WARRIORS OF THE WAY, EPISODE ONE Starshine Is Lost to Me

WARRIORS OF THE WAY
EPISODE ONE
STARSHINE IS LOST TO ME



      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............

https://bluevineyard.blogspot.com/2019/08/warriors-of-way-episode-2.html

                                        

               True Strength by John Dreamer

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 long years now and rubbed away the pain in my toes. I ran a hand through my long dark mass of curls and caught it in a tangle. Thinking I should do something about it, I looked into a deerskin bag for a brush and then threw it aside violently. "Who cares?" I asked the growing darkness. "I don't care! There is no one here to care anymore!"


      Loneliness gripped my heart and I threw myself down upon the blanket and covered myself with another and 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 and watched me 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 nothing less than the warrior I had trained to be, determined and hardened and heartless! (That was the plan any way.) That had always been the plan though at heart I had remained the girl I had always been despite my many perilous adventures.


    Looking down at the sparkling water in the brook, I dipped my fingers to test it's warmth and quickly decided a bath was in order. Slipping off my garments, I plunged into it's cooling 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 and cold 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 and reached for the fragrant soap I had purchased somewhere along my travels. Washing my hair, I remembered the woman who had cared for me as a child and spoke to me oft times in strange words that I could not understand but always her soft voice had comforted me and made me long for my mother.


     I stood for a few moments in the sun on the banks of the brook and let the breeze dry away the drops of water. 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 further because deep inside my heart I had always heard a voice that said softly to me, "Someday you will know." But that day had never come.


      I dressed quickly in fresh garments of soft deerskin and velvet, my preferred fabrics, not the preference of the royal house to which I was born but comfortable and luxurious 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 tangles from my dark hair, I tied it up with strings of garnet and leather and let it fall down my back in uncontrollable curls. Starshine had loved to pull my hair when I had dared to walk in front of him and snorted in amusement when I protested and pulled his own black mane. The memory of it brought tears to my eyes but I brushed them away and 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 and it's smoothness gave me solace. 

     Sitting upon the blanket, I looked around me at the marvelous berries hanging from the vines and bushes and I grew hungry and my mouth watered at the sight. Breakfast beckoned, but first I sought to examine the pearl white stones I had collected at the bottom of the brook. I held three of them in my hands and turned them round and round then 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 white 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 must. I must!


     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 and of the life I no longer felt a part of. I held my breath and waited for the watcher to return but it 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.....................

WARRIORS OF THE WAY EPISODE TWO What Do I Do Now?

WARRIORS OF THE WAY
EPISODE TWO
WHAT DO I DO NOW?






          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 of doing 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 new 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 but I had often 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. For I had been a rebellious child in my heart and had no desire to be mature and serious. Then a teacher had been assigned to rein me in and raise me up in the way I should go. And I made his life miserable though I loved him with all of my heart. Until the day that he, too, had absented himself from my life. Like all the others....................


     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 my life in which that day would occur. 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 catch us and 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. Of that I was certain. 


     Having journeyed throughout the land for many years, I had seen and known and touched and experienced almost everything that the  world had to offer (or so I thought) 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 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 tall flowered bushes and others 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 darkening 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. My mind became my enemy.

                      TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE THREE...........


                    "Cold" - Jorge Méndez (Sad Piano & Violin Instrumental)

ATTICS OF THE RICH

Attics of The Rich

(a nonsense must read blog posted on

 November 32nd)

Cricket bats at the ready, boys!

We gotta clean out the attics of the rich

And decipher kryptonite particles

Written in the tea leaves of Cypress

Before it is too late.

Go on now, go on!

Ain't no sense being stubborn

Mules got souls, too, I know that

But you turkeys 

Gonna end up on somebody's plate come Thursday.

I got me a cannon 

On the top of that hill

I'm gonna light it up and fire it

At Jupiter one of these hot damn days

You just watch me out of your blind eyes!

Weasels! Weasels! Everywhere!

Just look at 'em! Wearing lil ole heels

And mink coats and mini dresses

Made out of mp3 players

And fine copper wires.

I says to my buddy the other day

I says: Hambone, where you think we goin'?

And he says: I don't know 'bout you, Plumber

But I'm goin' to sleep!

And I says: Well, bring me back a souvenir.

Rose, my baby Rose, (you know the one)

She smile all the time and it make me suspicious

She even smile when she cryin'!

I bought her a turquoise Thunderbird to drive herself crazy in

But she put it in a blender and made one of them smoothies.

Did ya'll see that news story the other day?

'Bout the end of the 5th dimension

And the ramifications of the non-totalitarian be-bop society

And the effects of Popsicle dreams on a left handed 

Son of a moonshine maker in Rockport, Cali-sumthin-er-nuther?

It gonna be the death of us all

The death of us all, I tells ya!

That and peanut butter left out in the sun

And shooting stars lying all over the ground

For kids to trip over and make airplanes out of.

But back to the attics of the rich

That's my call in life

I know that now. Me and my baby, Rose

Gonna clean out all them attics with cricket bats

And settle down in Whynot, Mississippi and sell gorilla cookies.

Uh huh. Sho 'nuff, we are. You just watch!

Gonna sell us enough gorilla cookies

To get our own attic.

             

  

                                      

©by the twisted Voo

Nov 4, 07

THE GREAT SCHEME OF THINGS for Professor Lance Strate

The Great Scheme of Things



Words don't fail him but sometimes thoughts
Are suspended in his head like helium balloons
Full of ideas, hopes, wishes, prayers
They pop in out of the ethereal
Out of the indigo blue and with a certainty
That almost frightens.

The world speaks to him in quiet voices
Unknown tongues that are somehow familiar
Pleas rise up to his ears from the forests
The green grass calls his name
As though he were a friend
And the rivers pay respect.

This land he exists in, survives in, lives in
Is a precious commodity to his soul
Sometimes it's easy to forget
With all the clamoring chatter of technology
Just where you came from
Until clear reality slaps you in the face.

But in his dreams, he sees the new born mountains
Hears the eagle's cry and rushing waters
Feels the breath of morning wind
Wash his face as innocent
As his beloved baby boy
And he remembers what is real.

Education is a wonderful thing, he thinks
But what really matters
Is the freedom to think in the silence of peace
Turn off the world, turn off the phone, turn off the news
And bask in the wonder of a rainbow filled sky
To gather his family in the ark of his arms.

The world has come so far!
And has so far to go!
He wonders if he'll see it come to it's fruition
Whatever that may be.........
But in the meantime, there are plans to be made
Work to be done, bridges to build.

Friends to be met, songs to be sung
Poetry to be written and dreams to be dreamed
What really matters cannot be found within four walls
Inside a box of computer chips, cell phones, fibre optics
Virtual reality, nanotechnology, holograms and milligrams
In the great scheme of things, those things matter little.

He knows what matters
He sees it in his children's faces
The smile on the lips of his wife
The giggles, the fun, the yelp of the dog
The laughter that makes the sun
At the end of a rainy day.

Life is hard
But life
Can be beautiful
If you make it so
And he makes it so
He makes it so.

©By Voo
September 23, 07
For Professor Lance Strate
As promised.