On Seeing an Old Friend I'd Missed

Hello, old friend. It’s good to know
That you are still around
I hadn’t seen you hanging out,
And I was feeling down.

You used to come around each night
and visit for a while
But lately you've been so aloof
and I have missed your smile.

It’s been so grey and rainy here,
Our Autumn came too soon,
But now I see you're still around,
My sweet September moon.

Written While Still in Bed on Saturday

The pillow’s soft, the sheets are warm
And I’m all snuggled in.
The fan is blowing softly on
My face, my hair, my skin.
The day ahead is full of chores,
so much I must begin,
but I don’t have to start just yet;
I think I’ll just sleep in!!

God's Favor

God’s favor is coming to me
I feel it every day
God’s favor is coming to me
I know it’s on its way
God’s favor is coming to me
He’s promised something great
God’s favor is coming to me
And I can hardly wait
God’s favor is coming to me,
It lifts my heart today
God’s favor is coming to me
I feel it when I pray
God’s favor is already here
At last, I understand
God’s favor was always here
He holds me in His hand

To a Friend on Finding Love

Love led me through a darkened world,
Love held me when I cried.
Love lifted me from deep despair
And led me to your side.

Love walks with me, the crooked road,
Love teaches me to pray.
Love shields me from my worst impulse,
And I’m not led astray.

Love stands before me in the light,
Love brings me songs of praise.
Love holds me with the arms of hope,
While faith fulfills my days.

For these three always shall endure;
My faith, my hope, my love.
And Love, the greatest of all these,
Comes first from God above.

A Rainy Sunday Afternoon

There’s something in a rainy day
That was made to be spent in bed,
Snuggled under the downy fluff
Of a cozy, old flannel spread.
The soft rain splashing my window
The soft pillow under my head.
The rain sings a gentle lullaby
And into sweet dreams I am led

Yes, there’s something in a rainy day
That was made to be spent in bed
So why do I sit here typing a rhyme
When I could be dreaming instead?

The Patient Heart

The morning is not far away,
The chaos and the strife,
but for now my quiet thoughts
are of a different life.

I know that somewhere in the night
Another heart beats true
And someday, when the time is right,
I know that I’ll find you.

But that time is not here or now
And I am in no rush
So I will wrap my patient heart
In night-time’s soothing hush.

On Divorce

The gentle shadows touch my hand.
I hear the damp wood softly sigh.
The flames call back forgotten dreams,
but I have no more tears to cry.

The firelight plays chasing games
with old mem'ries that fill my mind.
The smoke that drifts off in the night
carries the hopes I've left behind.

The cherished past must quiet bide.
The busy present has no time
to mourn the hopes that we have killed.
To linger there would be a crime.

It's better to let loose the past
than cling to what no more can be.
And loneliness is easier
than living a dead memory.

So I will gaze into the fire
while, one last time, my dreams return.
I'll watch them sparkle in the blaze
and then I'll watch them slowly burn.

On the Choice to Run For Office

To boldly tread a path well worn
by those who have not cared,
while knowing that your choice requires
more than you've ever dared
means that the stand you choose to make,
the words you choose to say,
must offer more than platitudes
you'll use then throw away.

You'll have the forum many crave
to make your views well known.
The task of planting fallow fields
and tending what you've sown.
For those, there are, who sow to reap.
And those who plant to grow
a harvest that can feed all who
depend upon it so.

So choose your issues carefully,
be sure of where you stand,
then you can face the doubting crowd,
both calm and in command
to ask that they believe in you
and place in you their trust.
And know that they'll expect you to
return that faith. You must!

And they will learn who stands with them
and who just came to play
as each day you fulfill the oath
that you now hope to say.
Whate'er the end result may be,
elections lost or won,
you've raised the standards we'll expect
because you chose to run.

Animal Walk

Megan and Dana had been in all day
so Mother told them to go out and play.
She told them to have fun, have a whole bunch
but they were to be home in time for lunch.

So Megan and Dana went for a walk
and along the way they stopped just to talk
to an Elephant and a Kangaroo
who were taking a lunch break from the zoo.

The elephant ate some leaves from the trees.
Kangaroo nibbled a shrub by his knees.
They asked the girls if they cared for a munch,
but leaves weren't the girls idea of lunch.

Dana and Megan walked on down the street
and whom do you think they happened to meet?
A big black bear and a little raccoon
who were hurrying to be home by noon.

Their Moms had their lunches ready to eat
so they hurried by on all of their feet.
They both offered the girls a chance to come crunch,
but girls don't eat berries or bugs for lunch.

Then quickly a Blue Bird came flashing by
with a worm so big he could hardly fly.
He only waved, cause with food in your beak,
everyone knows it's not polite to speak.

They saw a Squirrel, a Bee, and a Bunny
sharing their lettuce, their nuts, and honey.
They offered to share their lunch with the girls,
but girls don't eat lunch with Bunnies and Squirrels.

Just then the girls felt their tummies rumble.
They knew that soon it would be a grumble.
They hurried home before everyone heard,
and their Mother fed them without a word.

For their Mother knew, as all Mothers do,
that hungry kids eat until they are through.
And then they can tell their Mom and their Dad
about all the fun that they may have had!

Quiet Moments Before Dawn

A silent thought, a silent world
A stillness in my mind
The slow tick tock of a distant clock
The only sound I find.

No whisper of the day to come
Has formed yet in my head
On tip toe, through the silent world,
I slip away from bed.

I settle in a favorite spot,
cradle a cup of tea
And treasure the brief solitude
This morning gives to me.

The day will not long stay at bay
The rush will soon return
But here, for just this precious now,
That is of no concern.

The Lonely Muse

I hear the voice that sings in me,
The voice of a lonely muse.
She sings of laughter and delight,
Of hopes and dreams and welcome news.
She sings of sorrow and of tears,
Those battles lost, those still to lose.
She begs me listen to her song,
But I can not. I must refuse.
I dare not join her in her song
I have to pay my bills and dues.
Because I must, I turn from her,
offering but some frail excuse,
to face the world, to hold at bay
my obligations' strangling noose.
But, in my heart, I know the truth-
that she’s the “me” I long to choose.

Fiction: Colm Ruadh and Rowan

The Singer of Songs, The Teller of Tales

Once, in a time now forgotten and in a place not totally unlike earth, there lived a great hero. A man of courage, with an understanding of both passion and of compassion. His name was Colm Ruadh and he was the leader among his people both in war and in peace, which made him unique in that place and time. For it was a time of turbulence and of confusion in the Kingdoms of Man. A time when the people of the different Kingdoms of Man were striving against each other and sometimes against the very world in which they lived. It was a time when the world itself was alive with creatures of all species that spoke with each other and with those of the Kingdoms of Man who would listen. It was also a time when the barriers between the Kingdoms of Man and the Kingdoms of the Fey were not as solid and impassable as they are now.

While the Kingdoms of Man battled against each other, the Kingdoms of the Fey watched with curiosity and with some concern. Concern that the anger and the pain that infected the Kingdoms of Man might spread across the thin veil between their worlds. Concern that the wars between the Kingdoms of Man might spill into the realms of the Fey or be carried into them intentionally by the warriors of the Kingdoms of Man. For the lands of the Fey were rich and beautiful. As rich and beautiful as the histories, the legends and the stories of the Fey. As rich and beautiful as the culture, the songs and the arts of the Fey. As rich and beautiful as the Fey, themselves. The Fey, though they often teased and toyed with the mortals of the Kingdoms of Man, were at peace with each other and had been for many more years than even the longest memories of their people could recall. The Fey were at peace with Mankind, too, for a while. But still they watched. Still they wondered. Still they worried.

In this time of watching a Council of the Leaders of the Kingdoms of the Fey met to discuss the problems of the wars between the Kingdoms of Man and how those wars could be prevented from spreading to the Kingdoms of the Fey. It was decided that, in order to fight the Kingdoms of Man, should that be necessary, the Fey would have to come to understand the ways Mankind. How Mankind lived, how they thought, what they dreamed of, what they feared, and most importantly of all, how Mankind fought.

While the Fey could watch the Kingdoms of Man from within the borders of Faerie, they could not interact with Mankind and more effectively learn their ways without crossing into the lands of the Kingdoms of Man. It was decided that some of the Fey would be allowed to move back and forth into the Kingdoms of Man in order to better learn the ways of men. For many years the Fey came and went quietly among the Kingdoms of Man watching, learning, but not interfering. Sometimes a mortal of the Kingdoms of Man would stumble through an opening in the border between the kingdoms and the Fey would take the opportunity to learn the stories and thoughts of that mortal before returning him to the Kingdoms of Man with only vague memories of the beautiful lands and sweet voices of the Fey.

All of this watching and learning was helpful to the Fey in small ways. But, ultimately, it did not achieve the understanding that they needed to be able to fight off the sickness of the wars of the Kingdoms of Man. For, though a bird may watch a fish swim and learn how it is done, the bird is still not capable of swimming with the fish. And this was the final conclusion of the Council of Leaders of the Fey regarding the Years of Learning as they were coming to be called. So another course of action had to be determined and the Council of Leaders of the Fey adjourned to their own Kingdoms to consider how next to proceed to protect the Kingdoms of the Fey from the wars of Mankind.

But many of the Fey continued to travel back and forth from their kingdoms to those of the mortals. In time some of the Fey became so comfortable in the Kingdoms of Man that a binding grew between them and those places they favored, their havens, in the Kingdoms of Man. These bindings were quite powerful and were often beyond even the strength of the Fey themselves to break. So strong were they that the Fey could be drawn to their havens in the Kingdoms of Man by the sheer strength of the binding. Even in defiance of their own intentions. The places of their bindings became known among the mortals in the Kingdoms of Man as magical or haunted or simply enchanted. Eventually, some of the Fey became so attached to the enchanted locations that they frequented that they were as much a part of the Kingdoms of Man as they were of the Kingdoms of the Fey.

By the time the Council of Leaders of the Kingdoms of the Fey realized that this was happening, many of their people had become firmly established in both worlds. The Council feared that the people of the Kingdoms of Man might begin to observe the Fey among them and begin to learn the ways of the Fey as they had tried to learn the ways of Mankind. This caused great concern among the Lords of the Fey. While they could not prevent their people from moving back and forth between the two worlds, they could, and did, forbid them to move about within the Kingdoms of Man. If one of the Fey had grown a binding, for example, to a lake or a forest or a mountain crag, to that place and that place only could they travel in the Kingdoms of Man. The bindings themselves prevented the Fey from being away for any length of time or at any great distance from the place to which they had become bound.

Our tale begins in one of the enchanted places, a great forest of mighty trees and gentle creatures who came to live there because of the Dryad who protected the forest and its creatures. They came because of the sanctuary she offered, and they came because of her great love for all the living creatures of the woods. Most of all, they came because of the wondrous songs and stories she would share with them every day. The stories of the heroes and the legends of the Kingdoms of the Fey.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Darkling Wood before him meant half the distance off of this day’s journey, but it also meant a far greater risk to his life and sanity. For it was said that the wood was bewitched. It was said that a man could enter it and come out with out mischance. Or, he could enter it and come home so changed that even his own kin would not know him ever again... if he came out at all. But Colm Ruadh, Red Colm as we would say it now, was weary. He had fought a great battle with war and death these past few days. A battle he had won, at the talks of treaty and peace with an old enemy. A victory he hoped would buy time for his Clan to grow used to the ways of peace and of prosperity. Weary, was not the way to enter a haunted place, but the hours saved, should he come through the wood safely, could be hours spent in rest before his own hearth. Hesitation would not see him home, either way, so he urged his horse onto the path through the Darkling Wood and rode to meet whatever the wood might hold for him that day.

The path was shaded and cool, but it appeared to offer no threat as he moved through the wood. In fact, the wood seemed to welcome him into its quiet realm. The air was soft and sweet with the smell of the evergreens that colored it year round, and filled with the rustling whisper of the gentle breeze through their branches. The light playing through the canopy of dark green often caught tiny motes of dust or falling needles as they danced with joy in the warm light. It was as if the forest more than welcomed him, it seemed to offer him sanctuary and haven. That is, until his horse grew restive with something it could sense, but Colm Ruadh could not.

Sadly, Colm Ruadh did not have the way of speaking with animals as many of the Bards and the Priests still did. He could not ask the nature of his horse’s unease, nor could he offer more comfort than the quiet, calm of his voice to soothe the nervous creature. As they moved farther into the wood it seemed to grow more comforting to Colm ruadh and more agitating to his horse. Indeed, so restive did the creature become, that Colm Ruadh was having great difficulty keeping him on the path at all. Colm had decided it might actually be faster to turn back and circle the woods, after all, when the choice was taken from him entirely.

