October 28, 2002

• Since I spent a lot of time writing this, I figured I might as well share.  It’s not finished and to tell the truth it might not ever get finished.  Especially if people pick it to death.  After all I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way.

  
  

       My mountains are rugged, high waterfalls cascade through deep chasms. Trees of all kind, Aspen, Oak, Myrtle, Elm, there are more than I can name here.  Gems and minerals abound though none are mine.  Their value doesn’t matter, not to me.  Everything I need is in these mountains, it is home.  However this is not where I started.  I began in a mountain ringed city.  

  
  

       My name is Moira Myandred, my fathers name is Vishmar and my mothers Andromeda.  They met in Inhoven where they were raised.  My grandfather is a wheelright and he and grandmother Myandred live above their business.  It’s not a rich trade but they never starved.  My mothers parents, also from Inhoven, sell leather, cloth and fur.  My parents own a dry goods store.  Candles, torches, packs, waterskins, compasses, everything a housewife, the adventurer or ordinary traveller would need.   I had an older brother, he died in a hunting accident.  I have a younger brother still living.  He, as my parents say, was the “happy accident”.  No replacement for my dead brother, but he does ease my parents grief somewhat.

  
  

       When I was two hundred my parents sent me to the druids to be tested for strengths.  My parents were honored and the druids shocked when I tested high in druidic abilities.  They all expected another tradesman in a long line of tradespeople.  For two hundred and fifty human years I studied with the druids.  As apprentices go I was not the brightest nor the dullest.  Some things came quickly like healing.  Some came slower like wilderness lore and knowledge of nature.  Mainly because I was raised in town and not used to such things.  I had spent most of my younger years inside shops of one kind or another.  

  
  

       Oddly enough, even though I was not raised around animals, I am empathic with them and usually able to handle most.  That is if they have any intelligence.  Did you know turkeys are so stupid that if a surprise rain comes they will look up until they drown.  It’s very hard to be empathetic to that kind of creature.

  
  

       The first time I bonded with an animal I was fishing at the bottom of a waterfall.  I was knee deep in a quiet pool tickling fish onto the riverbank.  I glanced up to see a bear cub at the edge of the forest watching me.  I could sense he was afraid and when I stepped closer to shore I could see he was starving.  With matted fur and dull eyes he started to turn and run.  I reached out with my heart and mind and sent soothing tones to him.  He stopped and turned back to me.  We spent the next  month on the banks of the river getting to know and trust each other.  We then spent the next eighty years learning and growing together.  When he died of old age, fat and sassy, I grieved so deeply my druid teachers despaired of my recovery.  They spent a year trying to reason with me and after that sent me home.  Two years later I was well enough in heart and mind to return to my studies.  It was a further twenty five years before I bonded again.  This time it was a wolf.  She lived fifty years and when she too died I had her daughter to help assuage my grief.  We mourned together and healed together, and as a result we too bonded.  She lived a remarkable eighty years and by the time she died I was through with my apprenticeship. 

  
  

       After I left school, I left civilization.  My teachers had taught me an appreciation of the mountains and I roamed them freely.  Spending years learning their secrets and delving their mysteries.  I know where gems and gold are and I know where the best wild mushrooms grow.  I would rather have the gems in the mountain and the mushrooms in my belly.  It’s where they both belong. 

  
  

  That’s all I have for now…like I said it’s not finished and may not ever be but hope you like it. 

  • 5:21 pm
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