the Raven fall into submissive territory. I perked up to take her place… naturally. Demons demon.

I started misbehaving for our Dom in small, ridiculous ways, chipping at his very thin-shelled exterior. I thought to myself, if he is who he says he is, great! He’ll love the self-reflection and awareness. If not… okay, then it’s working.

I have this twisted pride. No one has anything on my father. I didn’t want him to be worse. I needed my father to maintain that position because worse is unimaginable to me, and fuck anyone trying to knock that fantastic pedestal my father built for himself and placed me beneath.

He’d called me good, and I really took it personally. Oh, now I have to learn to what? Behave saintly? No thank you. We have parts for that.

I lazed around flicking my tail at him and shining my claws. I happen to love madness. A little bit.

His was truly unrepentant. He’d crafted a whole spaceship around himself that zipped around and through us with noxious fumes, and I fell into grace after a while, aware he wasn’t really allowing me to demon. He was just taking my spot inside my system that I had rightfully earned by knocking the Raven a peg down.

I found the Gods and began to pray. In particular to the Goddesses, because my experiences with men weren’t so good.

-Lilith

Every Good Mutiny

September 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 25

Content Warning: Trauma, dissociation/DID, coercive control, trauma bonds, psychological manipulation, abusive power-exchange dynamics, and references to mental health destabilization.

Leaving therapy sucked so much for me. I’d been using it to run away from my system, as it turns out. It was my safety net, me and my psychologist “against” my system. It was never going to work like that, but I couldn’t have that awareness until we left therapy.

In retrospect, it really was time to leave. We were making our choices and being responsible for them. We were functioning well for us. We were living the life we wanted to live.

But fuck if there wasn’t that ex Dom there reminding us we can be out of our mind if not vigilant.

I threw down and joined my system in all the reindeer games. What else was there to do? They had the majority, and system law says the majority gives no fucks about my sensibilities, logic, and care to live a respectable life.

I’m not at all spiritual, and what transpires next is both my deepest shame and my freedom to create exactly a shit pile of shit if I want to.

I let myself fall for that jackwagon. It’s so disappointing to me and so “not me.” I mean, I actually started to see the beauty in the intentional triggers he was pulling off on us and what I could learn from them.

My own curious nature got out of hand. I no longer had therapy to throw myself into, so I threw myself into… whatever it can be called. An incredibly abusive, toxic D/s? He called it biology, but that was dumb. That places me as an animal, a pig if you will, and I never consented to being a pig.

I can also be controlling in that I figured if I threw myself in, I could somehow gain back some kind of control in the situation, even if it was gradual over time.

I found the situation and circumstance hilarious. I went mad, full-steam-ahead mad.

Every good mutiny deserves a part like me, and I showed up to play my role.

-Raven

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Audience: Adults (18+).
Rating: Comparable to an R-rated film. Contains mature themes, sexual and sensual material, trauma, and spiritual content.

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