A wolf, large, gray, and silent, loped across the path directly under the nose of Colm Ruadh’s horse. So odd was this behavior, for the wolf is normally shy and distant unless hunting, that Colm was surprised into motionlessness by the wolf’s appearance. More surprised was he, however, by his horse’s response to the wolf. For, though his horse did rear, throwing him into the arms of a great tree, which was no surprise, it then ran off through the woods on the trail of the great wolf. Which was a very great surprise. The route that he had hoped would have saved Colm Ruadh a half a day’s journey appeared to now be likely to cost him more time than that, and maybe a good horse, as well.

Resigned to the loss of time, but not to the loss of his horse, Colm Ruadh set off on the trail of both horse and wolf. The path through the wood, which the animals had taken, was surprisingly well worn. As if it were traveled every day. Although that was not possible, for there was no one in all of the Kingdoms of Man who would live in a haunted place, such as the Darkling Wood, and animals almost never used the same track consistently enough to wear it down as heavily as this track appeared to be worn. Nonetheless, the track was there, it showed indications that both the wolf and his horse had followed it, and Colm Ruadh was too tired to do more than puzzle at the curiosity of the path as he followed it. As he followed it almost to the heart of the haunted forest, the Darkling Wood.

As he approached the heart of the wood, Colm Ruadh began to notice that the murmur of the breeze through the trees was starting to sound like a song. Not one that he knew, nor one that he had ever heard before, but it very definitely was a song. As he drew closer to the heart of the wood, he began to understand bits of the song. Not the words, for he had no way of knowing the language of the breeze or of the trees. Yet, somehow, he understood the song they were singing. Stunned by this realization, Colm stopped. Was he beginning to be enchanted by the forest? Was this the way the haunting began to change a mortal so that even his kin did not know him? Once it was started, could he stop the enchantment by closing his ears to the singing? Since he didn’t even know how he understood the song, could he stop the song from singing in his mind by simply closing his ears to it? And how could he answer any of these questions without knowing where the song came from? Colm Ruadh moved on down the path toward the heart of the Darkling Wood and the source of the song.

Almost at the heart of the great wood, Colm Ruadh began to smell the salt of the great loch around the end of which the Darkling Wood had grown. True, the people of Colm Ruadh’s Clan and of other clans fished and traveled on the surface of the great loch, but they did not approach the end that entered into the Darkling Wood with any less fear than they approached that wood on foot. Even the people of Colm Ruadh’s Clan who lived on the very shores of the great loch admitted that the dark end of the loch seemed to forbid and lure at the same time, that it was as haunted as the wood that surrounded it. It was to the very tip of the dark end of the loch, to this place of deepest enchantment that Colm Ruadh followed his horse, the horse who still followed the great, gray wolf.

It was here, with the smell of salt water combining with the sweet smell of evergreens and wild flowers, that Colm Ruadh found the singer of the song that had begun to haunt him. He stopped before he entered the glade which opened in front of him, in part because he did not want to be seen by the singer and in part because he was so astounded by yet another improbable sight. There in the clearing, side by side stood Colm Ruadh’s horse and the large gray wolf. Side by side and both drawn as close as they could get to the singer, who sat at the center of a ring of wild animals, predator and prey, creatures of air, of the land, and even of the water, who had been drawn to the heart of the Darkling Wood to hear the singer and her songs.

She was so beautiful. Not in a way that Colm Ruadh could describe later, but in a way that he knew within his soul and his mind. As he did not understand her words yet he understood her song, so he could not describe her appearance, yet he knew that he would see her clearly for the rest of his life as he saw her on that day. In that same way, he knew that she was Fey, a Dryad, a sprite of the wood. A creature of the wood, but not of this wood, one who sheltered in the wood and who gave shelter to the wood. A Dryad dwelt at the heart of the Darkling Wood. It was one of the Fey that haunted the wood. And Colm Ruadh was the only mortal who knew of it and had not been changed by that knowledge. Yet.

Colm Ruadh hid behind the trunk of a mighty Fir, one that had seen many generations of his ancestors pass through the Kingdoms of Man and into the World of Dreams. The song of the Dryad was beautiful and alluring. As with the many animals of the Forest, Colm found himself wanting to move closer to the singer, so as not to miss even a word of her song. The tale she told in her song was one of joy and light. A song of a place where the forest grew tall and spread across the land untouched by fire or destruction. A place that seemed so wonderful, while she sang of it, that Colm Ruadh felt his heart breaking with a longing for that lovely, distant land that he had never seen. Each time the longing grew in him to see her land or to approach closer to the singer, he would grip the ragged bark of the ancient tree until he could feel it stinging into the flesh of his palm and the longing would pass. Indeed, it seemed to him that even the trees of the Darkling Wood leaned closer to the singer at times. He knew that they were passing her song back and forth among them so that even those on the edge of the wood might share it, for had he not heard their singing himself?

How long he stood, listening to the songs of the Dryad, Colm Ruadh did not know. When the song finally finished, and the singer rose to go, she promised to return again the next day at the same time for another tale of the Kingdoms of the Fey. Then she turned into the wood across from Colm Ruadh’s hiding place and it seemed as if she vanished into a tree. Not as if she had walked into the trees and disappeared among them, but as if she had literally walked up to another mighty fir and simply stepped into it, become a part of it. Colm Ruadh waited quietly, absorbing the beauty of all he had heard and the significance of all he had seen. He waited for the many animals of the wood, water and air to return to their homes and lives. He waited, too, to be certain that the singer was well and truly gone before he stepped into sight. When the glade seemed almost empty, he stepped into it and walked over to the two creatures still remaining within the glade. His horse unharmed and now free of the enchantment of the Dryad, and the great gray wolf who sat quietly and watched him with interested and unfrightened yellow eyes. Careful not to startle his horse, Colm took its reins in his hands and spoke softly to it, touched its warm nose to be sure that it was well. It seemed to be, so he mounted.

As he began to turn the horse out of the glade and down to the edge of the loch, Colm noticed that the wolf still sat quietly and watched him. As if he felt that some courtesy was due the creature for having guided his horse and, therefore, himself to the glade that day, Colm Ruadh spoke to the wolf in the manner and language of men and thanked him for the “invitation”. The wolf seemed to smile at him, rose to his feet and trotted out of the Glen past the tree in which the Dryad seemed to have disappeared. Colm turned his horse toward the shore and trotted out of the glen and along the banks of the loch toward his home, and the world to which he belonged.

Had he looked back, he might have seen the Dryad step again from the tree. He might have seen her as she watched depart the mysterious mortal whom she had felt enter her wood as she had begun to gather her friends for the tale that day. The man she had felt meant no harm to her wood, and whom she felt might come to understand and love it as she did. The man she had sent the wolf to bring to the circle in the glade. The only mortal of the Kingdoms of Man whom she had ever allowed to enter her wood and leave it unscathed after having seen her face or heard her voice.

Colm Ruadh did not look back. He did, however, notice the seal swimming at the edge of the loch as he rode around it and toward the lights of his village and home. The seal was large for his kind, with brown fur and deep brown eyes. It had been one of the creatures of the water who had gathered around the Dryad as she sang of the land of her birth. He thought it must have been as deeply affected by the song of the Dryad as he himself had been, for it swam along beside him, following his path along the shore almost to the very lights of his home. Strange behavior for a seal, but perhaps not for one who had recently come under the spell of the Fey as this one had.


Colm Ruadh did not share the tale of his afternoon’s journey with his kin when he settled by his own fire that night. He told them of the negotiations, of the compromises which he had reached with their ancient enemies, and he spoke of the high regard in which those enemies had spoken of the courage of his warriors in battle. But he did not speak of the Dryad, her song or even of the gray wolf. He did not speak of them for fear his people would think he had been enchanted. For fear that they might try to destroy the wood or the Dryad who guarded it. Most of all, he did not tell them for fear that they might try to stop him from returning to the wood to hear another tale of the Fey the next day. For that was what Colm Ruadh planned to do.

The next day, as the sun approached the height of midday, Colm tucked a little food into his sporran, saddled his horse and rode it back to the edge of the wood. Just before he reached the borders of the wood, Colm stopped his horse, dismounted, and tied it in a shady spot by a small stream. He then walked into the wood and began to move quietly through the trees just out of sight of the shoreline. He had decided that he would get to the glen early, slip into a hiding place and wait for the Dryad to return and sing another of her tales. With very little trouble Colm Ruadh found the glade and settled in place, this time in the lower branches of the same tree he had hidden behind the day before. All he need do was wait, watch, and listen, then slip quietly away when the tale was done.

Colm sat there on the branch of the tree for only a short time before he felt a stirring in the mighty fir. As if it were waking from a long sleep and beginning to stretch its branches. He knew the Dryad must be close, but he was stunned to see her step from the trunk of the very tree in which he had settled. Fortunately, she did not look up into its branches. Colm Ruadh kept very still and quiet so as not to cause her to look upwards. The Dryad sat in the center of the glade as she had the day before and made no sound, at all. She did not call, or sing, or even speak, yet everywhere Colm Ruadh looked in the glade the creatures of the forest were coming to her. Settling about her as they had the day before. The first to arrive had been the gray wolf of the day before. He came to the Dryad, seemed to smile at her with his quiet eyes, then lay down beside her in the center of the glade. Creatures of the air settled at first on the upper branches of the trees, then moved down to the lower branches. Colm was concerned that those settling near him might cause the Dryad to look upwards to greet them, but she did not. In fact, she seemed to greet each and every creature as they came into the glade except those who settled around Colm Ruadh.

As the creatures of the loch began to leave the shelter of the water and move into the glade, she spoke even to them. The otters, the fishing birds, the seals all were greeted as they arrived. When the largest of the seals moved into the circle, the other creatures all gave way to it and even the Dryad rose and curtsied very low. Colm Ruadh could not understand the language in which she spoke, but knew the Seal must be very old or very powerful among its kind for the Dryad to grant it such special regard.

As he puzzled the question of the Dryad’s reaction to the seal, Colm heard the Dryad speak again, softly, and he stopped thinking and listened with all the other creatures to what she was saying. He listened to her song, to the words she spoke in a language he did not know, and understood her tale, as before, with his heart and not with his mind. Today the Dryad told not one, but two tales. The several songs she sang weaving together in his mind with the light and breeze and the colors of the forest, as if they were a part of the song, itself. When she had finished, the Dryad rose, thanked all for coming and promised another tale the next day. She turned toward the tree in which Colm Ruadh hid and walked into its heart. Again Colm felt the branch beneath him stretch and stir before it then settled back into a normal tree-like stillness.

The glade cleared, as it had the day before, except for the great gray wolf, who sat quietly looking at the tree in which Colm Ruadh was hiding. Not at the trunk where the Dryad had disappeared, but at the branches, indeed, the very branch upon which Colm Ruadh sat. Colm knew that the keen nose of the wolf had detected what the eyes of the Dryad had missed in the chaos of all the arrivals. So, when he was certain that the Dryad was truly gone, Colm climbed down from the tree and walked over to the gray wolf. Colm dropped to one knee in front of the wolf and reached out as if he would touch the creature. The wolf did not move. Colm stopped just short of touching the great wolf’s head and spoke to it as he had the day before.

“I do not understand your mistress, my friend.” Colm told the wolf. “I do not understand how she comes to be here, nor how she enters and leaves this place. I do understand that she is Fey, and that I am in danger when I come here. Yet I cannot find a place in my heart that would allow me to harm her or those who come here to hear her words. I don’t know how to make you understand this, but I will do neither you nor her any harm. I will do all within my power to keep others from doing you harm, as well. I and my people live in the village but 1hours journey from here around the east side of the loch. If you or she have need of me, bring me word and I will come. With all the warriors of my clan, if need be, to help or to protect you. This I promise you as Chieftain of my people.”

“We do not have need of your protection, Chieftain of the People of Lochside”, came the voice of the Dryad from behind Colm Ruadh. He spun about to face her, rising to his feet at the same time. For one should always face one’s doom on your feet, ready to fight before you fall. “We, the creatures of the wood, even the wood itself know our place within the Kingdoms of Man. We are subordinate to the laws of your world as are you. If we must fall, we will fall. Do not fear for us.”

“Lady of the Darkling Wood, I do fear for you. This is a hard world and not the gentle one into which you were born, the world of which you sing. As you say, I cannot change the course of life, but I can stand in defiance of that course and refuse to let it take me or those I cherish without resistance.” Colm responded quietly.

