Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
*stays ahead of Zooey's posse* 
There are a few swears in this chapter.
It's all untrue... mistakes are mine, song lyrics belong to their author(s)...
end of chapter 11:
--------
Ed must have got into the car while I was in the field, I fumed. Never mind that I had my notebook with me at those times. Or maybe I'd left it in the car outside the B&B, and left it unlocked... The possibilities chased one another around the inside of my head for most of that night. The fitful dozes I achieved at intervals were mercifully free of any dreams at all.
The next morning, I made a poorly-received apology to the landlady, and set off for another week of camping on the other side of my field area.
-----------
Chapter 12:
-----------
All is one, all is mind,
All is lost and you find, all is dream
The dreams started again that night, as if nothing had happened. In my dream-world, years passed, and Ewain had made the village his home. Mag had her first child, a son, and then a daughter two years later. Her instruction under Eleri the Ritemaster continued. The care of her children was shared by other women in the village, as Mag's education was considered of primary importance. She was happy enough with Alun... but she remained fascinated by Ewain. She was not alone in this; Ewain proved to be a charming and charismatic man, and he became a well-respected member of the community.
"You should learn to be more wary of him," Eleri had told Mag/me in one dream. "He belongs to Fire, and you must be cautious with fire."
"You say we must be cautious with those of Water too," I replied. "And Earth and Air. Each has aspects to be wary of, as each person has aspects they prefer to keep hidden, or so you have taught me. Why should I be more wary of him than of you, or Alun, or Moryn, or anyone else?"
"The elements manifest differently in different people. Fire consumes some, as it did my mate. Moryn's Fire does not consume him. It is too soon to say if the same can be said of Ewain."
"It's been years!" I said, incredulous. "He has worked very hard, and has won our respect and trust."
Eleri had sighed then. "One day, you may learn that caution is best carried at all times. Now, stop mooning over that man and repeat the ritual again for me."
Figments of my imagination. Anything else was unthinkable.
The landscape I mapped over the next few days became even more eerily familiar, and I realised I was walking over the area inhabited by the village in my dream. I remembered the geophys had shown a lot of reflections in this area, and there was a barrow nearby. The stone circle was just visible on a distant hill.
I came across the barrow at one point, and from some distance away I could see the cordon around it, and evidence of excavation. Dr. Lawson must have sent a team out here, I thought as I came closer, outcrop by outcrop.
A niggling sense of... invasion grew as I approached. It didn't seem right that we should come out here and disturb people's graves. Did it matter that they were millennia dead and no one remembered who they were? Grave-robbing was grave-robbing.
I'd never had a problem with archaeology before, and like many people, I'd happily goggled at remains of Egyptian mummies and the contents of their tombs in museums. Maybe it was just because I'd spent so much time in the area... or maybe because my dreams had been conjuring stories about the people who'd once lived here. They were more real to me now, despite knowing that my dreams were just dreams, than the inhabitants of a dusty tomb in Giza.
The dig team wasn't around – either they were having the day off, or they'd left for the winter and hadn't bothered to clean up after themselves. I finally reached the barrow, and looked under the large, tilting roof stone, down into the pit.
Sourceless grief assailed me, and outrage beneath that.
"She's gone."
They'd taken her. Hot tears stung my eyes as I looked at the place where my mentor had been returned to the Earth she had loved and served for most of her long life. At the empty space where her bones should have stayed, embraced by the life-giving soil and surrounded by her treasured items. Who had stolen her, desecrated this place? Why would anyone do such a thing?
Something of my self began to claw its way back to the front of my mind then, and I dimly realised that I was crouching at the edge of the excavation, crying out my grief for... who, a figment of my imagination? I scrambled up, backing away, and fell over. Up again, I turned my back, striding away even as a corner of my mind wanted to go back, to do something. I had to get away from there.
Ten minutes later, breathing hard, I dropped down somewhere out of sight of the barrow. Pulled off the backpack and the beanie, and the mp3 player I hadn't even heard for the last quarter of an hour. Scrubbed my hands through my hair, then gripped it, then let go and hugged my knees.
What the fuck was that?
"What the FUCK was that?!" My voice sounded constricted, panicky. "What the hell just happened?"
No one answered, just the sound of wind shushing over the grass and rocks. I wanted someone to appear and tell me I'd imagined all of it; or better yet, for Glen to wake me up in our bed at home. But that didn't happen. I was trapped.
I tried to calm down, and think things through. I took deep, slow breaths, and wiped the tears from my face. Maybe my blood sugar was low, so I took out a muesli bar and ate it.
