Criss-crossings

Spring finally arrived in the high mountains that cycle, the rains ceased, the winds shifted into more often the breeze and the pond slowly began to fill in from the sides. The pond grasses and shrubs began their tangle dance of sprouting from the edges. If one was not watching you might say the pond was disappearin’ but really, does a thing ever truly DISappear? Jo and Lokea made a ritual of regular journeys from the vardo on the Ledge, Lokea often in the lead at first coaxing the stealth huntress from her den on the porch. “Come on Jo, let’s go.” “Doesn’t she know I’ve spent most the night out there and now she just wants a little hike for the fun of it?” Jo watched from the top of the trail her eyes scanning and her nose twitching. The chipmunk scolded from across the slope, taunting Jo “You keep away from THIS tree. Isn’t it bad enough you and your people have taken apart our ledge and made things different? You can’t move things around and not expect to disturb someone you know!” Jo listened; she’d heard this lecture again and again for weeks. She knew the truth of it. Born wild in a wood far from the pond there remained a knowing the black cat maintained. Her loyalty was to the wildness of her breeding and yet, the affection she had for Lokea and Pat tamed her. It was the price for regular meals and a place to sleep. She’d paid and was not unsatisfied with the bargain. She loved the two old people, and they had finally allowed themselves to love her. “Oh, she’s needing to feel the trail, can’t fault her that.” There was nothing better for transition than to feel the Planet with your paws, or feet. Cat was born to teach the lesson of loyalty. “I can sleep later, the days are so dang long any way,” and as if prodded with a switch Josephine was air born and talking a blue streak as Lokea gathered her wits and balance along the narrow over-grown trail.

If it were possible Lokea wished to experience life on the narrow band Pat liked to called the “mean” … living life evenly neither extremely infused with excitement and passion nor deflated by the humanness of living to the point of exhaustion. The fact that she was on a trail alone, sorry Jo … with her familiar, was an example of an Extreme. Many Sensitives cannot be in the woods where mold, trees, pollens and the general reality of life and death in concentration, is just too much stimulation. Lokea Bird had left one love after another: her island home, books and print friends and family, life in a house, clean air … and now that she had made it safely out of the city, the lure of freedom and fresh air refused to be denied. After the first couple of weeks she traveled without a mask on most of her hikes though she was still sure to leave her trail clothes outside the vardo, changing into her robe or inside only clothes after a hike. There are a multiple of steps that make a human Sensitive’s life less convenient and requires living by the rules of sequential access. A Sensitive lives the prototype transitional human experience…less convenience more consciousness. Like Gypsies throughout the history on The Planet, Sensitives often become Gypsies who choose to be Travellers not just because houses and walled structures create ill-ness. Sensitives like Lokea Bird find that the seed of migration has waited until the spell was broken. A family out for a Sunday walk passed the vardo on the Ledge. The young woman smiled in the direction of the dandelion colored wagon. Her father, pushing a child in a stroller looked from the vardo to the mansion across the driveway. What manner of questions crossed the man’s mind? What fantasies amused the young woman?

Then there is the issue of humans aging. Unlike our kin the human has a relatively short life-span. All four humans living within short trek from the pond of Ever are within a count of one to five from six decades. Each of them lives with degenerating functions that create a challenge in their own fashion; and two of them are Sensitives. Anna Paint was born with the air energy lit with fire. Her nature is quick and her mind a twin with two versions at once. The artist has dipped her pen or swept her brush into every conceivable paint, dye and glue available to a crafter of visions. Bundles of dreams began falling down around her. The Pond of Ever called, and she heard. Doctors have named the condition “Parkinson’s” and I suppose that is as good a name as any. Spell-carriers will be given many names before the Reassembling is complete. How fiercely and how long a mortal clings to the dreams that no longer make for a soul satisfied is different. What matters to our story is the manner in which the four friends smatter with the pieces of their differing dreams to create

No one the better

Nor the other the worse

Graced or gifted

With listening heart

Accepting, not rejecting

The pieces of the dream

Now re-done

One will be this

The other be that

And neither expects

More, in fact

Listening to words

Hearing them through

Connected, Respected

Bernadette knew the warmth of the season would light the fire of the kin’s migration. Many of the neighbors had already made the trek to the Lake, and Calliope prepared for his journey this warm evening. “I see you’re packing for the Lake,” Bernadette called through the window of her vardo. “The heat is making its presence plain to me my queen. Indeed I feel the cool deep water of the Lake calling my name.” Calliope arched his long body sniffed in the cool fresh water from below the creek-bed. “Will you and T.F. be coming with us?” “Oh, yes my froggie and I will be along in a stretch of awhile. There’s still a bit of the business to be done there on the Ledge, so be well on your journey old friend and know our night’s work be done before long.” “Then, so be it with you both. I will make my way to the crossing and bid T.F. my best while I’m there. Till next we meet may it be pleasant for you as Ever.” “The same be truth for you, Calliope.”

Travelling Frog rested silently on the lichen-covered stones that criss-crossed the gully. From his vantage point the Pond and Lake were equally near, or equally far. He could see the rails of Josh and Anna’s porch surrounding the mansion. Jane E. sniffed the air and noted, “Frogs and salamanders.” The chiz-shu had grown to understand their role in the cycle of things here. Before her unfortunate encounter with Melissa’s swift paw, young Jane was novice to all things wild. T.F. was the patient one, again using his knowledge of the ways the Gypsy Frog poured the nectar of the place into the large pottery bowl of water kept especially for Jane E. “To save you from your own young self dear Jane the nectar will sort the folk who are best left to their own goings and doings. You are meant for kinder things.” Indeed Jane E. was made to listen and love the two who came and built the mansion overlooking the Lake. Both Anna and Josh found comfort and confidant in the small dog even with one eye. “You are more than dog enough for the task,” Travelling Frog said as he finished his alchemy those nearly ten years ago.

Calliope made his presence known with the low and almost chirp like whistle that only he and his old friend could hear. “And to you a good evening,” T.F. was glad to see his orange spotted companion. “I have seen the doe and her children at the Pond. The young are already at the tit and will be strong of foot before too long. Shelela and Tusi sit and warm a growing pair and soon the telling will have come a big and broad spiral.” Calliope clambered to the rock to sit beside his friend. “Will the changes come quickly when the twins be born?” “Change is slow Calliope rarely will nature’s course leap a rushing river when waiting a season ensures the crossing. Then again who can predict nature in a rage?” Frog and Salamander nodded sharing a small chuckle between them. “The Bird and her man unravel as the two eggs above in that mud-covered nest prepare for a criss-crossed nature.” Both frog and salamander considered the possibilities for The Planet. T.F. offered, “In the mind of mortals, beings such as you and I are of small consequence. The mortal mind views fairy as bug or worse something to be controlled as pest. It is a strange and ill-gotten belief that keeps a race spell-bound. Creators have sent messengers, Indigo children, beings of love, star travellers and Gypsies in all forms. Each has been misunderstood, threatened; physically harmed or worse controlled with concentrated doses of life or death … they call it medication.” The two friends knew the risk of concentrating life or death and dispensing a dose without remembering how dangerous sedating a spell in the breaking can be. “So few know how to allow the breaking of a spell, and fewer yet make room and messiness as the piecing Reassemble.” Calliope winked at the Gypsy Frog and in a blink the salamander was gone. “Until we meet, fair winds and cool waters,” T.F. turned and hopped up the wild cherry trunk to the mud covered nest and found both swallows at home.