(...In KATE ; the "Cat-A-Crawler"...)
After pulling my back muscles this morning by getting up wrong from my meditation room chair, I hobbled down to my bedroom very slowly. After finally getting laid out flat on my back without further damaging myself, Helaina and Crystal were called to help fix my pain. After adjusting my composure to receive their healing, I was informed that my mental presence was not required while they worked on me.
Apparently the kids from my/(Lord Viskey's) "Council of Noble" were waiting in the wings, and livid with excitement for the opportunity to be with their "father". The first entity to take advantage of this opportunity was my ever animated "Minister of Entertainment," Angelica. She projected a mental image to me indicating that the relief shift workers had already replaced all the Council Girls duties for this weekend, and that freed up the whole gang for an adventure. Angelica insisted that we needed to go on a picnic, and Nicole spoke up immediately saying that she knew the perfect place.
In a moment or two, I felt the presence of Gabi, Manu, Terra, Noellen, Peter, Denise and Cindy, and we were in the northeast corner of the yard swooping in on a rather long "golf cart" appearing vehicle parked there. This was Nicole's "overland crawler" and I noticed that it had three rows of seats in it that would accommodate at least three passengers on each one. We were going to use it on a journey that would take us some distance away from our "Garden of the Galaxies" and beyond "Fantaris Secray" proper.
As I stood near by and visualized my entourage of small people piling into the thing from all four sides, I could see Gabi throwing up an arm and shouting, "shot gun!", which apparently earned her the honor of the passenger seat, front, far right side. I wasn't in any hurry to crawl in myself, because I was taking in the scene of all these elated kids, ecstatic to go on an excursion. Angelica suggested that "father" should have the privilege of the front seat, but I said that it was quite okay, and that I'd just sit in the back with my three "littlest" ones and enjoy the trip from there.
As everyone settled into the "buggy", Nicole was in the driver's seat, Manu was in the middle and Gabi was near the exit opening. The cart had no doors, just open sides and a segmented canopy just floating over our heads with no means of visible support. In the middle row, Noellen sat behind Nicole, Angelica in the middle, and Terra to the right side. Peter and Denise sat to the left in the back seat, and Cindy crawled up into my lap, in the back, right seat, for our exodus.
I reflected on previous soul flights where my "Overland Travels Coordinator," Nicole and I were in a one or two seat vehicle, and so I made the remark that "I didn't remember 'Eleanor' being so big". The overland crawler that I was thinking of, Nicole had named, "Eleanor", because that was an acronym for; "LNR", or "Land Navigation Rover," and it was decidedly more "intimate" feeling than this "jumbo sized" vehicle was.
Nicole turned and abruptly corrected me, saying, "She isn't. We're riding in 'Kate' today; this baby's my 'cat-a-crawler'". In an instant, the vehicle lunged forward, and I heard Nicole add, "She's my 'party cart'."
It was plain to see that Nicole had a large amount of pride for her overland vehicles, naming them, and defending their honor when one was mistaken for another, and it amused me to see someone so absorbed in what they enjoyed the most. For Nicole, I could tell, that it was the pure joy of feeling her soul in motion.
Just as soon as we began to move, there was nothing familiar about our surroundings. I could tell we were moving through some wide open space, but in a moment or two we came to a stop. Evidently, it was to pick up two more travelers. Stopping "Kate" out in the middle of an open field, I could tell there were short grasses growing all around for as far as I could see. It seemed like a hot, "late summery" sort of place, even as this cold January day slipped away from my mind. Surrounding us, the grasses were crisp, dullish green and dry. Standing there were two familiar children, I recognized as the brothers Mica and Jehwah. If I didn't know better, I could have guessed them to be Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn with their straw hats and cut off bib overalls.
While Mica piled in and "muscled" himself in between Terra and Angelica, Jehwah ran all the way around the back, to the left rear, where Peter met the larger boy's "high five" and crawled in beside us. From the seat just in front of me, Mica looked over his shoulder with a wide mischievous grin, and with an over exaggerated display of "getting comfortable", he stretched his arms up, out, and down on the girl's shoulders he was sitting in between.
Terra brushed his arm off her shoulder and proclaimed, "You're not that smooth goof ball," while Angelica brushed his other arm away with a more "subtle" indifference. Angelica looked at us all in the back seat, as if checking whether we were all ready to go again. She smiled at me and said, "Now you and Peter don't have to be the only guys there."