The Dryad laughed, it sounded like a breeze through an orchard, all the little leaves clapping with joy as it passed among them. “Would you defy the river as it runs in spate down through your hills? Would you defy the avalanche as it falls from the great peaks of the mountain onto the lower slopes? Would you defy the gale that capsizes your boat on the cold, bitter, heaving loch?”, she asked.

“Yes”, he replied. “Yes, because there is always hope that the flood may be stemmed, the avalanche may be turned, or that the boat may yet come to shore. Yes, because I will not allow my people to be swept away by any force of man or nature, without rising to their defense. It is the obligation of a Chieftain. It is his responsibility and his privilege. My life for theirs. My life for yours, if you ask it.”

Again the Dryad laughed at him, but this time it was a bit softer, as if the trees of the orchard were heavy with blossoms and the leaves clapped more gently to prevent those blossoms from being disturbed. “I have your life already within my hand, Colm Ruadh of the People of Lochside of the Kingdoms of Man. I do not need you to offer it to me, for I am Fey and you are in my haven. I may take your life or leave you with it as I wish.”

She raised her hand to silence the next words from Colm Ruadh. When she knew that he would be silent and allow her to finish, she held her hand up before him, palm upward and slightly cupped. “I have had your life within my hand since you entered my haven yesterday. Those of the Kingdoms of Man who enter my wood with evil intentions toward her or her creatures, do not come out again on the other side. Those who come curious to discover the secrets of her enchantment do not often leave without having discovered that enchantment to be quite dangerous. Those who enter only to pass through or to admire and rejoice in the peace of my haven are never harmed. You were such a one. But I had heard of the great warrior and peace maker, Colm Ruadh. I had not thought such a combination was possible in the Kingdoms of Man, so I had you brought here. I wished to see you.”

She sighed, as with regret, “But now you have come here again, and of your own choice. I am left with a quandary. Do I allow you to return to your people and hope that you will continue to remain silent about what you have seen in my haven, or do I assure that you will tell no one, by enchantment?” She tilted her head slightly to one side, as if looking at him and the problem he presented from another angle might help her to find an answer.

It was Colm Ruadh’s turn to laugh, for he had never heard that the Fey had any regard for the well being of mortal men. He had heard that a Sprite of the woods or of the water, would take a man’s heart, his mind, and his soul without ever a second thought. “I’m not sure how you come to know my name nor all that you seem to know of me, but I’m certain that I would like to at least know your name before you decide how to settle the difficulty I present. Is that possible, Mistress of the Darkling Wood? Will you tell me your name? It cannot make a difference to your decision. If you choose to trust me then trusting me with your name is not a greater risk than trusting me with your secret. If you choose to destroy my mind and all memory of you, then the memory of your name will be destroyed with it. So, how are you called, fair maid of the Fey?”

She stood quite still and looked at him. As still as if she had never moved before nor would she ever move again. Colm thought that he had offended her, so still she was. As he started to speak again, to apologize, for in fact, he had not wanted to hurt her, she laughed again.

“You are a great problem, indeed, and much more dangerous than I had heard, Chieftain of the People of Lochside. For I find I do not want to hurt you. The Kingdoms of Man have few enough who are worthy to lead them. It would not be wise or proper to deprive them of such a leader as you. Go then, but do not come here again thinking that I will not know. If you come again, speak to me as you enter my glade and I will join you. But be aware that I will know that you have entered my wood as soon as you have done so. Such is the binding between the wood and myself.”

“Go now. It grows late outside the wood, and your people will worry about their Chieftain, if you are gone too long. My friend here will guide you through the wood to your horse. I have set a watch upon him so that he would neither stray nor be harmed in your absence.” Colm realized there must have been a look of surprise on his face at that comment, for the Dryad smiled warmly. “Did you not realize how far my vision reaches Chieftain of the People of Lochside? Do not fear. I would not have you or yours harmed, either. Protection is an odd thing, it is not always the weak who need protection, nor always the strong who can give it.”, then she did laugh, a sweet rustling laugh that Colm Ruadh felt very much like joining. The Fey were, at best, unpredictable by all accounts he had ever heard. But, he thought, it might prove to be good to have a friend among the Fey, after all.

Colm reached out and took the Dryad’s hand in his. He looked into eyes that were as green as the forests of Faerie, and said,” My Lady of the Darkling Wood, I thank you for your generosity to one who sought to eavesdrop upon you. I thank you, too, for your invitation to join you again, here in your wood. As bold as it might seem in light of your generosity and patience with me, I would make one more request of you. Please stop calling me Chieftain of the People of Lochside. My name is Malcolm, I am called Colm by my Clan, my kin and my friends. Please do me the courtesy of addressing me as my friend.”

“Colm, Colm Ruadh. It is odd to say the name of a mortal man. It feels strange on my tongue, but I will try to remember.” The Dryad then stepped back into the trunk of the great fir Colm Ruadh had hidden in and disappeared. As Colm turned to leave the glade, the gray wolf at his side, he heard her voice, faintly, from the bows and branches above his head. “It is Rowan. My name is Rowan, Colm Ruadh.”

To Be Continued

To an Absent Love

The darkness of an empty room,
the silence of a friend,
the loneliness that lingers in
a night that will not end...
I long to hear the whisper of
your laugh upon the wind.

The ever dark'ning evergreens,
the blue sky, bruised with pain,
the inlet dimmed, in grim relief,
against the winter rain...
I long to hear the whisper of
your dreams in mine again.

The silence stretches ever on
and yet, I know you're near
for everytime I call to you
I see your face, so dear,
peering back through each raindrop.
I miss your light, your cheer.

To A Friend on her Divorce

The legacy of treachery,
a debt that's oft too steep to pay,
is that the one who bears the guilt
is seldom he who walked away.

As I faced the endless night of
cold betrayal and burning shame,
I told my self that you were right
and that I bore, alone, the blame.

I sought within myself to find
how I could thus have failed you so.
And, as I delved within, I was
amazed by what I came to know.

I found a woman, lost in love,
who was not seeking her way out,
who gave of passion and of self
with never hesitance or doubt.

I found a woman, true of heart,
with equal diligence allowed
for focus on her family
and for the work she had avowed.

I found a woman, fair and kind,
who strove in all to find some good
and giving unto all mankind
more of herself than many would.

And, though I found this woman frail
and often weary of her load,
I found she always fought herself
to keep her feet upon the road

of patience and of faithfulness.
And if she stumbled on her way
she struggled back onto the path.
She loyal to oaths did stay.

And so I came to face the truth,
there in the chill of morning's light.
I knew that my love had been true
and that I'd fought a valiant fight

to save a love that was well lost.
As life forsakes the dreary dead,
so love forsakes who tramples it
to scuttle to another bed.

I bear no guilt, the choice was yours.
I will not suffer one more day.
I take but joy. The legacy --
That debt I leave for you to pay.

To Walt Disney

You promised me a fairy tale,
a happily ever after.
Instead I've found, essentially,
an escalating disaster.

Maybe I missed a page somewhere
that held a truer ending?
Did Sleeping Beauty crave an apple
as Prince Charming grew unbending?

Did Cinderella ask her Prince
to please take back that old glass shoe
as the realization struck --
a palace means more work to do?

Did Rapunzel think back fondly
on tower, witch, and thicker hair?
I wonder if she climbed back up
and shaved her head right then and there.

Why did I buy into your tales,
your "happy ending" fantasy?
How could I ever have believed
a man brings more than misery?
And still I hope, with each new frog,
that there might be a Prince for me.

To a Friend Who Moved Away

As the miles grow between us,
as you go farther out of reach,
I will mark those miles with sorrow
by letting fall a tear for each.

Our lives must follow different paths
and only briefly did they cross.
The friendship that once brought such joy
now, also, brings the pain of loss.

Dear Friend, sweet Sister, must you go?
You tell me that you're needed there.
Just in case you haven't noticed...
You are also needed here.

Who will share the little pleasures,
those no one else can understand,
which bound our hearts and lives together
for a brief, but happy span.

I know distance is no measure
by which a friendship can be judged.
But distance robs me of your presence,
therefore, this move is much begrudged.

Laughter has always been my way
to deal with sorrow or with pain.
I will not let a bitter feeling,
our last few days together, stain.

But when you pull out of our street
and seek the eastward path again,
the sun will vanish in the clouds
and all my world will turn to rain.

And as the miles grow between us,
as you go farther out of reach,
I will mark those miles with sorrow
by letting fall a tear for each.

Loving Memory

Weeping, weary I lay my head
upon the pillow on my bed
and let my mind begin to drift
back to a time before the rift
of life and death pulled us apart.

I search the reaches of my mind,
pursuing treasures I might find.
The precious mem'ries from before
when life offered an open door
between your love and my poor heart.

Frantic, I roam the corridors
hoping, behind those many doors,
to find a way to say good bye
and finally dry these tears I cry.
They seem to flow unceasingly.

Then, softly in the quiet dark
I hear your voice and feel the spark
of laughter that it always brought
when you would share a funny thought
or, maybe, tease me lovingly.

And in my heart I feel you near,
no longer lonely or in fear
For, though I'll never see your face,
I know I've found that hidden place
where you will always wait for me.

Now, suddenly, I understand
the phrase I thought came light to hand
when carvers earned their daily bread
on stones that mark our final bed.
I'll always have you close to me,
you're held In Loving Memory.

A Newborn's Lullaby

"Welcome to our little, blue Ark",
each Animal did say.
We'll dance and sing, we'll purr and bark
to celebrate this day!

We'll keep you warm and safe and snug.
We'll each one bring a toy,
like daisy blooms, a lady bug,
a song all filled with joy.

And as you grow we'll teach you things
that every child should know.
Like words to songs a wee bird sings,
the dance of falling snow,

why little brooks all laugh with glee,
and why the bees all hum.
With each new day we'll help you see
just what makes life such fun!

But, now's the time for a lullaby
from Robin, Wren, and Lark.
Sleep well! Sweet Dreams!
No need to cry.
You're safe on Earth's blue Ark.

Lambie Pie Lullaby

The little lambs go every night
to find a place to sleep.
They look into sweet children's dreams
while they are fast asleep.
And when they find a happy dream
inside a little head
they snuggle close to that small child
inside that baby's bed.

For Bo Peep's fluffy charges still
believe in children's dreams,
and when they're snuggled close they can
peek in those dreams, it seems.
And sometimes they can even hop
inside those little dreams
and play all night with those small babes
beside sweet dreamland streams.

But when those little children wake
and raise their sleepy heads,
there are no sheep all snuggled close,
there's just a rumpled bed.
For only when the children dream
are lambs allowed in bed.
And when those children start to wake
the lambs rush home, instead.

So if you wake up in the morn
and find a rumpled sheet,
it's probably because the lambs
disturbed it with their feet.
But you will wake up happier
because your dreams were sweet,
and you won't mind if Lambie Pies
don't leave your bed sheets neat.

So every night before you sleep,
your prayers you ought to say.
Then close your eyes and count the sheep
who, in your dreams, will play.
And when you wake up from your sleep,
the lambs all gone away,
just smooth the wrinkles from the sheep
and have a happy day!

The Magic of Chldhood

As a child I saw wondrous things,
spectacular imaginings.
Even now the magic still sings
sweet little secret whisperings.

Dragons dancing in the air
tossing tresses of dragon hair,
whirling on mighty dragon wings,
singing songs about dragon things.

Unicorns playing tag in the trees,
hiding and seeking where they please.
Horns of gold and coats of pure white
sparkle like rainbows in star light.

The gryphons roar and gargoyles laugh.
Pixies swim in the old bird bath.
Leprechauns in all shades of green
flirting with fairies, seldom seen.

The world's full of magical sights,
reams of dreams of mythic delights.
Each one is more fun to explore
than the one you explored before.

Explore them all before you are old.
Dream an adventure, bright and bold.
Slide on the rainbow, ride the wind.
For when you're grown, it all may end.

Or, maybe you'll be lucky, too,
and the magic won't end for you.
I've found the magic never leaves
anyone who truly believes.

The Bear and the Bees

Once there was a big Grizzly bear,
his fur was soft and brown.
And every day he went to work
way down in Bear Downtown.

His job was simple, don't you see,
he climbed the tallest trees
and at the top he collected
the honey made by bees.

Now, though this bear was very good
at climbing up the trees,
he really wasn't very nice
when talking to the bees.

So one day all the bumble bees
said, "This has got to stop!"
And so they watched him climb a tree
and when he reached the top

the bees all flew out of the trees
and stung him on his nose.
And then they flew around the tree
and stung him on his toes.

Well, then that poor old Grizzly bear
decided to ask why...
"Why did you sting my nose and toes
and make me want to cry?"