All right. Presumably Dr. Lawson had sent a team to excavate something out here before his funding had run out. A barrow is an easier target than, say, the interior of a sizable stone circle. For a moment my heart clenched painfully at the thought of that place being dug up, but I pushed the feelings of horror away. Just another hill!
When I'd first come out here, I had liked the area, feeling comfortable and possessive of my solitude here. So, there was some sort of attachment. And I didn't like Dr. Lawson. He had come out here and invaded my territory, so to speak. Just as I'd felt Ed had invaded it when I'd first met him. Digging up an old body was a far greater transgression than Ed's mere presence had been. And those dreams I'd been having had made me excessively sentimental about this place, and the old, unknown inhabitants.
Because they were unknown. That had not really been Eleri's barrow, because Eleri had never existed outside of my head. It was someone's barrow, obviously, but even the best efforts of archaeology could not tell us their name, as the Celts at that time had no written language.
I stayed sat there, head in my hands, until my reaction had faded, and I could believe my own explanation. But I didn't go back to that barrow. Better not to risk my fragile equilibrium.
-----
I was afraid to go to sleep that night, and for a long time I thought I never would, staring up at the roof of my tent. But weariness overcame me eventually.
Oil lamps filled every niche in Eleri's hut, but their light still seemed insufficient. The Ritemaster's health had been declining for the last year, and now she hadn't left her bed for nearly a month. I had been living with her, trying to bring her back to health, but I knew it was hopeless. Eleri was an old woman, and her time was nearly done.
I wasn't ready to let her go, though. My third child had died only a few months before. He had only been an infant, and not as strong as the first two. But my heart didn't care that the birthing-woman said he was weak, or that Eleri said that the elements were out of balance in his little body. He was still my baby - but he had died. And in the midst of mine and Alun's grief, Eleri had become bedridden, and I took her care upon myself. Alun had accused me once, angrily, of abandoning him and my two older children. I had responded, equally angrily, that I had a duty and a responsibility to Eleri as well. Furthermore, as her acolyte, custom dictated that I spend as much time with her as possible, learning as much as I could.
But perhaps Alun had had a point. Many days I spent weeping on Eleri's frail shoulder, for my lost baby, and for her impending death as well. Eleri never tolerated the latter, if I spoke of it.
"We must all return to the Earth sooner or later," she kept saying. It had the hollowness of a platitude when I thought about my tiny son, but she at least had lived a long life, and had accepted her mortality. I hadn't accepted it yet, however.
And on this night, she was dying.
Her voice was barely audible over her wheezing breath and fits of coughing. I felt so helpless – I had buried sacrifices on the hilltop, inside the circle of wooden posts, begging the Earth to delay its claim on Eleri, but to no avail. If she'd known, she would have told me that there was no delaying this, but I ignored that wisdom from myself, as I would have from her.
"There should be drums," she was whispering, telling me of an obscure ritual. "As always. Drums are the Earth's heartbeat, the spirits respond to them..."
"I know this," I reminded her softly. Her mind had been sharp, but now I wondered if it was wandering in her last hours.
"Listen! You will probably never need this ritual, but the knowledge must not be lost! If the place sacred to Earth becomes corrupted, if any such place does, someone will need this lore. To call the Earth spirits back, to wake them, and cleanse the place."
I subsided, and strained to hear her faint words. Tears stood in my eyes, and I tried not to think that these might be the last words she would speak to me.
"... four others, inside, besides yourself. One of each, Earth, Sky, Fire and Water, for balance. And you, giving more weight to Earth. Your blood..."
The words were lost in a coughing fit, and I offered Eleri the healing tea she had been living off for so many days. She waved it away, a feeble gesture that broke my heart still further. I swallowed a sob.
"Please, don't..." I began. "I need you. We all need you. I don't know everything yet..."
"No one does," Eleri breathed, her grey eyes as hard on mine as ever. "You are of Earth. You have strength, and you will need all of it. Let your heart guide you if your knowledge falls short." She sighed, exhausted. "Your family needs you, and soon, the village will too."
The Ritemaster stopped to cough again, each one weaker than the one before. Fear gripped my heart.
"Is it ready? My barrow?"
"Yes," I sobbed. She had chosen the place where she would rest, and the men had levered a large slab of stone on top of the two boulders that were already there, their roots in the bedrock. A grave had been dug.
"You will know what to do," she sighed.
And was gone.
The oil lamps flickered in a gust of wind, as if in homage, but my tears blinded me.
------------
There are a few swears in this chapter.