There was a time span where Nicole bounced us along in her cat-a-crawler and I watched the menagerie of children interacting with each other in every row of seats. I was mesmerized by all of the spirited cooperation and buoyant playfulness between these kids, sometimes bursting into a choir of ditties and songs that inspired yet another level of elation amongst the caravan. They knew how to have fun with the least amount of effort. While Jehwah and Peter played some kind of game with their hands flailing about in front of them, Denise and Cindy were cuddling me. Denise on the seat to my left, and Cindy on my right leg, facing her "adopted" older sister. Each were perfectly content in an extended hug with me; one arm each, around my back and their free one reaching tiny hands and fingers to the other across and in front of me.
I could see that we were ambling along on a back county road. It was narrow, dirt based and lined with tall plants thick with rather large bobbing yellow flowers. I felt a serenity and a peace; the sensation of having a place to go and a purpose for doing it, yet being carried along with no necessary effort on my part. I knew that we were all in good hands with Nicole's determination and motivation for doing what she loved most. We drove along this sunflower lined dirt road till we arrived at an isolated place where three dirt roads converged and one grassy and overgrown path lead off from that intersection towards the remaining direction. We were amid a sea of yellow, save for one area that seemed like a tunnel of green and brown. Here, I found that we were at the beginning of a much wilder looking path, and I noticed how much taller the sunflowers were than we. In that moment, I felt like I was no longer an "adult" in stature, but rather about the size of a young boy, at about twelve or thirteen years old.
We bailed out of Kate and met a morning air that felt cool and comfortable, as if in perfect compliment to an "Indian-Summer-like" day. The sky was bright with patches of feathery clouds moving nonchalantly that allowed the sun to poke through for brief moments before it "shied" back behind another. The air was thick with the smell of pollen and a sweetness that was both pleasant and relaxing.
No one was perplexed over the direction we were to go. With the grassy path disappearing into a thick and wild canopy of trees, our little troop of explorers knew that it was the only choice to make. The path looked more like a set of twin trails; like parallel tire ruts going off into the distance. It was both inviting and mysterious, and I walked in the middle of the crowd, picking the left rut instead of the right because a mud puddle was in that one. As I got past that puddle, I could hear Noellen exclaim, "Ew-w!", and I immediately knew she discovered the puddle a moment too late. I chuckled without looking, preferring the mind image over the actual scene, and a moment later, I heard what could only be described as a loud, "thwap!", and I knew Jehwah found the same puddle in far more "decisive" terms.
We walked on realizing that this was an abandoned road, neglected by time and it came to an abrupt end, where large tangled trees obscured the forward progress otherwise to be made. There was a creek beyond these trees, and I knew this as what in earlier times, would have been the proper place for a bridge to be. For now though, it had long since been gone. A continuation of our grassy path was revealed, off to our left. It became apparent because of it's pressed down grasses that led up a very minimal rise along an area where "field" edge met "woodland" edge. When we turned for the path, I could see the moving vanes of a windmill almost silently turning in the fading "morning-like" coolness. As we walked in a little further, it was evident that off to the side of this windmill, and perhaps, a quarter of its height lower, the roof of an ancient barn jutted upwards towards the now, crystal blue sky.
As we got to the end of our "alleged" road, I found our access path had opened up into a wider field of shorter grasses surrounded by the woodlands, tall undergrowth, a meandering stream. Nearly at the center of this area, the sturdy looking old barn rested beside the "quiet creaking" of moving wind mill blades. In our approach to the barn, I suddenly realized that Jehwah and Mica were carrying two very large picnic baskets and that Angelica and Gabi were wrestling with a rather large, loosely folded clump, that turned out to be an oversized picnic blanket. Until this moment, I didn't even realize these things were being brought with us on the short hike.
Nicole had been leading our pack in all the way, and at this moment she shouted, "This is it," after which, everyone else shouted with glee and success and ran in to set up our picnic zone. By my account, I'd have to say that the grass was too short to be considered a field, but too rough and course to be considered a lawn. It was soft and gentle to the touch though, and quite inviting to lay down upon because of how thick it was. Three of the bigger girls spread out the blanket, placing it, I suppose, about thirty feet or so, out from in front of the barn. The boys set up the baskets right after that and before I could step onto the thing, Cindy and Denise had wrestled two over sized pillows onto the blanket and proclaimed that they were for me.
We lounged around for awhile; twelve kids on what could have been a Norman Rockwell canvas; out in the country, sprawled out all across a picnic blanket, playing and entertaining each other while enjoying our stash of Sunday flavors that never seemed to empty the baskets from which they were being removed. We laid about for a time, feeling fat and lazy until Manu lamented the fact that there weren't any clouds to see "animal shapes" in. Almost immediately, Terra blurted, "let's explore the barn." A unison of agreement reverberated to the proposal.