And so the angry bumble bees
decided they should tell
the bear just what had made them mad
enough to sting him well.

You come to work here every day
and climb up all our trees.
And then you take our honey combs
and never ask us please.

Well, Mr Bear, he sat right down
and rubbed his tender nose.
Then, sheepishly, he bowed his head
and, looking at his toes,

he cleared his throat, and then he said,
"My apologies.
Although a bear is big and strong
and you're such tiny bees

I still should mind my manners and
say thank you and say please.
And, if you'll please forgive now,
I'll mind my Q's and P's."

So now that great big grizzly bear,
whenever he climbs trees,
is always nice to all the bees
and always asks them please.

And all the bees just love that bear.
In fact, he's their best friend.
They save him all their best honey
and ask him back again!

Sir Danny and the Dragon

Danny'd had a lousy day!
They said he was too small to play!
They said he had to go away!
So as he walked home, spirits saggin',
wouldn't you know, he's stopped by a Dragon!

"I'm a mean and nasty Dragon",
roared this beast, his tail just waggin'.
"Don't you think that I'm just braggin'.
When I say that I will scare you.
You had better believe it's true!"

Well, Danny knew what we all know,
if you aren't big you can't just grow.
But he could be a small hero!
So, Danny stood up straight and tall
and said he wasn't scared at all!

The Dragon roared and streaks of fire
reached the tree tops, then went higher!
That scaly monster said with ire,
"You act brave, but scared you'll be
when I climb up that big, tall tree!"

Now, I'll admit that's not real scary.
But, when something big and hairy
warns you to be scared... be wary!
Still, bold Danny saw no danger
in the threat made by this stranger.

"I live where trees are very tall.
Though, as you see I'm very small,
I climb those trees, I climb them all.
So you will never frighten me
by simply climbing up a tree."

"Well, I know what will frighten you",
that fearsome Dragon said, then blew
a ring of smoke, sparkly and blue.
"I'll sneak up stairs and make your bed!"
The blue smoke curled around his head.

Now we all know that any chore
can be a bother or a bore.
So our bold boy thought long before,
"I'm a good boy", he bravely said,
"and every day I make my bed."

The Dragon roared so loud the birds
in all the trees, flew off in herds!
Then he whispered these fiery words,
"I know something I'm sure will scare.
I'll wash your face and comb your hair!"
The Dragon sat back proud and smug
and gave himself a Dragon hug.
But our brave boy just gave a shrug.

"Mother loves me and she's not mean,
she combs my hair and keeps me clean."
"It's obvious you just don't see
that being scary's quite easy.
In fact, it's rather clear to me
that you're not really mean at all",
said our hero, brave and small.

"I think, perhaps, you ought to try
to be a friendly, scaly guy
and not to make small children cry!"
The Dragon gave a fearsome snort"
But Dragons aren't the friendly sort"
he said and sat down with a sigh.
"I know I'm not fierce, but I try.

For if I can't make children cry
the real fierce Dragons soon will snub
and I can't join their Dragon club!"
Then that great Dragon shed a tear
and more, it seemed, would soon appear
'til our young hero said with cheer,

"My Mom once told me what to do
when other kids make fun of you."
"My Mom, I've found, knows everything
from why stars shine to why birds sing.
And my Mom said, with anything,
if it is not just right for you
then you find something else to do!"

"If other Dragons don't think you fit
then you don't worry, not a whit!
You start your own club, bit by bit,
and only let in Dragons who
like being friendly, just like you!"

"And I will spend my time in play
with kids who don't just always say,
"You're much too small, so go away!"
I think this plan's a real good one
for little boy or big Dragon!"

So, as the day drew to it's end
Dragon asked Danny to be his friend
and promised never to scare again
any more little boys or girls.
Well, maybe sometimes little girls.

Winter Ducks

Gray on gray beneath a drab sky.
The small flotilla bobbing by,
rustled by wake, and wind, and tide,
readies to sail. Then takes to the sky.

Childhood Heroes

The lonely path they chose to tread
left them bloodied, torn, and dead.
A path that often brought disdain
from those for whom they bore such pain.

History names them true and brave
and yet no garland marks their grave.
Not even those for whom they fell
remarked the place their bones now dwell.

In silent and uncaring earth
they find no measure of their worth
to those of us who knew them not,
but know the dream for which they fought.

They lived and fell in freedom's name.
One died a king and one in shame,
falsely bearing a villain's brand,
while buying hope for their native land.

My love for Freedom's way of life,
I owe to their long years of strife
to guaranty their heirs the right
to live and grow in freedom's light.

It matters not they fought and fell.
Their lives and deaths both serve us well.
For they stand testament and proof
to the enduring human truth
that Freedom is worth any cost.
Though in their fight their lives were lost,
their legends live and still they grow
and mark the path our lives should know.

The Stars

Flickering flakes of frigid light
float across the frozen night.
Flecks of foam on a cold, black sea
tossed by the winds of eternity.

White hot eyes to heaven's soul
burning night's abundant coal
to cinders by each new day's birth.
Throwing no heat back on earth.

Perspective points on plains of night.
Motionless, in rapid flight
from dark'ning rim to rising glow.
Never wavering as they go.

Poet's muse, Lovers' elation,
Scientific destination,
Expanding gas ball, speed of light...
The greatest mystery of night.

Aging

The dreams of youth have passed me by,
the wisdom of age eludes me.
I cannot, now, with eagles fly,
that much exercise excludes me.
I've found my energy ebbs low
before I've even dressed to go.

There was a time, though now long gone,
when strength was not so quick to flight.
When I was first to start the song,
I went not gentle into night.
Now, as the evening calls to me
my bed is where I long to be.

The aging process takes its toll
on cities grand and castles bold.
Empires fade as the ages roll,
mem'ries weaken, then grow cold.
But matters seem to be astray
now that it's my hair turning gray!

Dear friend, don't misconstrue these lines.
I don't mean to sound dejected.
I haven't lost my grand designs.
I'm not really disaffected.
I'm just amazed how rapidly
the aging process worked on me.

The Snowstorm

I watch the dancers whirling by,
watch their shining faces.
The silver lace at cuff and hem,
swirling through the paces.

I watch them settle at the end.
Coolly take their places.
Blending, each into the other
leaving now no traces
of the flurry that has brought them
to their settled places.

Blending, each into the other
to settle in the night.
Listen as the music whispers,
faces reflecting light.

Again, the wind touches my hair,
their music surging bright.
Fresh dancers flash into the air,
in lace and silver flight.
I watch as, on and on, the dance
continues through the night.

Mt Rainier

Photo by Ruben Beitia
View of Mt Rainier & the remains of Spirit Lake from the summit of Mt St Helens: devastaion caused by the eruption in 1980

Green the firs, their darkened tresses
brush the green of soft blown grasses.
Rich, the green of holly bushes,
bright red berries, prickled touches.
Bright and pale, the mossy alder.
Green meets blue at sky and water.

Ringed with green, the mountain towers.
Lord of earth's most fearsome powers.
Clothed in ice, a fiery chorus
sleeps beneath that rich, green forest.

Homesick

In the shadow of the Mountain
is where I've made my home.
Amid green and fertile valleys
that stretch from peak to foam.
They always draw me back again,
how ever far I roam.
There, on the shores of Puget Sound,
I'll always be at home.

In the shadow of the Mountain
live those whom I love best.
Those who cause my heart to sing and
my weary soul to rest.
Whate'er the reason I must go,
their absence leaves me pressed
to get back to the Cascade range
and hold those I love best.

In the shadow of the Mountain
is where I long to be.
Too many Rainier sunrises
have passed there without me.
But, as Olympus starts to flame
and Sol slides to the sea
in the shadow of the Mountain
I, once again, will be.

Wild Geese

Wild geese, necks stretched in morning flight,
dark forms against a cold, gray sky,
herald the fresh rebirth of spring
as, northward, on their course they fly.

There, in the chill of Spring's first dawn,
I watched them race the morning wind.
I felt my heart take flight with them
away from earth's relentless spin.

When they had traveled out of sight
I felt my heart return to me.
Lighter than it was last night
for having soared, one moment, free

Sunrise on Mt Rainier

Fiery Breath across the sky.
The clouds, in tortured frenzy, blaze
above the mountain's chilly face,
above the morning's misty haze.

Bright heat reflects the mountain's core
and burns the darkness into light.
Erupting from earth's darkened rim,
the sun ascends the mountain's height.

Twilight

As twilight drifts across the Sound
the moon and stars above,
my thoughts are ever homeward bound
to haven, hearth, and love.

Memories of Summer

As the leaves of autumn wither
the winds of winter blow.
As summer sun and autumn rain
become the winter snow,
Memories of the softer days
keep running through my mind.
Days of family and of laughter,
the fragrant summertime.

My Church

Shining silver, the river flows.
Tall and straight, the evergreen grows.
Life flows seaward, fresh into salt.
The forest robes the mountain's fault.
Thus God's great work unfolds as we,
in awe, observe the mystery.

Seek not for God in spires tall
or hallowed, old cathedral hall
if, in your heart, you know he dwells
in woodland hills and mountain dells.
For, though He is omnipresent,
He also knows our heart's intent.

Thus when I need to hear His voice
I leave behind the choral noise
and seek the hush of forest dreams,
the water songs of mountain streams.
And on the rush of beating wing
I hear the songs the Angels sing.

The Blossoms

The breezes pass with gentle tread.
The blossoms bend and blow.
The sun may warm or rain may spill,
but still the blossoms grow.

At times the weeds may strive to choke,
and pull the blossoms down.
Yet ever on strong limbs they climb,
the rich, warm earth to crown.

The crumble of last season's growth
provides the fertile loam,
from which derives the blossoms' strength,
in which they've made their home.

Their roots delved deep within this soil.
Thus, when the storm winds passed,
though they were troubled by the gales,
those strong, deep roots held fast.

The blossoms offer their sweet gift,
which through the garden spreads.
It spills from petals gently tossed
and fills the nearby beds.

And as the gentle breezes blow,
the blossoms, stirring as they go,
lift ruffled leaves to briefly show
that in their shade new blossoms grow

The Company of Women

Men peak my curiosity,
disturb my virtuosity,
inspire flights of fantasy
and drive me to insanity.
They’re delightful and diverting
and, too often, disconcerting.
They are so many things but then,
while I would never give up men,
the company of women delights me.

I love to hear their laughter ring.
To me their voices seem to sing.
I love the way each new day brings
a plethora of precious things
to share with sisters of the soul.
So many hearts that make a whole.
Though life would be a dull, drab place
without the sight of a male face,
the company of women delights me.

The sorrows that no man can know,
the places they can never go
all bind us closer to each other,
Sister, Daughter, Aunt and Mother.
The burdens carried every day,
the dreams we won’t let die away,
the prayers for those who fill our world.
Matron, woman or little girl,
the company of women delights me.

So often women have no choice,
the world won’t heed a single voice.
but if we all stand and rejoice
perhaps, in some small way the earth
will stop and take note of their worth,
those who gave all life its birth.
The company of Women delights me.

The Unicorn

She wandered nightly on the strand,
where the ocean kisses the land,
chasing the waves 'cross moonlit sand.
Sometimes returning with the morn.
Twas there she met the Unicorn.

She was a child, though truly grown,
who, only love and trust had known.
As life, with treachery is sown,
I feared her ways would lead to scorn.
I had no thought of Unicorn.

And thus I questioned her one dawn,
as, home at last, she crossed the lawn.
Her smile was light and sweetly drawn.
She swore her dress had thus been torn
while racing with the Unicorn.

Being worldly, in my own right,
I viewed her tale in skeptic's light
and doubted not she'd passed the night
with one who'd leave her soon forlorn.
I'd never seen a Unicorn.

My anger shattered her sweet calm.
She wept, face hidden in her palm
and for her tears I found no balm.
It stabbed her like a wicked thorn
that I could doubt the Unicorn.

But I'd forgot what legends told
of mythic Unicorns of old
and maidens pure as finest gold.
Of common innocence are born
both maidens and the Unicorn.

And one may draw the other near
for moments joyous or sincere
while those nearby mayn't see or heart
the gentle touch on golden horn
as maiden greets the Unicorn.

So late that night she, quiet, fled.
Leaving behind her childhood bed,
she sought the sandy beach instead.
I followed, to prove her forsworn
when she met man, not Unicorn.

My heart felt dark and cold as night
'neath the moon's ethereal light,
as I looked o'er the last dune's height.
There in a glow as bright as morn
stood the girl with a Unicorn.

