The Blue Vineyard Of Voo Shining Stone: STILL NO RAIN

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Warriors Of The Way Episode Three Day Breaks On A Hardened Heart

 

    WARRIORS OF THE WAY

    EPISODE THREE

    DAY BREAKS ON A HARDENED HEART

                                              

     The sun fell out of the sky like a dying bird and crashed into the west with a sudden darkness that chilled me to the bone. I arranged my belongings around me and threw a blanket down upon the grass under a low hanging tree that provided a sort of shelter. Pulling off my knee high boots, I threw them onto the jumble of assorted treasures that had traveled with me for what seemed like decades now. I rubbed away the pain in my toes and ran three fingers through my long dark mass of tangled curls.    Thinking I should do something about that, I looked into a worn deerskin bag for a brush but threw it aside violently. "Oh, who cares?" I asked the growing darkness. "I don't care! There is no one here to care anymore!"

 Loneliness gripped me and I threw myself down upon the blanket. Covering myself with another, I fell into a dreamless sleep that seemed to last for days and yet only for minutes. My last thought before sleep had been, "Let this day be only a dream!" But that wish was not to be granted. A strange and beautiful white bird awakened me with an eerie song as it sat in the tree opposite mine watching warily with unreadable eyes. I lay there not moving and watched it watching me until it suddenly took flight and seemed to wave back at me in an approving farewell gesture.

 I frowned and hid a smile behind my hand and turned my head as though I had not seen. I didn't want to smile. I did not plan to ever smile again. Smiling belonged to yesterday and Starshine and with the wilding joy of childhood. Today was another day. Today I would become the warrior I had been trained to be, determined and hardened and heartless! (That was the plan anyway.) 

    Looking down at the brook's sparkling water, I dipped my fingers to test it's warmth and decided a bath was in order. Slipping off my garments, I plunged into it's cool depth, gasped and swam swiftly to the other side to acclimate my body. Pearl white stones lay all along the bottom of the stream and I dove down and collected a few and brought them to the surface. Like fragile bird's eggs they were but cool and soothing to the touch. I had never seen the like. What strange stones!

 I hurried out of the water and threw them down upon the blanket. Washing my hair with fragrant soap, I remembered the woman who had cared for me as a child. She spoke to me oft times in a foreign tongue that I came to partially  understand but always her soft voice had comforted me. It made me long for the mother who was not there.

  I stood for a few moments on the banks and let the cool breeze dry my skin. It never occurred to me that anyone might see me. I had not seen another human for many days nor did I care to. People always seemed to stare at me with strange looks and shocked expressions. I never understood why. When I had asked my father, he said to me, "Because you are beautiful. And special and they love you." That explanation never satisfied me. Neither did it make me question him further (out loud.) As I grew, I  began to hear a mysterious voice deep inside my heart say softly "Someday you will know." But that day had never come.


   I dressed quickly in clean garments of the soft deerskin that I loved. It not the preference of the royal house to which I was born but was comfortable to me. The deerskin tunic fell to my knees and was topped with a garnet cloak of velvet, hooded and tied about my throat. A garnet belt circled my waist and it's fringes came to the hem of the tunic. I pulled on my deerskin boots and the finger-less gloves that ran halfway to my shoulders. Brushing the damp tangles from my hair, I tied it up with strings of garnet and let it fall down my back in the usual uncontrollable curls. Starshine had loved to pull my hair with his teeth when I had dared to walk in front of him. How he snorted in amusement when I protested and pulled his own black mane in return! 

  The memory of it brought tears to my eyes but I brushed them away. I then clasped my father's gift around my neck, the golden necklace that matched the golden circlets in my ears. I had worn it for so long that I felt bare without it. Somehow it's smoothness gave me solace. Something I needed very much just then.

                                 
     Sitting on the blanket, I looked around at the marvelous berries hanging from the vines and bushes and my mouth watered at the sight. Breakfast beckoned, but first I sought to examine the pearl white stones. I held three of them in my hands turning them over and over. Then I threw them up into the air in a juggling motion and let them fall down into my lap. "You're such a child!" I told myself and threw them down upon the blanket in frustration.

  There was a cracking sound and I looked in amazement to see that two of them had been damaged. I picked them up and saw that each stone had broken in half and hidden inside one half was an object so shiny and dazzling that it hurt my eyes. "What magic is this?" I muttered and attempted to look at the objects through my upheld fingers. My surroundings suddenly went silent. Not a sound was heard, not a bird's voice, not a wild beast's call. Silence. My hardened heart began to race in unknown fear and I knew without looking that someone stood behind me. I felt them there without so much as hearing a single footstep.

                        

  It was a feeling of great....evil. I felt it watching me, willing me to pick up the broken stones and remove the brilliant things inside them. It was almost too much to bear. I struggled with the strange manipulation and fought against it as hard as I could, thinking that I had to. I had to! And so I did and the moment passed and the silence silently melted away into the morning. Noise rushed my ears then, noise of the wild and of the world that I no longer felt a part of. I held my breath and waited for the strange sensations to return but they did not. Instead, I heard a twig snap and a footstep and a branch pulled back and to my utter horror, heard a voice, musical and low and oddly familiar. And the voice said "Magic indeed!"

To Be Continued In Episode Four.....

Soldier Of Love