It's all untrue... mistakes are mine, song lyrics belong to their author(s)...
end of chapter 11:
--------
Ed must have got into the car while I was in the field, I fumed. Never mind that I had my notebook with me at those times. Or maybe I'd left it in the car outside the B&B, and left it unlocked... The possibilities chased one another around the inside of my head for most of that night. The fitful dozes I achieved at intervals were mercifully free of any dreams at all.
The next morning, I made a poorly-received apology to the landlady, and set off for another week of camping on the other side of my field area.
-----------
Chapter 12:
-----------
All is one, all is mind,
All is lost and you find, all is dream
The dreams started again that night, as if nothing had happened. In my dream-world, years passed, and Ewain had made the village his home. Mag had her first child, a son, and then a daughter two years later. Her instruction under Eleri the Ritemaster continued. The care of her children was shared by other women in the village, as Mag's education was considered of primary importance. She was happy enough with Alun... but she remained fascinated by Ewain. She was not alone in this; Ewain proved to be a charming and charismatic man, and he became a well-respected member of the community.
"You should learn to be more wary of him," Eleri had told Mag/me in one dream. "He belongs to Fire, and you must be cautious with fire."
"You say we must be cautious with those of Water too," I replied. "And Earth and Air. Each has aspects to be wary of, as each person has aspects they prefer to keep hidden, or so you have taught me. Why should I be more wary of him than of you, or Alun, or Moryn, or anyone else?"
"The elements manifest differently in different people. Fire consumes some, as it did my mate. Moryn's Fire does not consume him. It is too soon to say if the same can be said of Ewain."
"It's been years!" I said, incredulous. "He has worked very hard, and has won our respect and trust."
Eleri had sighed then. "One day, you may learn that caution is best carried at all times. Now, stop mooning over that man and repeat the ritual again for me."
Figments of my imagination. Anything else was unthinkable.
The landscape I mapped over the next few days became even more eerily familiar, and I realised I was walking over the area inhabited by the village in my dream. I remembered the geophys had shown a lot of reflections in this area, and there was a barrow nearby. The stone circle was just visible on a distant hill.
I came across the barrow at one point, and from some distance away I could see the cordon around it, and evidence of excavation. Dr. Lawson must have sent a team out here, I thought as I came closer, outcrop by outcrop.
A niggling sense of... invasion grew as I approached. It didn't seem right that we should come out here and disturb people's graves. Did it matter that they were millennia dead and no one remembered who they were? Grave-robbing was grave-robbing.
I'd never had a problem with archaeology before, and like many people, I'd happily goggled at remains of Egyptian mummies and the contents of their tombs in museums. Maybe it was just because I'd spent so much time in the area... or maybe because my dreams had been conjuring stories about the people who'd once lived here. They were more real to me now, despite knowing that my dreams were just dreams, than the inhabitants of a dusty tomb in Giza.
The dig team wasn't around – either they were having the day off, or they'd left for the winter and hadn't bothered to clean up after themselves. I finally reached the barrow, and looked under the large, tilting roof stone, down into the pit.
Sourceless grief assailed me, and outrage beneath that.
"She's gone."
They'd taken her. Hot tears stung my eyes as I looked at the place where my mentor had been returned to the Earth she had loved and served for most of her long life. At the empty space where her bones should have stayed, embraced by the life-giving soil and surrounded by her treasured items. Who had stolen her, desecrated this place? Why would anyone do such a thing?
Something of my self began to claw its way back to the front of my mind then, and I dimly realised that I was crouching at the edge of the excavation, crying out my grief for... who, a figment of my imagination? I scrambled up, backing away, and fell over. Up again, I turned my back, striding away even as a corner of my mind wanted to go back, to do something. I had to get away from there.
Ten minutes later, breathing hard, I dropped down somewhere out of sight of the barrow. Pulled off the backpack and the beanie, and the mp3 player I hadn't even heard for the last quarter of an hour. Scrubbed my hands through my hair, then gripped it, then let go and hugged my knees.
What the fuck was that?
"What the FUCK was that?!" My voice sounded constricted, panicky. "What the hell just happened?"
No one answered, just the sound of wind shushing over the grass and rocks. I wanted someone to appear and tell me I'd imagined all of it; or better yet, for Glen to wake me up in our bed at home. But that didn't happen. I was trapped.
I tried to calm down, and think things through. I took deep, slow breaths, and wiped the tears from my face. Maybe my blood sugar was low, so I took out a muesli bar and ate it.
All right. Presumably Dr. Lawson had sent a team to excavate something out here before his funding had run out. A barrow is an easier target than, say, the interior of a sizable stone circle. For a moment my heart clenched painfully at the thought of that place being dug up, but I pushed the feelings of horror away. Just another hill!