I saw her stroke the creature's head.
I could not hear the words she said,
but I felt my heart stopping dead
as into starlight she was born
astride the racing Unicorn.

I struggled 'cross the sandy beach
frantic, desperate, them to reach.
Calling, crying, I did beseech
not to be left, of all joy, shorn
by losing girl and Unicorn.

I reached the place where last they trod.
Found cloven hoof prints, never shod,
where passed two creatures, blessed by God,
the gentle child, whom I had born,
and living myth, the Unicorn.

Through my deep sorrow I have learned
a truth, that in my heart has burned.
Her innocence had my guilt spurned.
Thus, from my life, has hers been torn
to bless that of the Unicorn.

Now I walk nightly on the strand
where the cold oceans brush the land
hoping my love will draw again
to me the child that I still morn
and with her, too, the Unicorn.

Petroglyphs

I see the relics left behind
by those from a forgotten time.
Gifts from a dark and primal past,
linger, though they're fading fast.
The legends and the stories told
by dreamers from the days of old
engraved in memories of stone,
outlasting breath, out living bone,
which stand in testament to all
who hear new generations call.

What will we leave for those who come?
What legacies have we begun?
Will children of those distant years
still comprehend the joys and fears
which shaped our lives on this small earth
in centuries before their birth?
What little treasures, left behind,
will stir the curious of mind
to question what has gone before
and what the future holds in store?

What of songs and deeds and truth
will have survived times grueling proof
to tell our heirs of we who've passed
and of the dreams we hoped would last?
How will they, then, perceive us now?
Will they look back and question how
we could have been so blind, so wrong
to stop this deed or still that song?
Or will they thank us with full heart
for richer lives, for purer art?

Will they, when sifting through the dust,
uncovering but bones and rust,
not understand the soul, the fire,
the hope, the dream, burning desire
to step beyond our daily bond.
The thirst for knowledge well beyond
the paltry quota now our fare.
Or, knowing, will they even dare
remember us who've passed the torch
or dare pass it to the next watch.

Song of the Silkie

The Song of the Silkie

She hadn't really believed him when he’d told her that she'd see him again, but she was beginning to change her mind on that point. A Silkie, a creature straight out of myth and folklore that most people believed never existed and here she was wondering if she’d see one again. Yet, as she stood at her bedroom window listening to the secret whispers of the cold, dark water muffled in a soft gray morning mist, she had to admit to herself that it was beginning to seem like a real possibility. She wasn’t certain whether seeing him again was a good thing or a bad thing, but she knew that she would enjoy it either way.

The dreams he had left with her had not faded, as she had feared they would. In fact, they had solidified into very real memories. Sometimes a smell or a sound would trigger a memory and it would take her a moment or two to realize that it was his memory, not hers. Lately those memories were becoming more frequent and more vivid. They had even begun to invade her dreams now and again and, as she had there on the beach at Cape Alava, she would find herself flying beneath the water’s surface or walking the cool grasses of a time she had never seen. He had told her he would not trouble her dreams again and yet, there was no doubt that his memories were the inspiration for some of her most interesting dreams.

Last night’s dream had been the most intense by far. It had seemed to her that she was dancing on a bridge of reflected moonlight that crossed the inlet from the eastern shore, where the moon rose, to the western shore where her home was nestled on the bank; dancing with feet so light that they never actually touched the surface of the water. As she had danced lightly across the reflected light she had begun to realize that the music that stirred her, that directed her dancing, was the song of the stars, a drifting, sparkling chorus in the air around her. Then, rising from the dark water and through the glow of the moonlight bridge, a dark form had stepped toward her, had come to join her in the dance. He seemed to have no face that she could see, only shadows obscured slightly by soft dark hair. She wasn’t afraid of him, though. How could she, a creature of the air and light enough to dance on reflected moonlight, be afraid of any creature from the solid world?

As he moved with her in the dance she felt, felt rather than heard, the rhythm of the music change. It grew faster, less restrained, as if twice the number of dancers meant that the music must whirl at twice the pace. She hadn’t felt dizzy so much as giddy, exhilarated. Whether it was from the faster pace of the dance or the closeness of the strange, faceless man she hadn’t known. She also hadn’t cared. Even when she had felt her feet slipping through the moonlight bridge and into the cold water, she felt only elation and anticipation.

As she slipped back into his world with him, every step of the dance taking her just a bit deeper into his world, she could hear the tone of the music changing, changing from songs of starlight into the rushing whispers of water running in deep, swift currents. With each whirling step the music, his music, was growing in her ears until, at last, it had become an aquatic symphony of such intensity that she had begun to feel breathless. Oddly, however, and in complete contrast to her sense of excited anticipation, she had also begun to feel a bit chilled, especially those parts of her already under the water.

The chill had, ultimately, startled her into wakefulness and she had found that her legs were poking halfway out from under the covers. She assumed that was the reason she had begun to feel chilled and numbed in her dream, but the dream had been so intense, so real, that she wasn’t certain of that “rational explanation” even now.

Sighing, she turned from the window. It wasn’t really fair to accuse him of disrupting her dreams, when it was her own unrestrained imagination that seemed to carry her off now and then. Granted, it was to his memories, or variations on them, that her imagination tended to turn, but that was probably only because his memories were so much more exciting to her, so much more intriguing than her own memories were. After all, she’d lived with her memories all her life and with his for only a few months now.

As she headed out the door to work, she tried to put the dream and any lingering questions regarding his whereabouts aside. She had a busy day at the office today and it was just the first day of what was shaping up to be a long, hard week. She was fairly certain she’d have more than one “Monday” this week, but at the end of it would be the Memorial Day weekend and a three-day break.

It’s odd how our expectations seem to define our perceptions. Looking back on the day, it had fully lived up to her expectations. It had been harried and frenetic, but also quite productive. Had she told herself, going into the day, that it was going to be exciting instead of hard, she might have come out of it a bit less rattled. As it was, she came home feeling a bit like the rat race track was located right in the center of her desk and she’d spent all day sweeping up droppings. The thoughts she’d had no time to linger over during the wild pace of the day, slipped clandestinely back into her mind as she settled onto the freeway for the routine 45 minute drive back to the house and the haven it offered her weary mind.

Formlessly, the evening drifted into the night. The occasional whopping of a seal subduing its dinner, stunning a large fish by slapping it onto the surface of the water, was the only sound that intruded on the ripple of dusk lapping at the edges of the night. Even the loons and the gulls seemed to have settled into a peaceful lull that night. It was always amazing to her how, only 15 minutes from downtown Olympia, there could be such absolute peace in the night.

In contrast to what she had hoped, her dreams that night were less exotic. She seemed to be always just at the edge of hearing of a distant party. She caught hints of light, tinkling music, and laughter. Maybe that was dancing she heard or maybe just the breezes ruffling the grasses on the bank above the water. Always the moonlight shown just ahead of her, but never right where she stood. She didn’t actually spend the night chasing her dream as much as she spent it realizing that she was missing the bulk of the dream, but not quite knowing how to find it.

When she woke the next morning she closed her eyes and told herself it was just the dream still.
That light beginning to fill the room was just the moonlight on a distant party. She kept telling herself that as she struggled downstairs and made a cup of tea. She even tried to tell herself that she had caught up with the party at long last when she stepped onto the back deck and glanced down at the five distinct circles of mushrooms that seemed to have sprung up in the back yard overnight. Only in a dream would she find five Faerie Circles in her own back yard. Sure, her practical parents, both master gardeners, would simply look at the yard and call it a wet spring in western Washington, but she knew differently. She’d seen the Faeries dancing in those same sorts of rings on hundreds of occasions. The different Kingdoms of the Fey always allowed each other to join their celebrations and she’d been to more Faerie dances than she could remember over her long lifetime.

It was a good thing she had set her teacup down on the deck railing as she had noticed the mushroom rings. Otherwise she might have dropped it when she realized that his memories had just surfaced as her own again. It was most disconcerting because she really had seen, in his memories, so many of these same rings… she actually could visualize the steps of the dance…
What were the Faeries doing dancing in her yard all night? A missing Silkie, hovering at the back of her mind, was bad enough, but now the place was teeming with Faeries! She started to chuckle a bit. You let one Silkie into the neighborhood and the next thing you know….
Oh yes, he was coming back very soon. She could feel it more certainly everyday, every night to be more exact. But the chuckle turned into a pensive frown as she walked back into the house to get a fresh cup of tea and a shower. Did she really want her life to change beyond her control, as it would if she let the Fey become a presence in it? Did it matter what she wanted? The Fey in ancient legends were never overly concerned with the wants or cares of the mortals they impacted. The legends often presented conflicting results from exposure to the Fey, some people waking a hundred years after they had gone to sleep while others returned home ancient after a lifetime with the Fey to find that only a day or an hour had passed in their world. Men left wandering aimlessly through the hollow hills, minds and souls lost forever, after spending a night with a Naiad. Women with dark haired, mysterious children fathered by a Silkie who came and left in a night. The stories were varied, the consequences of interaction with the Fey as varied, but always, always bad for the hapless mortal caught in the wake of such an encounter. For the first time anxiety entered into her thoughts of a reunion with her friend from the beach at Cape Alava. Oddly enough, the rest of the week passed with little incident. No new reminders of the mysterious “Seal Man” she had met three months ago on the coast, no overt indicators of the “other world” intruding into hers. Even work seemed to settle down to a steady, fluid hum. Telling herself that she had been letting her imagination run rampant with her good sense, she slammed headlong into the three-day weekend when she hit the inevitable two and a half hour traffic jam coming back from SeaTac Airport. She had left work early to drop her parents off for a quick run south to visit the grandkids in the San Francisco Bay area when the drive back to Olympia had turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. She encountered not one, but three different jam-ups. One was related to a four car, one semi accident and the others were simply related to the merging of too many people towing too many travel trailers onto one three lane freeway at the same time. By the time she had gotten into the driveway she wanted nothing more than to sit on the back deck, listen to the breeze whistle through the now hollow space between her ears and to sip an exotic drink who’s name was reminiscent of a warm sandy beach populated by half naked, sun baked people who spent all day smiling and singing gentle songs. Instead, she decided to pull the lawn tractor out and get at least some of the 5 acres, on which she lived, mowed while there was sunshine in which to do it. Three hours later the pasture and the orchard were neatly and tidily mowed, leaving only the lawns immediately surrounding the house to finish tomorrow and then she could take the rest of the weekend off. She backed the lawn tractor into the garage and, as she turned off the engine, she heard a sudden whirring complemented by a steady knocking sound. Instinctively she turned to the tall window on the far end of the garage and spotted the culprit. It was a rite of spring, a regular occurrence every year at this time of year, and she knew how to handle it. A small hummingbird had come into the garage through one of the open bay doors and had gotten turned around. It was trying to exit through the large window, a solid pane of glass, which it seemed to notice to the exclusion of the four open garage bay doors. Sighing, half from exhaustion and too much sun and half from knowing that she would have to scale the more than waist high, overly crowded work bench, capture the frantic creature without hurting it’s fragile wings, then climb down again with no hands and no help before she could free the tiny thing, she stepped over to the bench and began to clamber onto it.

Hummingbirds don’t typically like to be grabbed and held by humans, even when frantic and exhausted. So it took her a few minutes to actually pin the tiny creature into a corner with both hands and even more time to get it safely secured in one hand so that she could have the other hand free to aid her in the climb back down off the high bench. As she turned from the window she was pulling off the bits of spider webbing that clung to her hand and to the tiny bird in it, so, at first, she didn’t notice the dark haired, fully naked man standing in the garage bay door watching her. When she did look up, her small shriek was followed quickly by recognition and then the anger of embarrassment.

