WARRIORS OF THE WAY EPISODE ONE

  

WARRIORS OF THE WAY

EPISODE ONE

      I awoke to find a flower crushed underneath my cheek. I had not noticed it when I lay down the night before but then I had been too tired and too grief stricken to notice anything but the aching in my heart. I had walked for many miles, having lost my horse to the bite of a viper on the hillside far behind me. Starshine. Black as midnight with a white star shaped mark on his neck and star shaped sprays of white on his two front legs. A magnificent horse, my childhood companion, my best friend.

      His death had come as a great shock and one that I wondered in my loneliness if I would ever overcome. How had I been so careless? How had he? We both had ears and eyes like hawks and had never been attacked unawares in all our years together. Perhaps it was in our weariness of long journeying that we had become fatigued and let down our guards. Perhaps we had taken our protection for granted much too long. But he had been my guardian as I had been his. I could not remember a day of my life without him in it. Till now. How could I ever forgive myself? 

     The viper had appeared out of nowhere, long and fat and golden hued, like no snake I had ever seen. I had dismounted Starshine and had climbed to the top of a tree to scan the horizon when it happened. The horse made no sound, gave no cry for help, raised no alarm. When I'd made my way back down the tree, taking my time and humming a melody I had heard in the last village we'd passed through, I jumped down laughing and shouted, "Starshine, my friend! I have spotted a lush green field for thou to graze ......."

      And there I saw him, still as death itself, his sweet eyes closed and no breath coming from his nostrils. Lying on his sleek, black rump, there coiled the viper, it's cold, intelligent eyes looking at my expression, almost, it seemed, in mocking amusement. I felt a tremor go through my body as I stood frozen in disbelief and anguish.

       "H..h..h.how?" I gasped in a tiny whisper of voice, feeling for the first time in years like a helpless child. The viper stretched out to it's full length and struck Starshine behind his unhearing ear as if to answer then turned his yellow eyes back to me and disappeared from sight. Finding my feet and voice, I sank to my knees beside my faithful friend and sobbed until I could sob no more. I wept until his silky mane was soaked with tears and I had caressed his beautiful face and flanks a thousand times. I had never felt so alone. 

      I didn't know how to say goodbye. I refused to say goodbye. The morning with it's azure skies and golden sun so full of promise became my heart's saddest day. I hated the tree I had climbed, the hill on which it stood, the land in which it grew. But most of all and more than anything I had ever experienced; I hated that viper! I swore vengeance on the creature and made no apology for it. Fury flowed through my veins like lava, shut down my mind and took my soul on a journey I had never made before: to the dark side of myself. 

      During that journey, I would learn to distrust, to fear, to question all that I had been taught. To walk alone, to love and to know a different, more terrifying kind of heartbreak. I would lose my faith and find it again in strangers and places I did not know existed. Worst of all, I would learn that I could not trust my own eyes or ears or heart. For, from that day forward, nothing would ever be as it appeared. Nothing. Not even the person that I had always imagined myself to be. Everything changed after the encounter with the snake. Light became dark, the familiar became strange, the tangible, intangible and the road I traveled on, a seemingly never-ending quest to find understanding of the mysteries. But the world would never be the same. Everything changed for me at the tree.

     

        TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE TWO............

❔❓UPON REQUEST❔❓

WARRIORS OF THE WAY Episode Two The Dark Side

 

WARRIORS OF THE WAY

EPISODE TWO

THE DARK SIDE

          I don't know how long I lay there resting my head on my dead horse. I had fallen asleep and gone tumbling down into a mindless, restless realm populated by running horses and children, golden vipers and strange men in white hooded robes. I awoke to find the world still there and Starshine, a lifeless form with no sign of his equine spirit and wisdom. I was totally disheartened. I lay aside all of the equipment that he had carried for us and pondered what pieces I could carry myself and discarded the rest. I could see no way to bury my faithful friend outside of digging his grave with my bare hands and I had no strength for that. I formulated a plan to cover him with stones and began the task to do that, a long and tedious chore that took many hours.

As I looked for stones and carried them, I let myself go to places I should not have gone to in my mind but nevertheless, I could not stop the going. I had experienced many things in my life: death and life, illness and miracle, joy and hope delayed. But being strong of spirit and sure of my calling, I had endured and grown stronger with each setback. I was my Father's daughter. I was independent but totally devoted to him and to doing his will. My course had been set at birth and I had never deviated from that course except during the long months of my sickness. And even that had been ordained to ensure the quietness of my youthful spirit and the teaching of my soul and mind that could not have been achieved had I been awake and well.

But this! This, I could not bear. I had been promised that Starshine would be with me until I did not need him and I could not imagine a future in which that day would come. He had always been there. His face would appear at my window every morning when I awoke as a child. He would call and laugh his almost human laugh and I would fling myself up and over his neck still in my nightclothes and off we would fly through the courtyard until my Father's servants would scold us into stopping.

The chickens would screech and scatter, fruit baskets would overturn and children would scream in laughter and cheer us on. Those were my earliest memories and my happiest times. Having no brothers or sisters and never having known my mother, Starshine had been my closest companion. And now he was dead. Murdered. By a creature not of this world. That much was certain. 

Having journeyed throughout the land for many years, I had seen and known and touched and experienced almost everything that the wild world had to offer and in no place and time had I ever seen a viper such as the one that had struck down my horse. The thought of the thing made the blood boil in my veins, made my hands turn into fists, made my heart give way to hate. The thing my Father had warned me about. Hate. The one thing that could destroy love, he said. Never hate, he warned me. Love only and live peacefully with all things, if that be possible. And having said that, he trained me in every type of warfare and fighting mode and skilled me with sword and bow and dagger and cunning strategy. 

But now all his teaching dissolved in me as I explored this new emotion and let it turn me in it's tide. As I covered the still form in a mound of stones and hid it with branches, I wondered what I might do now that I had no one to talk to and no one to help me bear the burdens. Until this day, I had ever looked forward to tomorrow and hardly known a confusion or misdirection or loss of insight. My life now seemed like a blank slate, cleared of all mission and purpose.

I completed the task of hiding Starshine's body and picked up the items I thought most needed and started down the hill, refusing to look back. For the first time in my life, I could not connect with Starshine's thoughts in my mind and I could not feel his spirit walking with me. He was gone and I was abandoned and that's all I knew. 

I walked for miles until I came to a brook flowing with crystal waters and shaded by willow trees and gray boulders and vines hanging full of berries and strange fruit. I had no appetite but drank gratefully of the water and lay exhausted upon the soft grass staring into the changing sky. My face darkened with sun and anger. Then I began to question. And I began to twist within my mind all of the promises that had been made to me and I began to doubt. And with the doubt, I began to lose all sense of direction and with that, last of all, I began to lose hope.

CARELESS WHISPER......blues version.......holey moley!!!

                                                                         

                                                                   

                                            🌹 Le Voo Voo🌹           

HERE'S A QUARTER..............