In My Garden

Yesterday morning I took a little walk in my garden, to see how all of my plants were doing after the hail we had had the night before.  The little beans, peas, and greens looked unscathed, but my onions were horrible.  They looked as though they had been stepped on in places, while others had been chopped off cleanly, 6″ above the ground.

“How strange,” I mused, wondering if the dog was responsible for the mess.  Just then the neighbors cat made it’s presence known, and my dog ran through the onions barking.  It was not the dog.

“Lord, what caused this?”  I prayed.  The answer came clearly that I had little creatures wreaking havoc.  The same little creatures I had been told about a few days before, when I asked why it was so difficult to pull or dig root crops from my garden.

Frustrated, I told the creatures to stop!  They were no longer allowed to cause trouble in my yard.  Almost audibly, I *heard* them ask, “Can we go there?”  and knew they were pointing to the neighbors yard. 

I told them to go back where they came from.  They left for the neighbors yard.  I continued to survey the garden, then stopped to pull some weeds.  I *heard* laughter, as something rushed past me.  Looking around, I saw nothing.  I continued to pull weeds.  Then something landed on my head.  I reached up, expecting to shoo a bug away, but I found dirt.

A little handful of dirt was in my hair!

Glancing around, to see which child had snuck up on me, I realized that they were all in the front yard, playing.

“Who did that?”  I asked.  Again I *heard* laughter and the sound of little feet running, scampering through my garden.  “Didn’t I tell you to leave?”  I demanded.

“Why can’t we help you,”  came the response.

“Help me?  You were causing trouble before”  I reminded them.

“We can pull weeds.”  “We can help flowers to grow.”  “Do you want the peony plants to get bigger?”  “Would you like more iris and raspberries?”  The voices rang out. 

Not knowing what to make of the commotion, I continued pulling weeds.  I could feel the presence of these little men, and their desire to be useful.

Soon the weeds were coming out of the ground by the handful, roots and all.  Quack grass was pulling up, with 18-30 inch runners in tow.  The ground felt alive and loose, even in areas that have only been worked by hand, and not yet this year.

After observing these creatures for a few hours I came to a few conclusions about them:

• They are similar to Leprechauns or Mono-pods, in their original state.
• They are generally happy.
• They can cause trouble, if given orders to do so.
• They live above the ground, but have great ability with what is right under the ground, such as root crops and things that grow by tubers. 

If you have had any such visitors to your yard, I would love to hear your tale.

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Be Carefull What You Wish For…

The Hill-man smiled knowingly, as he took the pouch, and leaned back against the dragon.  From a side pocket he withdrew a packet of small, white, thin papers and carefully separated one of them.  The rest he stored away, his lips pursed, and eyebrows knit tightly.  How he wished that he could have brought a pipe, but Kassandra had been against it.  She had said it would not travel well, and was better left behind.  Now, as his leg throbbed, he wondered how he had ever been talked out of leaving his home.

He opened the pouch, and inhaled deeply.  Inside was a mixture of Hare’s Mirth, Orange peel, imported from a tropical out-cropping of his native continent, and some small green sticks.  He gathered a small amount, and crushing it in his fingers, evenly spread it on the paper.  Then he rolled it, like a cigarette, and lit it with a twig from the fire.

As he inhaled the fragrant smoke, the pain in his leg eased, and his mind cleared.  For a moment, he was very aware of their situation:  Of Kassandra’s intentions, and of the monks coming up the mountain.  Then his mind flew far away, and he knew even more.

* * * * *

What was this strange mixture he smoked?  What properties did it have?  Was it just a pain reliever, or was it a hallucinogen, and what affect did it have on the hill-man?

As we considered these questions, we were reminded of other times when we had seen a similar mixtures.  Once we saw someone meditating, with the aid of an incense made of these ingredients.  We had quickly left that scene…not wanting to know any more.  Another time, in another story, a group of men, who were traveling in the winter had stopped at an empty cabin for the night.  Just as they were retiring for the night, the leader had thrown something of the sort into the embers of the fire, and sleep had quickly taken the group.  So, what ever this was, it was not uncommon, and evidently, used for a wide variety of things.

I found this very inspiring, and decided to make up some of this mixture.  The results have been delightful…

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Dragons Over Russia

One summer, growing up, I was awakened every morning by sonic booms.  It was fighter jets flighing overhead.  They were heading to an open area where they could safely (for those on the ground) practice dog fighting.

My brother and I often spent the first part of our day watching their antics, loving every minute of it. 

We kept track of individual planes by carefully following the sun’s reflection, as the jets flashed silver across the sky.

Dog fighting.

That was my first thought when I saw the flashes in the cloudless wintery sky, the day we discovered Kassandra on the mountain top.  (We had just asked God if she was alone, when we saw the flashes.)  I watched, wondering if it was a military exercise, or something more serious.  Kathrine saw them too; but, instead of asking who, she asked, “what are they?”