“Jeez Louise”, she snapped. “You scared the fire out of me!! What are you doing here?” “You needed help”, he responded, simply. “Well I didn’t need help wetting my pants in fright”, she retorted acidly. “And get inside the door before someone else sees you! Where’s your skin?” With one eyebrow quirked in a look that implied that she knew the answer to that question if she would just think about it, he calmly answered her request and not her question. “No one will notice me if I don’t wish them to do so.” Nevertheless, he stepped into the garage and up to the workbench where she now crouched preparatory to jumping down. Reaching up, he touched her hand and the terrified creature secured in it stopped bobbing its head from side to side in a frantic effort to free its wings. The small hummingbird sat still, quiescent, in her hand. Feeling somewhat calmed herself by his touch, she asked the man, “Will you take him please, so I can get down”. As she settled the bird into the palm of his hand and drew hers back, the Silkie didn’t close his hand around it as she had expected. But the hummingbird didn’t fly frantically back into the window, as it would have if she had opened her hand that way. It sat quietly on the man’s hand and just looked at him, as if waiting for his instructions. With both hands now free, she was able to settle into a seated position and slide off the bench. When she was back on the ground she reached over as if to pet the tiny creature with one finger, but stopped short of actually touching it. “It’s alright”, the Silkie told her. He needs to rest and find some nourishment, but he will be okay if you touch him. She stroked the small head gently and felt it bob slightly under her finger, but nothing more. Suddenly realizing what she had just been told she said, “There’s a honeysuckle vine on the back deck. That ought to give him plenty of nectar.” Without comment, the Silkie started for the back deck. Realizing that he was still completely naked, she whooped, “Wait!! Wait, just wait a minute.” She ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. Grabbing a pair of flannel shorts and a T-shirt from a drawer, she shot back down the stairs and into the garage. “Please put these on”, she said, holding them out to him. Again, she got “that” look. Blushing at her own thoughtlessness, she said, “Okay, pick up your foot then.” As she pulled the shorts up around his waist she closed her eyes to be sure she didn’t see anything more closely than she already had. When she stood up with the shirt still in her hand, she could tell he was laughing at her, but she just ignored him and stalked out of the garage and toward the honeysuckle vine. When they reached the Honeysuckle vines, the Silkie lifted his palm slightly and the small bird flew directly to the sweet blossoms and began to feed. The two rescuers stepped back out of the way and left him to accomplish the rest of his recovery on his own. As they stepped away from the Honeysuckle and it’s now happy harvester he turned to her and pulled the T-shirt from her hands, then pulled it over his head. As his head re-appeared from the top of the T-shirt he gave her a wicked grin and said, “Are you more comfortable now?” She laughed and threw her arms around the man’s neck and hugged him tightly. He hesitated a moment, but then she felt his arms move around her tightly and the soft breath of his laugh tickled her neck a bit. She pulled back out of the hug and said, “Where have you been? How are you doing? What’s going on under the water out there! I knew you were coming!! Hey, I thought you said you’d stay out of my dreams, but I sure seem to be dreaming a lot about your world!” Chuckling, he gently touched her mouth with his hand to still the flood of questions and commentary. Speaking so softly that she almost had to lean closer to hear him, he didn’t even try to answer all of her questions. “I have not been touching your dreams, you have been coming into mine. Sometimes I hear your thoughts even when I’m awake. I could sense you near to me the night of the celebrations.” He glanced at the remains of the mushroom rings, and said, “I tried to keep them from entering your dreams, but they seemed to know our thoughts were touching. I’m sorry if it disturbed your sleep.” “Not at all,” she responded. “That dream didn’t “disturb” me as much as some others did.” Blushing, she glanced back at the Honeysuckle as if checking on the small bird, which was no longer there. A soft smile slipped onto his face and he touched her hair gently. “I enjoyed the dance, too. What took you from me? You would have loved dancing within the water’s embrace.” “I - I- I got cold,” she stammered, confused by the light touch on her hair. “I had kicked off my covers and my feet and legs were freezing,” she said, recovering her composure. “Please don’t do that,” she asked him as she brought his hand back out of her hair, “ it distracts me.” “It’s supposed to,” he said. Scrambling for a way to keep him at arm’s length and change the subject, she fell back on her Texas upbringing. “Oh my gosh,” she exclaimed, heading up the stairs to the deck, “I’ve kept you standing out here in the backyard. Would you like to come inside and have a drink or something to eat? I was just getting ready to make some dinner.” She caught herself up short and turned to look at him. “What can you eat? I may have some salmon in the freezer, but I’m not sure if it’s still good.” Laughing at her again, he assured her that he could eat anything she could eat, but that he wasn’t hungry. He had come to visit her and to help her with the hummingbird. “But there wasn’t time,” she stammered, confused. “From the time I saw him there until you showed up at the door there wasn’t time to get out of your skin and hide it and then get up to the garage.” And,” she finished defiantly, “there is no way you could have known that I needed help with that bird.” “I knew,” he replied. “And you think of time as flowing at only one speed.” “Ah, ye-ah…., “ she cattily retorted. There was no way she was going to buy into alternate time lines with this guy. Star Trek be damned, this was the real world. Okay… A real world peopled by myths and legends, sure, but still the real world and there were no alternate time lines!!! Sensing her defiance, he turned to face the inlet, now visible to them again as they had reached the top of the deck stairs. Following his action instinctively, she turned too. He stood looking at the soft ripple of the water for a moment. When he spoke it was as if the sound of his voice lapped gently at the edge of her thoughts, soothing the defiance. “Do you see the ripples on the surface of the inlet,” he asked her. “Yes,” she responded. “They move gently, almost imperceptibly. But, below those slow ripples are many currents. They are swift in the center of the inlet and much slower here in the cove. All of those different currents are unapparent to you, here, on the surface.” He paused and stood looking at the water. Could he see the different currents moving beneath the surface from here, she wondered? “Time is much like that. Your people can only see the surface but there are many speeds of time below the slow surface ripples.” Again, he reached up to touch her hair and stopped short of contact. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not to distract you. It’s just an old habit.” A memory or two of his flashed into her mind at that comment. She must have blushed at them because he said, “I recall you once told me you only wanted to talk… So I have come to talk. I owe you that... and more.” She remembered telling him that. This time it was her memory. Talking to the large Seal in the cove here in back of the house, calling it a Silkie and telling it she would cry seven tears into the inlet to make it come to her… that she only wanted to talk to it. She reminded herself again to be careful what she wished for in the future. Suggesting that he remain on the deck while she went inside and made a quick pitcher of lemonade, she turned into the house cursing softly under her breath. Whether because he was only going to talk to her or because she was still shaken by the effect he’d already had with no more than a touch on her hand or her hair, she didn’t know for sure. It had never really occurred to her that he might consider anything more than just friendship, but the last thing she needed was a Silkie playing mind games with her. She knew, without a doubt, which of them would win that one. She stopped suddenly and thought to herself, “I wonder if that’s how they do it? Do they have such a power over our minds because we let them, because we think they do?” As she mixed up the instant lemonade, she mulled through it a bit, but decided it didn’t matter. She did want to talk to him and she definitely wasn’t prepared for anything else. So if he was willing to let it go at a friendly chat, she had no objection and was grateful for the opportunity to spend some time with a legend.
She walked back out to the deck rail where he was standing looking down on the Faerie circles below them. She remembered what he’d said earlier and asked as she handed him his lemonade, “What was the celebration for?”

"A new child was born to my people," he said. There are so few now, the newborns. So few since we avoid taking mates from your people. The match of our blood to the mother's is stronger among your kind, the connection is closer than it is with the seals. But the seals don't mind and they have never tried to destroy us, to drive us from their world for being what we are as your kind has done. Still, there are fewer Silkies born and more seals. There are so few now that a new birth is a cause for celebration."

"Wait a minute", she jumped in, "Are you telling me you just had a baby or are you telling me there's more than one Silkie in our inlet?"

With that slightly wicked grin he seemed to manage so perfectly, he responded, "Yes. I have a new "daughter" and so there are two Silkies in the inlet," he clarified, "for now."

"What do you mean "for now", "she asked him while digging through the Silkie memories stored in her mind for the answer.

"She will go to the Land of Song soon," he answered.

Bingo!! The appropriate memories had clicked into place in her mind at that moment. She(he) remembered sending off the young ones on several occasions to be raised in her(his) own world. It happened sooner with the children of the seals than with those of humans. The human children needed longer with their mother to be able to survive the journey than did those children born of seal mothers. Sooner or later, though, they all went to be raised in the Land of Song. She(he) remembered the weeping of the human mothers as they stood on shore and watched their beloved children leaving them forever. Some, she(he) recalled, had even tried to hide the children or to take them far from the ocean, thinking that would protect them from the inevitable. How little humans understood the power of the Fey to draw one another to themselves. How little humans understood the power of the Fey… period!

Shaking her head, in part at the foolishness of human mothers and partly to clear his memories from her mind and let her own thoughts return to it, she realized she had been quite still for long enough that he was watching her closely.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I was just... thinking about what you had said."

The look of gentle concern on his face surprised her. He reached toward her again, but this time he stroked her temple softly as he said, "I can take them from you again, if they trouble you."

Backing away in horror at the suggestion, but with a deep appreciation for the obvious concern that had triggered it, a concern not supposed to exist in his kind for her kind, "Don't you DARE", she exclaimed. She made herself grin at him, as wickedly as she could manage at that moment, and told him, "I think it may be useful, some day, to know how a Silkie sees the world! I think I'll keep them for now, thank you very much! It just takes me a minute or two to shuffle through them. They are not as familiar to me yet as they are to you, but they are really very interesting!"

"Really", he responded with a curious look on his face that she couldn’t quite understand. "I also find yours to be quite… enlightening." The pause that followed that comment mirrored her silence of a few moments before and gave her a moment of relative privacy in which to absorb the shock of realizing that, as she had acquired some of his memories, he had acquired some of hers. That brief moment of realization might have turned into a huge moment of panic had she not noticed the look of concentration on his face that seemed to be a reflection the confusion she felt when trying to sort his memories through in her mind.

"You know," she remarked with a chuckle, "It's really very rude to shuffle through someone else's memories while you're standing right in front of them… "

He chuckled, too.

"Come on, sit down on the swing with me and tell me all about your Daughter", she said. "Is she beautiful? DUH! All babies are beautiful! Will I get to meet her?"

They settled on the porch swing and she noticed a bit of a wild expression in his eyes. He was obviously still absorbing the human reaction to babies from her memories while trying to remember who he was and address her questions.

The conversation spun softly around children for a while and then began to shift as gently as the evening breeze from one harmless topic to another. The pattern of conversation weaving a blanket of exploration, discovery and laughter over the two very different creatures who sat together on the swing while the world nodded quietly off to sleep around them. As the small eyes of the night began to peer over her shoulder, she realized two things. One, his fingers were playing gently in her hair as he talked yet she could still think, in fact, had only superficially noticed the gentle touch for some time now and, two, the small hummingbird they had saved earlier had come to nestle in the crook of the leg she had curled up under her on the swing. That leg had now fallen asleep and the tingling was probably what had called her back to herself. She had not been lost in a trance of the Silkie's creation, but the trance common to any new friendship as it takes those first tentative steps from mere acquaintance into the possibility of trust.

She touched the tiny creature sleeping on her numb leg and it stirred softly. Then, as if realizing that it was being addressed, it swiveled its head around and looked across its folded wings at her.

"Everything from my bottom down is numb, little one. Would you mind if I moved and gave it a chance to wake up again", she asked the still somnolent hummer.

When it didn't move, the Silkie gently slid his hand under its tiny body and lifted it from her leg. She then slid around and put both feet under her and stood up, slowly. The tingling was actually quite painful for a moment, but she forgot the pain as she heard a whirring, almost like the
buzzing of a giant fly, at her left ear. The little hummer had decided that she was more comfortable than the Silkie and had come to ask permission to nestle on her shoulder under her ear. Well, maybe it wasn't really seeking permission, it just settled there quite as if it had every right to be there.

She looked up at the sky glittering with the pictures of ancient legends and fierce creatures, the constellations that she had known for her whole life, and wondered why they seemed so much brighter tonight than they usually did. She felt the man move to stand beside her at the railing of the deck. She felt the hunger in him, the need to return to the salt water that rustled now beneath the ruff of grass that fringed the bank of the inlet. As if in answer to the sorrow of his impending departure, a poem she had memorized as a child came, unbidden, into her mind.

"The night will never stay," she whispered. "The night will still go by, though with a million stars you pin it to the sky. Though you bind it with the blowing wind and buckle it with the moon, the night will slip away, like sorrow or a tune."

"I remember when you learned that," he said, the words a whisper, a breath, on her cheek. Or was it just the night breeze. Somehow, it didn't matter which. It was gentle and warm and comforting either way. "I go, but to return again, moth-like to the flame. Far from your side I cannot bide, I hunger for your name."

"Then we'll see you again, we two," she asked him, the little hummingbird fluttering lightly at her ear to be included in the question.

"Yes", the whisper of the breeze replied.

"And the wee one? Will I get to meet her someday, too", she asked.

"Yes", whispered the breeze against her cheek.

"Then good night, my friend. I'll wait for you where the moonlight meets the shore." She chuckled then, that just felt too much like a movie for her… "Or you can come to up to the house like a civilized person and I'll make you dinner!

The breeze drifted to her this time from across the yard with a soft laugh. As she turned to head back to the door of the house she noticed a small pile on the deck near her feet… a pair of flannel shorts and a T-shirt. Grinning at the visual image that popped into her head, she picked them up and headed for the doorway. Before she got there her small passenger whirred up from her shoulder and zipped off into the night.