When I'd first come out here, I had liked the area, feeling comfortable and possessive of my solitude here. So, there was some sort of attachment. And I didn't like Dr. Lawson. He had come out here and invaded my territory, so to speak. Just as I'd felt Ed had invaded it when I'd first met him. Digging up an old body was a far greater transgression than Ed's mere presence had been. And those dreams I'd been having had made me excessively sentimental about this place, and the old, unknown inhabitants.
Because they were unknown. That had not really been Eleri's barrow, because Eleri had never existed outside of my head. It was someone's barrow, obviously, but even the best efforts of archaeology could not tell us their name, as the Celts at that time had no written language.
I stayed sat there, head in my hands, until my reaction had faded, and I could believe my own explanation. But I didn't go back to that barrow. Better not to risk my fragile equilibrium.
-----
I was afraid to go to sleep that night, and for a long time I thought I never would, staring up at the roof of my tent. But weariness overcame me eventually.
Oil lamps filled every niche in Eleri's hut, but their light still seemed insufficient. The Ritemaster's health had been declining for the last year, and now she hadn't left her bed for nearly a month. I had been living with her, trying to bring her back to health, but I knew it was hopeless. Eleri was an old woman, and her time was nearly done.
I wasn't ready to let her go, though. My third child had died only a few months before. He had only been an infant, and not as strong as the first two. But my heart didn't care that the birthing-woman said he was weak, or that Eleri said that the elements were out of balance in his little body. He was still my baby - but he had died. And in the midst of mine and Alun's grief, Eleri had become bedridden, and I took her care upon myself. Alun had accused me once, angrily, of abandoning him and my two older children. I had responded, equally angrily, that I had a duty and a responsibility to Eleri as well. Furthermore, as her acolyte, custom dictated that I spend as much time with her as possible, learning as much as I could.
But perhaps Alun had had a point. Many days I spent weeping on Eleri's frail shoulder, for my lost baby, and for her impending death as well. Eleri never tolerated the latter, if I spoke of it.
"We must all return to the Earth sooner or later," she kept saying. It had the hollowness of a platitude when I thought about my tiny son, but she at least had lived a long life, and had accepted her mortality. I hadn't accepted it yet, however.
And on this night, she was dying.
Her voice was barely audible over her wheezing breath and fits of coughing. I felt so helpless – I had buried sacrifices on the hilltop, inside the circle of wooden posts, begging the Earth to delay its claim on Eleri, but to no avail. If she'd known, she would have told me that there was no delaying this, but I ignored that wisdom from myself, as I would have from her.
"There should be drums," she was whispering, telling me of an obscure ritual. "As always. Drums are the Earth's heartbeat, the spirits respond to them..."
"I know this," I reminded her softly. Her mind had been sharp, but now I wondered if it was wandering in her last hours.
"Listen! You will probably never need this ritual, but the knowledge must not be lost! If the place sacred to Earth becomes corrupted, if any such place does, someone will need this lore. To call the Earth spirits back, to wake them, and cleanse the place."
I subsided, and strained to hear her faint words. Tears stood in my eyes, and I tried not to think that these might be the last words she would speak to me.
"... four others, inside, besides yourself. One of each, Earth, Sky, Fire and Water, for balance. And you, giving more weight to Earth. Your blood..."
The words were lost in a coughing fit, and I offered Eleri the healing tea she had been living off for so many days. She waved it away, a feeble gesture that broke my heart still further. I swallowed a sob.
"Please, don't..." I began. "I need you. We all need you. I don't know everything yet..."
"No one does," Eleri breathed, her grey eyes as hard on mine as ever. "You are of Earth. You have strength, and you will need all of it. Let your heart guide you if your knowledge falls short." She sighed, exhausted. "Your family needs you, and soon, the village will too."
The Ritemaster stopped to cough again, each one weaker than the one before. Fear gripped my heart.
"Is it ready? My barrow?"
"Yes," I sobbed. She had chosen the place where she would rest, and the men had levered a large slab of stone on top of the two boulders that were already there, their roots in the bedrock. A grave had been dug.
"You will know what to do," she sighed.
And was gone.
The oil lamps flickered in a gust of wind, as if in homage, but my tears blinded me.
------------
Actually, if he was in your story you could always say that all the 'big animals' had run away and you'd only managed to get him a small rodent skin, a mouse perhaps..
I am so bad...
). 
^You're cracked! But in such a good way!
or a shrew, perhaps? Tamed or otherwise.... 
