The final hank ... the last installment Shelela and Shenia ... She the Little and the Small

Author's notes: http://vardofortwo.blogspot.com/2009/12/healing-through-crafting-of-story-wood.html

Shelela and Shenia … She the little and the small

Our story draws closer to its destiny, dear ones. The journey broad, the telling savory, the lessons wrapped in filigree and sennit, bundled in cedar boughs and hidden on bits of driftwood from islands far south of the high mountains. The tale cannot be finished without knowing more about my own dear birthing, and that of my twin Shelela. If ever you will need the nectar of the place to taste the truth, it will be here as I braid the final hank into place. Have you kept the kettle hot for tea? If you have neglected the small ritual it would be a fine time to raise yourself to the burner and bring the spring water to a boil. A story always tastes the nectar of the place with tea.

We must return to the beginning and listen as my own dear mother and father consider the choice Kaimalama Noa has made.

Shemaladia of Osprey listened as her mate to be recounted Kaimalama’s disclosure. Both my parents were full-size Grey Wood Crafters. To see them now, their heights would surprise mortals for they were Giant in your vocabulary. Perhaps as large as twelve feet from ground to head feathers, Shemaladia and Freeilll were among the last of the Giants with coil of stardust and bird nearer fairy than human in spite of their size. My mother waited for my father’s final word, looked deeply with her eyes closed and sought any unspoken thought that might linger in his telling. When she found none there Shemaladia asked, “Are these mortals long in coming? Will it be within our cycles they be here on The Planet?” Freeilll Noa felt certain the mortals would come only when his name and that of Shemaladia of Osprey were as fairy tales or make-believe. “Do you see the lesson in our mating as a birth-place for our future coveys, a warming of a different sort to prepare our twins for change?” My father simply nodded, affirming Shemaladia’s intuition. “Kaimalama has opened a channel to the Ever of the future through his choice. What has been is reassembling, and though you and I have enjoyed the Grace of Grey and crossed the Cosmos with our gifts there comes a time for loving the small, birthing the value of reserve and it continues with our mating. We have been asked to value a concentrated version of ourselves, leaving behind that which no longer serves, embracing all that will likely flourish forward. My brother’s choice will reveal the nature of small when nurtured. He has lived one hundred cycles with a secret kept. Hording polyps, fish and the moving winds examples of secrecy and a grace ill-founded.”

Shemaladia of Osprey remembered the moment she first saw Freeilll Noa. “What will our twins be like from our mating?” She had thought that then, and now she knew the answer was “different.” The lid of stars that poured stardust from the constellation of The Big Dipper would open within three moon rising. Time was still on the side of destiny. My mother had received many gifts of gratitude and thanks over her long life. Souls lost and found often gifted Shemaladia with tokens of their appreciation. Thinking of her pouch of brocade that held those gifts my mother conned in my father’s direction, “I believe a clue has been with me all these many cycles. A gift from a sister lost to herself gave me a circle of silver with stone of pink quartz. The ring was too small for my claw. Pink quartz is for the healing heart, perhaps the perfect size for reassembling the size of a Wood Crafter’s egg.”

In the end the ring crafted of silver with stone of pink quartz was indeed the perfect size for twin eggs birthed by Freeilll Noa and his mate Shemaladia of Osprey. The lid of stars poured their stardust as it had for times back into memory, and as it has been for all those times, mates of destiny embraced their dance of bliss. One of those paired is said to have embraced with a small circle of silver held tight between their breasts. The ring of silver split between my mother and father. Each half was absorbed into their hearts creating two halves the size of perfectly reassembled eggs, twin girls named Shenia and Shelela Wood. In the scheme of destiny we were the first of the covey to be She the Little. My mother and father viewed the future knowing the new race called Mortals would grow with the spell of hording in their coil. Like my uncle the spell would be like a mask unconsciously worn unexpectedly risky business. My parents chose to value the small concentrated good that had until that point lived grand, large, and Giant. We sustain our Grace through that choice and look from our coveys and warrens at the mortals who are called Sensitives and Spell-binders and watch for one woman in particular who has memory of kin and kind. That mortal carriers the gift of Fantasy … a willingness to forget all and then, she will make room for us to join in. From the Ledge near the Pond of Ever a woman fitting that description has moved herself and her mate into a wee wheeled home. The fairies are keeping close watch on things on the Ledge, and warming on a branch is a pair of violet eggs the size of a mortal woman’s earrings.

This story is braided complete for the while. Mortal destiny lies tentatively on the balance between grand and small. Sensitive kin with dreams falling down around them are the clue to a reassembled beginning. Will the race who has been spell-bound by greed begin anew, release what no longer serves the original Creators’ song and step gently back where the nectar of place is sipped, shared and for goodness sake, never horded? Cross your fingers and make room in your dreams for fairies and Gypsy Frog kings to join in. Until the next wind gathers the dust of story ~ be gentle with your stepping and kind in your encounters.

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.