Stepping from the night back into the darkened house, she felt a small note of wonder chime in the corner of her mind. He had come to visit. He had come and gone and would come again. They were friends. Friends! Now that was an amazing thing! A Silkie for a friend and maybe a hummingbird, too! Now, even she would never have believed that was possible! And she had come out of it unscathed.

Or had she? With a sudden bolt of fear she stumbled through the darkened house to the computer room. She flipped on the light switch and rushed to the computer. She had to check the date and time… No! She would not believe it had been anything more than a few hours. Oh dear God in heaven, please let it still be today. Why does it take so long for this stupid thing to boot up?!!!

When the computer screen finally blinked sleepily into life, she flipped to the settings menu and checked… Initiating the shut down sequence, she calmly headed back out of the den and up to bed. It had been a long day, but it had only been one day! And she was looking forward to her dreams that night. As she settled into bed a few minutes later, she thought she heard the sigh of the breeze tinkling the little wind chime outside her bedroom window. Was it a sigh or was it a chuckle, she wondered briefly before she drifted off to sleep.

Her dreams that night were far from what she had expected. If her thoughts, her dreams, were linked to his somehow, then his, most assuredly, were linked to those of his daughter. The images were vague, more emotional responses than actual sensory impressions. Warmth, safety, the smell of mother’s fur against her nose as she lay curled in a tight ball beside her. The cool brush of water on her skin as one of the other seals rolled off the boom for a fishing run. Floating in a cocoon of complete peace, she knew that these smells identified those who would protect her, shelter her from any and all harm. It was a night of restful peace, the kind only the very young could know. What an amazing experience to waken and find that cocoon of warmth still shrouding her mind with its peace.

Maybe it was having spent the evening and night in close, in intimate proximity to the Silkies, but when she rolled out of bed that morning all she could think of doing was to pull out the kayak and hit the water. Before she headed for the beach though, she pulled a clean pair of flannel shorts and a clean t-shirt out of her drawer and tucked them neatly into a gallon sized zip-lock bag along with a pair of old flip flops. With the paddle and a small towel over her shoulder and the kayak skirt already strapped on around her waist, she headed for the beach.

Turning the kayak over and giving it a quick wipe down to remove any accumulated cobwebs along with their creators and any other bugs, she pulled it off the concrete bulk head and trotted it the 10 feet or so to the water’s edge. Once into the kayak with the skirt in place she pushed off the rocky beach and felt the cool glide of the water under the flat keel of her river kayak. A bit more unwieldy in the flat, still water of the inlet than a sea kayak would have been, the orange kayak still seemed to glide, with little effort on her part, across the smooth water.

As she rounded the point on the south end of her cove, she could see the old log boom that was home to the seals as they calved each spring and summer. You weren’t allowed to get within 200 feet of the boom and the seals that sheltered there, but there was really no need to do so anyway. The seals of Henderson Inlet were quite friendly and would come out to the passing kayaks and canoes just to “chat” with the rowers. They would slip up along side the kayak and, if you talked to them, would actually look at you as if they understood every word. They would often glide along side for a good few minutes before rolling into the water and getting back about their seal business.

This morning she was looking for a particular seal, a large, dark furred seal…

Well before she ever reached the boundary of the protected zone, she had to slow her paddling in order to not actually hit one of the many seals that had ventured out to meet the kayak this morning. Today the curious seals seemed to linger a bit longer than was their pattern, but she couldn't be sure that it wasn't just her imagination or wishful thinking.

As she lingered near the edge of the restricted zone, she tried to think of how to find him, or to let him know to come find her. If, she reasoned to herself, their minds could connect while she was sleeping, then maybe, even though she was awake, if she thought of him, concentrated very intensely on him he might sense that she was out here on the water… looking for him. She sat very still and tried to call him in her mind. She didn’t really knowing what she was doing, or if she was just sitting there making a complete fool of herself "thinking" at her own imagination. She was about to give up in frustration, with a bit of humiliation tossed in for good measure, when he surfaced just to the left rear of her kayak. As he spoke her name, she turned her head and looked into large, dark eyes filled with the now familiar laughter.

"Hello Silkie," she answered. “How are you this morning? I wasn’t sure how to find you.”

"I am well," she heard the answer, but she knew that he had not "spoken" to her. He surprised her with his next comment. "You don’t have to think hard to reach me. We were bound by the healing dreams. If you think of me, I know it.” Before she had a chance to absorb the full implications of that comment, he continued, “You want to meet the child. She is too young to transform, yet."

At that he rolled back under the dark water and disappeared. She thought for a moment that she had been "dismissed", but very quickly he resurfaced near another seal and a pup that had been lingering about 25 feet away from her kayak. She turned the small boat toward the three seals and they, in turn, began to move toward her. The mother seal tried briefly to keep herself between the kayak and the pup, but the Silkie apparently soothed the worried mother and the young pup slipped up next to the kayak and looked up at the woman who gazed back with joyful delight at the small, dark face.

There was a quiet recognition between the pup and the woman who had shared her dreams of the night before. She reached her hand down to the water's surface, but didn't actually touch the pup. She wiggled her fingers an inch or two in front of the pup's nose and then she said quietly, "Ciao, bella."

The tiny pup nuzzled the wiggling fingers and the woman wondered for a moment if she was about to be bitten. Instead the little pup wriggled under her hand and let her rub its little snub nose gently with her fingers. It was a moment of complete exhilaration for the woman. To sit there in her kayak and have a tiny little seal snuggle with her hand as if she were an old friend. The thrilling interlude lasted only for a moment, then the pup rolled under her fingers and beneath the surface of the water. It popped up quickly between its parents and snuggled up against its mother's side.

As mother and child rolled into the water, the Silkie moved back toward the bright orange kayak. She leaned slightly over toward him and said, "Thank you. Thank you so very much. She's a beauty. She must have gotten her good looks from her momma!"

At that the Silkie turned and began to move away from her small boat, but she heard the whisper of his laughter in her mind. Before he disappeared under the dark, cold water she called to him and told him that she would leave dry shorts and a shirt in the upturned kayak for him, if he wanted to come up for dinner later on.

She beached the kayak a few moments later and, popping the waterproof “skirt” off of the kayak she clambered awkwardly out. She pulled the kayak up onto the bulkhead again, but before she settled it into place she picked up the ziplock baggie containing the clothes and set it into the hollow keel of the Kayak. Then she rolled it completely over with the opening down to prevent it from being filled with rainwater, which was still an issue this time of year.

She was about halfway up the steep boat ramp when she stopped abruptly and spun to look out across the water past the point at the southern end of the cove. What had he said? That they had been bound by the healing dreams… anytime she thought of him he would know it? “Holy Shhhh… !” she thought to herself. “Oh that’s Not Good! That is very Not Good!” In a state of extreme panic she began trying to sort back through all the times she’d thought of him. She felt the flush of embarrassment start under her scalp and she only stopped noticing its progress when it got to her stomach. At which time she began trying to think of not throwing up!

Turning, almost unconscious with panic now, she started back up the boat ramp. Although her brain had not kicked back into function, she began to hear a persistent pounding somewhere in a back corner of it. A thought, desperately trying to make itself realized, was hammering away at her numbness.

What had she thought about him, what hideously embarrassing secrets had she disclosed to him without ever knowing she was displaying her private, innermost imaginings to him. She climbed the steps of the deck.

Oh no, she was thinking about Him now! He must know she was totally panicked, that he had her so disjointed that she couldn’t think. “Oh Noooooo,” her mind wailed as, almost blindly, she put the paddle and skirt back somewhere in the vicinity of the corner of the deck where they were stored.

“I can never have a private thought again,” she moaned to herself as she turned, blankly, to stare out again at the empty water. Instead, she came eyeball to eyeball with the small hummingbird of the night before.

Whirring frantically as it held its position before her uncomprehending eyes, the little creature bobbed a bit closer. It stopped just far enough from her face to avoid actually touching her, but close enough that she felt the wind from its busy wings touch her cheek like a gentle hand. Dazedly, she looked at the small creature fanning its wings almost at the tip of her nose and realized it was getting tired from hovering there watching her.

Without thinking, she invited her tiny, worried friend to rest, “Come on then, little one, settle down for a bit.” It nestled contentedly under her left ear again, as it had the night before, and touched her ear with the tip of its long beak.

At that gentle touch, she felt the tears start down her face and, with the rupture of the emotional dam, came a sympathetic rupture of the dam that had formed in her mind. The thought that had been hammering behind the wall of shock & horror suddenly broke through into the daylight. Yesterday he had said he wasn’t coming into her dreams, that she was touching his mind at night while she slept. What if the “bridge” crossed both ways? Could she hear his thoughts if she tried to hear them? How would she go about “listening in”? Wouldn’t he know she was “listening”? Could he block her mind? Suddenly a shudder wracked her mind… What if he couldn’t block her out? Did she really want to listen to his thoughts? To know what went on in the mind of a Silkie?

She had to know. She tried to think of him, but the urgent need to blow her nose after her big cry kept her from being able to focus on him. She certainly didn’t want him peering into her thoughts while she was wondering whether or not she had phlegm running down her face. She closed down any thoughts of him by focusing on the little bird on her shoulder. She tried to explain to it that it might want to sit somewhere else or it needed to be prepared for a whole new experience. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket, folded it in half and she blew her nose. The little bird seemed quite startled. It almost seemed, for a moment, as if she could sense its thoughts. Of course, the fact that it actually shot up off her shoulder and buzzed off to the deck railing could have been a significant impetus to her sensing its surprise.

She laughed at the whole comedic scene and that little bit of normalcy gave her the grounding in “reality” that she needed to face the experiment ahead. She had a firm grasp again on who she was and with that sure and certain self-knowledge as her anchor, she calmed her mind and closed her eyes. She did as he had indicated and she simply thought of him. She felt the touch of his mind immediately. It was quiet, like a whisper, but clear as a nearby bell. He was half out of his skin. He had been frantically struggling with the transition, as he had on the beach at Cape Alava, but this time he had been struggling against the uncontrolled panic in her mind. She could tell that he knew she was calming down and that helped him get his own panic under control.

She didn’t acknowledge the greeting he spoke to her as she touched his mind, she just started trying to move “past him” and into his thoughts, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that she didn’t know how to do that. How did she bring up her own thoughts, could she do that in his mind?

Then it occurred to her… his memories, the ones she had from their encounter on the beach at Cape Alava, might be the key to touching his mind. When she had touched his dreams in her sleep, had it been because his memories had surfaced in her mind and that had formed the link between them… those memories that they both held in common, his in her mind and hers in his mind?

“Yes,” he answered her. “Yes.”

She ignored him. She drew to her mind one of the memories of racing under the water’s surface as if she were flying. She felt his elation at that memory. She ignored him again. He was the enemy! She had to ignore him and stay focused.

Abruptly, she felt a horrible anguish overwhelm her. A sorrow she could not measure and had never felt before, in all her very long life, tore at her when she realized that he felt she was the enemy. She didn’t know that he had not understood the nature of the binding between them. It was so simple and so deeply feared among her people that it was impossible for anyone not to know of it. How could she have realized the ignorance of his race, so long separated from hers that they had forgotten even the important tales of the older days? Had he not told her yesterday that he thought it might be “useful to know what a Silkie was thinking”? She had known then that he understood the binding and accepted it, but now, he considers her “the enemy”. Their minds and lives were bound beyond severing, she had been changed irrevocably by that binding and she was “the enemy”.

She tore her mind out of his almost screaming in her hurt and sorrow. Sorrow at the changes that made her almost alien to her own people and hurt at his anger and seeming enmity towards her. How could …

“Oh no. This is worse than the memories. When our minds are touching, I can’t even tell his thoughts from mine. How can I ever handle this,” she asked herself. She closed her eyes and felt the tears spilling through her fingers. It had, indeed, gone from bad to worse. Oh yes, she had been right all along. You can never come out unscathed from a contact with the fey.

The aching sorrow in her heart had not lessened with the breaking of the contact between their minds. It was at the point when she realized that the ache was still there, that she remembered why it had come to her in the first place. She started laughing and crying at the same time. Well, at least the fey don’t always come out unscathed from a contact with mortals, either.

“We almost never do.” His voice behind her left her frozen with the fear of him, again. He touched her hair and asked quietly, “Shall I take the memories from you now? It is the only hope you have of being truly human again.” His voice was soft and touched, still, with the sorrow she had felt earlier. It was a sorrow that suddenly fell into place in her mind, as it had not really done until now. He was deeply hurt by the anger she had felt towards him. Her thoughts, tied with his by the shared memory at the exact moment when she had felt her anger, her fear, boil into definition, had become so confused with his that she had forgotten that it had really been his pain, not hers, that she was feeling.

