The Raptor Oracle
You find yourself at Costco, stocking up on supplies in preparation for the latest emergency: water, toilet paper, bread, milk, rotisserie chicken… the essentials. As you round the corner to pick up some more snacks, the freezer section is beckoning to you. You can’t explain it, and you would never usually fill the freezer right before a potential outage, but somehow you know you must go down that aisle. Something there is important for you right here, right now.
You round corner and there, in the middle of the aisle, is the spirit of a giant velociraptor. He barely glances at you - he’s very busy chowing down on packages of dino nuggets, each dipped in the store’s finest ketchup. As you stand there, eventually and between bites, the velociraptor glances at the ceiling with an ancient look in his eyes, then turns his attention to you.
You have found The Raptor oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.
The Raptor Oracle says:
So many people want to rush to the end of things when they’re still in the middle or even the beginning of it all. But endings don’t always look like we think they’re going to. Public narrative will tell you that endings are always dramatic and loud and all-encompassing. We expect that every ending will come with a bow, or a cut to black, with an asteroid, with a comet, with fire. Or ice.
When, usually, endings aren’t like that. Most endings have us saying, wait…that’s it? Wait, it’s over? That was the last? The regular, personal, most long-term endings are really a series of small steps that make significant change until everything is different. They tend to be made of everyday stuff: blankets, bathtubs, flashlights, doors, bags, hot chicken, frozen nuggets.
A lot of the time, endings don’t even look like endings at all.
You’re here, though, so you know that. You’re already a master at endings. So many things have ended for you - jobs and relationships and housing situations and vacations and heartaches and waiting periods and good books and bad movies and jars of peanut butter.
Whole worlds have ended on this planet before, and whole worlds will end again in your lifetime. Both on the individual and on the collective level. Endings are change, and change is constant.
Yet here you are, standing in the freezer section at the grocery store, shopping for snacks, considering what you like and what you want and who prefers what among your friends and family and neighbors. You’re preparing by choosing household items that will make things more comfortable and more like community. Even if you should have to face a sudden loss of electricity or water or access. Or if, maybe one day, you look out your door to see people floating toward the great angel raptors in the sky. Sure, why not. You’ve probably seen stranger endings than that before, to be honest.
You are still going about your life in the small and pleasant ways that matter most. Despite all the endings you’ve been through to date. Maybe, because of them.
So if an ending does happen to be near, you’ve done it before. You’ll do it again. You know the steps and how to move through it. The only impulsive decision you’ll be making is whether you want ranch, ketchup or honey mustard with your raptor-shaped nuggets.
Because you also know beginnings. You’ve had so many of those before, too. You know how quiet it gets at the end and what happens in the very minute you look around and say: “Whoa it’s over?” “That’s the end?” “When did it stop?”
You know that the exact moment it dawns on you that something has come to its end, you have a new beginning to be prepping for next.
Need another oracle story today?
About the Oracles
Bailey Lewis - the voice behind and creator of Found Oracles - is an award-winning writer, multimedia storyteller, and owner of Bailey Sends Word Story Studio.
Visit the Bailey Sends Word Story Studio site for more stories steeped in modern mythos - work exploring intuition, mystical encounters in the everyday, and how the stories we tell ourselves create our reality.