It soon became apparent that the flashes were reflections off the scales of seven young silver dragons.  They rolled and frolicked through the crisp air, like a bunch of puppies; up, over, under and around six statey red dragons, who soared steadily northward.  The red dragons were of middle age, large and disciplined.  All were heading back, the way they had come; now that their leader lay dead on the cliffs below.

Seemingly, Kassandra had been attempting to aid her ex-boyfriend, a native born hill-man, who was now a man of influence in Europe.

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The Monks and The Hill-man

Kassandra, perched on a peak of the Ural Mountains, with the dead dragon seemed so alone; but as Michelle (the author), Kathrine and I discussed her perdicament, that weekend, we saw that she was not quite stranded, nor alone.  A hill-man leaned against the dragons side, his leg badly injured.

Coming up the other side of the mountain where monks.  Some were clothed in rough fabric and furs, while others looked more Tibetan.  As we peered down the mountain’s side, we could see an ancient monastery.

The monastery was square, with a courtyard, and a well in the middle.  The wall was wide with rooms in it, and the central building, which stood in line with the main gates, was also square.  Snow had blanketed everything during the night, and continued to fall on this grey morning, as the monks slowly climbed.

Michelle had no idea how this fit into her story.  What she could tell us was that the main character, Lincoln, was searching for Kassandra, on behalf of his best friend, her late husband.

As we watched, Kassandra added some twigs to the fire and rising, spoke angrily to the hill-man.  He shrugged, looked down at his right hand, then stealing himself, he looked her in the eyes and spoke calmly.  For a moment she tensed, lips sealed tight.  Then she turned and marched into a cave, where she retrieved a small packet from a saddle bag.  This she gave to the hill-man, and, without saying a word, left.

For the beginning of this story, visit here and here.

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Characters With Minds of their Own

When Tolkien was writing ” The Lord of the Rings” series, he hadn’t planned on including Aragorn. 

Imagine…No Aragorn. No king to return to the throne…

According to Tolkien’s statement, recorded in “The Inklings,” he had not known Aragorn existed, until the hobbits ran into him, in the Inn at Bree.

Books that write themselves and characters that don’t follow instructions…I am told it is not uncommon. 

 My friends and I have seen much of this as we work on novels, which grow and expand, but never seem to end.  As time travels on, the characters become more and more real, until they are old friends (or enemies, as the case may be).

These characters have interesting, unpredictable ways of contacting those involved in their lives, which takes me back to the strange smells. (See “Do You Smell What I Smell“?)

The day of the strange smells I called my friend, Kathrine, to pray.

Moments after we began asking God, the meaning of the smells, He showed us a woman clothed in black armor and a many horned helmet, standing near the peak of a snow capped mountain.  That was the Latte.  Near her, lying dead, was a huge red dragon.  Hence, the smell of something decomposing.

Now we knew it was something fiction, but which story?  Or was this something new? 

As we continued to watch and pray, asking God what he wanted us to know, it became apparent that this woman was some where in the Ural Mountains, and that her dragon had died of natural causes, even though it was not overly old.  We saw that she had been there long enough to have a small camp fire going.  That accounted for the smoke.

She stood facing the fire, despare clouding her stature. Suddenly she squared he shoulders, and marched up the cliff.  She surveyed the land, looking for a way down. She could see nothing but wind smoothed snow, stretched out like a slide to the clouds below.  When she returned to the fire, she removed her helmet, shaking out her long dark hair.  Thus revealing her identity: 

 Kassandra.  A ruler form a foreign planet, a character from a mutual friends story.

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Do you Smell what I Smell?

Have you ever caught a strange, unexplainable sent drifting through your home?  A sent that had no reason to be there? 

While washing dishes, one morning, I smelled a strange odor:  That of something dead, pungent and ripe.

I quickly looked around, seeking the source.  Then I raided every nook and cranny of the kitchen, (the only room where the smell was present) seeking to find what had gone bad.  With no luck, I returned to dish washing, only to smell fresh cigarette smoke.

The smoke smell seemed to be coming from one corner of the living room.  It crept along the floor, through the kitchen, then down the stairs to the front door, where it accumulated, before tumbling into the basement, where it dissipated.

Now, no one had smoked in my home for over a year, and no one was smoking outside my home.  As I continued to look for the source, feeling the walls, to make sure it wasn’t an electrical fire, Benjamin came to me, proclaiming, “I smell cigarette smoke, and it is coming from over there…” pointing to the corner of the living room.  “May be it is neighbor Larry’s,” but our neighbor was not home.

After about half an hour of detective work, by my children and me, we returned to our chores, wondering if the smoke smell would go away.

Later that day I smelled a latté, rich with whipped cream and sugar.  This time I didn’t bother to look, instead, I called one of my best friends to pray.

This kind of activity could only mean that God wanted to alert me to something going on in our world, fact or fantasy.

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