She rose from the bench and stepped away from him, fists clenched at her sides to keep them from shaking. When she thought she had herself as under control as possible, she turned to face him. She almost broke then. She could see the pain in him, he held a fear of his own tightly in check. She realized that, had she not been into his mind, she would never have known any such feelings existed in his world, but having been there, she could sense them and feel them as clearly as if they were her own.

Reminding herself of her anger in order to keep her focus on what she needed to do, she spoke as coldly as she could make herself sound. “Before I agree to anything with regard to you, I want to know all of the things you think I already know! Everything! IF I doubt you, if I suspect you are hiding a truth from me, then I will touch a memory and tear the truth from your mind myself. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Then start.”

His voice was the quiet whisper of the breeze that she remembered from the night before. Soft and quiet enough that within a few sentences she had moved closer to him, without realizing it, in order to be able to hear every syllable.

“In the older days, a time when the veil between our worlds was not so great, one of the fey, a dryad, formed, by accident, the same bond that you and I now share with a human male. It was an accident that drove the Kingdoms of Man and the Kingdoms of the Fey apart forever. It was a binding that changed both the dryad and the human so that they were never truly human or truly fey again. They became something different. Each acquired something of the other and that something marked them so greatly among their own folk that they were never completely at peace with anyone, except each other, again.”

“This was a time when we greatly feared war with your kind and we had not yet been able to find the way to secure entry into our kingdoms from your world. When it was understood that the human, who was a warrior and a leader among his kind, had, with the binding between them, been given great knowledge and understanding of us and of our world, it was believed that she had betrayed the fey intentionally out of love for the mortal. She was cast forth from the Kingdoms of the Fey by the combined power of the Lords of the Kingdoms and forbidden to enter them again upon pain of death. She became a great guardian of the humans against her own kind.”

“In the end, whatever the human had acquired of her power and her knowledge, he was still mortal, and when he died, she carried his body through the veil between our worlds and into the Kingdoms of the Fey. As she stepped through the veil, the bane fell upon her and she was executed where she stood. It is the only time in all the long years of our memory, that one of the fey has ever been executed by our people.”

“Before she had passed through the veil, she cast forth all her powers upon the forest that had been her haven for all her life. Wherever her power touched a tree, that tree took a new form that had never been seen in either world before. The new trees grew white blossoms and deep red berries. To this day, those trees bear her name and are a true and infallible protection against any power or spell of my people.”

“The horror of her punishment and her death have left their mark on my people, for we have very long memories. Only twice since that time has the Bond of Rowan touched another of our own. Both have been under circumstances when one of us has been in grave danger and they have been unable to protect themselves in any other way. The binding is for life. The second time it happened, the banshee who had formed the bond with a human, this time he was a bard, was not punished by the Lords, but she died of sorrow within days of her love’s death.”

“For she had loved him. She had loved him so much that, to protect him from the pain of being forever alone among his own kind, she took from him the memories he had collected from her during the binding. He did not remember her at all, but he would dream sometimes of a banshee that he did not fear. He lived his life without knowing her or the sorrow that she felt every moment that she lived without him, but with his every thought tearing at her mind.”

He had stopped speaking several minutes before she felt the spell of his words drop from her mind. It was not a spell of his casting in the traditional sense, she understood now that he had no such power over her. It was a spell cast by the sorrow of the story and the full realization of what the bond between them meant to him. It was a death sentence. His life was now bound to the length of hers.

With deep remorse, she suddenly remembered the thought that had brought this conversation to a head. She turned her face up to his and said, “I’m sorry. You are not now, nor were you ever, the enemy. I was wrong to be angry with you and I was wrong to … “

“No,” he stopped her apology with his expression as much as his words. “The regret is mine, for thinking that you could remember the ancient lessons of our peoples. They are older than your memories. I understand that now.”

She turned from him and walked down the deck to the swing they had shared the night before. She sat down, leaned forward and buried her face in her palms. As she felt him settle beside her, she started to ask the question she knew she had to ask next. “You said there had been two occurrences since … “ She stopped, the name she had been about to utter connecting to a memory in her mind, a memory from her own life this time. “Her name was Rowan?”

“Yes”

“Even I know that Rowan trees are said to provide ward against fairies and such. Wow! Ancient memories! How long ago was that?”
“Long. Long ago.”

Remembering her originally intended question, “Who was the last one,” she asked. “What was their story?“

Surprisingly, he chuckled at that question. “You know them, you know them well. You know them from your childhood and you know them from my memories. She was a Naiad and he was a war leader among his people. He led his people in a great fight for freedom. Because he was the beloved of the Lady of the Naiads, herself, and had brought the fey that dwelt in his kingdom under his protection, we fought with him in his great war. Those are the memories of him that you have from me. I stood with him against the children of the dragon ships.”

“When he grew old, she brought him to the Kingdoms of the Fey with her. She brought him to us hoping that being in the Kingdoms of the Fey would be enough to extend his life. We accepted them among us because he had been a friend to us, the first since the sundering of the Kingdoms. We welcomed him to our world. He is the only human who has ever been granted asylum in the Kingdoms of the Fey. It did not save him, but she was among her own kind when he died and she survived longer than had the others before her. Almost a year after he died.”

He turned to her and asked, “ Do you know them? Can you not guess who I mean?”

She looked at him, almost hoping she was about to make a complete fool of herself, and guessed, “Arthur. King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake?”

“Yes. That is the name they bear in your legends, yes.”

With the wonderment palpable on her face and in her voice, she said, “So even some of the legends about him have a basis in truth? You know, I don’t think I’m quite ready for all this “truth” after all.”

They sat quietly in the swing together then. Not talking, not touching, just sitting. When the tiny hummingbird came back to settle on her lap she stroked it without really noticing what she was doing. A memory popped into her mind, the memory of her demand to know all that he thought she knew. She turned to him, answering the memory as if he had spoken her name, her head cocked slightly to one side in question.

He reached over and touched the small bird in her lap. “This is one of the things I thought you understood. Animals will trust you as they do me. I think they have always trusted you a bit, but now they will come to you for companionship, for comfort or for assistance and you will understand them, but not their words. It will grow stronger as you live longer with that of me which is now you.”

“Oh,” she said. “I think it’s already happened with this little guy. I didn’t realize it until now, but it makes sense somehow.” With a sigh, she asked, “Anything else you can think of that I should know?”

I think it is different with each bond. Each of those involved has been of a different race of the fey. We are not all alike, as you humans are, basically, all alike.” With a hint of the wicked grin she remembered from last night, he finished, “Or so you seem to us.”

She laughed. Somehow, it felt good to laugh again. It felt important to find some way to lighten the weight of the disclosures she had been facing.

“Okay,” she answered, “We’ll take this one step at a time. But if you realize something that you think I know… please tell me. Please.”

“Yes,” he agreed. Then, as if offering a compromise, he finished with, “I can take the memories from you and you can be yourself again.”

She considered that offer quite seriously. She felt strongly inclined to accept the offer and return to a “normal” life. Then she remembered facing him just a few moments before and seeing the pain and fear held so tightly in check. This time he turned to her, as if answering her thought. She made up her mind in that moment, and she was content and at peace with the decision.

“You would be all alone then. There would be no one of your people or of mine, who could understand you completely. We live like that all the time, we humans, but apparently the fey don’t.”

“I knew what I was doing when I moved to help a hurt Silkie out of his skin,” she continued. “I may not have realized how much it would change my life, but I cannot regret help offered to someone who needed it so desperately.”

“No. Thank you for your offer and the great sacrifice it would be, but I think I need to stand by you in this. That’s what friends do for each other. Even when they can’t really help with a problem, they ride out the storms together.” Then she touched his hand, her fingers sliding around between his thumb and fingers to fold his hand into hers. She squeezed it softly, then almost fiercely.

As he squeezed back she decided that the first step to surviving anything was to find steady ground. That old Texas upbringing rose to her aid again. If you can’t cure something, then you bring food and you make everyone eat! Eating was steady ground, especially when she realized she had talked with him through dinner last night and still had not eaten today. It had to be almost noon.

“Come on,” she said, let’s go get some lunch. You can explain the rest of this to me when we’ve eaten. That way, if it scares the willies out of me again, I’ll at least have something to throw-up this time.”

There was the laugh! She knew he had still had it inside him somewhere. She just felt better seeing that he could still laugh. He had been dealing with this knowledge since the encounter on the beach several months ago, she guessed. If he had come to terms with it, she could too. After all, they were of “one mind” now, weren’t they?



They had talked that night into the wee hours of the morning. They had run, over and over again, through each of the previous instances where such a joining of the minds had occurred until she knew every detail of them and until she could not have kept them sorted in her mind to save her life. He had wanted to just give her the memories, but she thought that if he told her about each couple, she might “hear” something in his recounting of the stories that she would not notice if she just absorbed his memories. If he didn’t notice a fine distinction because he was so used to the memories, would she absorb that complacency with the rest of the memory?
She had had him run through numerous of his “encounters” with others of her species to determine what the difference was, why no similar bond was formed with the forming of a child. All that she could conclude at the end of the night was that there was some exchange that was uniquely part of the sharing of strength, of the healing process itself, that was not inherent in the act of intimacy. He had laughed and assured her that she had come to the same conclusion that his kind had come to many long years ago. There had to be a piece missing. There had to be. It was too cruel, even for this world, for love to be a death sentence without any hope of reprieve.

As she felt weariness tugging at her mind, she felt a desire for the water and his other form tugging at his mind and she called a halt to the inquiry for the night. It had been a long day and both of them needed time to absorb all that had happened between them. She saw him to the steps of the deck and gave him a hard, long hug. Holding him for a moment in her mind as she held him in her arms, she had sensed that he needed to know that she was still at peace with her choice so she extended the hug for a moment or two longer than she would have felt to be comfortable the night before. Tonight… tonight it seemed like it was a lifeline to which they both needed to cling. Then she pulled back, kissed him gently on the cheek and whispered, “I’ll see you in our dreams.” He was gone then, with that same soft breeze on her cheek. She turned back into the house, locked the doors and headed up to the bed that she suspected would offer her little sleep that night.

She was wrong. The emotional exhaustion of two days of surprises followed by more surprises had wearied her. She was asleep within moments of laying her head on her pillow. Asleep, but not resting. She found herself wandering through his memories of the other relationships after all. Apparently, it was still on his mind as much as it was on hers. As she wandered through his memories she began to notice an odd sensation, a “whispering” at the edge of her dreams. It took a while before she realized that this was not just one of those weird dream sensations. In fact, she drifted back into her own mind and into consciousness as two realizations crept into her unconscious mind, one fast on the heels of the other.
The first was the realization that she had not one, but two Silkie’s dreams playing in her mind that night. His mind, closely tuned to that of his new daughter, had been listening to the baby’s dreams while she had been walking through his dreams. That was the odd whispering she had heard, the little one’s dreams rustling about at the edges of his dreams. When she recognized it for what it was, she had let herself slip from his dreams into the quiet dreams of the sleeping child. It was a soft relief to share dreams not yet filled with the great events that torture the dreamer.

It was as she floated in that innocence that the second realization struck her. While the act of intimacy didn’t create the bond of mind and soul, it might solidify the existing bond into an unbreakable force. Did the joining of two lives so irretrievably that mind and soul merged into one make it impossible for one half of the joined union to live without the other half. If only the intimacy of the other relationships could be avoided, maybe death was not inevitable for the Silkie when hers came to pass. It was too late to avoid the joining of minds. That had occurred on the beach without either of them fully realizing that it was happening. Their souls had joined when she had finally understood the implications, for him, of their joining and he had offered to relive her, at the cost of ultimate loneliness for himself, of all knowledge of his existence and, thereby, all suffering. Her choice to remain aware and a part of his life had joined them, soul to soul, forever. The only joining they had not made was the joining of their bodies. That, at all costs, must never be allowed to happen.

She closed her mind, as best she could, to all thoughts of her sudden insight and of the predicament in which they found themselves. There was time enough tomorrow for discussions and decisions. Tonight they both needed to rest and sleep. She closed her eyes and sought again the peaceful lull of the baby’s dreams. It seemed like the only safe haven her weary mind could settle upon and she was quite content to share the peacefulness of that small, safe world. As she drifted into those quiet dreams, she felt another mind, an equally worried mind, nestle into the edges of her thoughts. As one, they floated into the peace of the little Silkie’s quiet dreams.

To Be Continued