In the time that followed, we had crawled up into the hay loft, had fallen back into piles of loose straw, and had jumped from bales to a small puddle in the middle of the dirt floor just to see how far we could make it splash. The puddle was a remnant from the smattering of small holes we could plainly see in the old roof. It was evident that in our activity of raising a little dust, a myriad different shafts of sunlight were spotlighting our play. Oddly, the mud never made a mess on any of us, but we could all watch it splatter to the wall boards and framework of empty stable stalls.
I watched the boys entertain themselves by tossing dirt clod bombs into the air, then laughing as each exploded into a dust cloud that was quickly carried away in the breeze. In all of this, there were some pigeons, that once roosting in the rafters of the hay loft, had now become curious over all of the commotion. I watched as they launched from various openings, to fly out and up repeatedly. In flight, they would make wide and graceful arcs in the air above the barn roof then turn back to settle on an open perch once again. They seemed to be more joyful of sharing our presence than being perturbed at our activities. A few even seemed curious enough to fly down to the ground where the girls were sitting in a ring, making ornaments of tiny colorful flowers plucked from the ground.
I was at a little distance from them, perfectly comfortable leaning against my two plush pillows, but I could see how Terra and Nicole worked with nimble fingers weaving and lacing small flowers and stems into natural jewelry. When Nicole was done with her miniature creations, she handed them to one of the other girls sitting near her. Then, with upturned wrists, she would invite a bird to land in her palms. It was as if the pigeons were trained. Miraculously, one or another would fly down and right into her hands, settling in as if it were going to nest. Once it seated itself, Terra would put her power of concentration to work. Taking one of the miniature flower arrangements from whoever happened to be nearest in the circle of girls, she would then pass her hands over the pigeon in Nicole's palms. Suddenly, as if she were a magician, when her hands moved away, the bird appeared to be wearing a pretty suit of shiny materials and jewels.
The bird would launch itself and fly away from Nicole's palms, and then the routine began again with Nicole, the other girls, Terra, and another pigeon that was waiting close by. The birds would fly off, one after another and each one had a suit that seemed unique to the individual bird itself. None of this ornamentation interfered with their flight though. This being proven when each would go into an acrobatic arc with unrestrained feathers from beak to tail, taking them up, to, and around the windmill in this bright heavenly daylight. I got the impression they were actually showing off their gifts by trying to find the perfect place where the beautiful light accented their ornaments the best. When the last pigeon was graced with its majestic outfit, and we paused long enough to watch them all showing off in flight, the birds one by one, flew back to the rafters through open windows and doorways of the barn. By the time they had landed, each sparkling little suit seemed to dematerialize leaving unruffled feathers in their natural condition once again.
Terra requested that Gabi and Manu should take Cindy and Denise out into the surrounding field. She pointed to where some scruffy looking plants grew beneath the tree line at the field's edge. I heard Manu tell the girls to look for "foofers" because Noellen was going to show us some of the constellations she had flown through with "Fast Dash". The girls returned to our blanket with armfuls, or with up turned dress hems made into pouches for what looked like perfectly rounded "fluffs" of seed heads. They were kind of like goat's beard or dandelion seed heads; spherical but airy looking in shape. As she took them from their collectors, Noellen complimented the youngsters for bringing back a good assortment of sizes.
Noellen collected them from the four littlest girls of our troop, one, two, and sometimes, three at a time. Then, after looking each one over with admiration and approval for her companions efforts, she turned her palms up and nudged the foofers skyward. They rose as if caught on the slightest of breezes and floated until directly over our heads where they very deliberately halted and began to rotate in place with an invisible buoyancy. Terra watched Noellen's manipulations, waiting for the proper count of these fluff balls to move into their various groupings. When they had risen sufficiently and began to rotate was taken as the sign for her turn to go to work on them. Then, with Terra's piercingly intense gaze, she pointed to each little foofer in its place in the sky. In that instant, they would begin to glow even brighter than the surrounding daylight. It seemed like they were actually catching "on white fire", and with this effect, they immediately began to look like stars forming various clusters in the greater universe at large. Needless to say, this event earned itself the utterance of many "Oohs" and "Aahs" from each of the craned necks watching.
Soon, it became a game of challenge for Terra. Noellen would name off a constellation and Terra would proclaim, "Ooh; I know that one" or, "That one looks like this." She would then move her pointing fingers to the various glowing balls and rearrange them as if they were invisibly locked to her finger tips. Though the foofers were being moved rapidly and with little effort, they would rarely get into their final position before Noellen would hurriedly name off another constellation. Eventually, Terra couldn't keep up with the changing names and her previously attempted arrangements. Soon, she had everybody laughing out loud when the balls began to scatter or collide. Terra conceded to Noellen's game by saying, "I guess its true that the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing."
Eventually, we all ended up on our backs, on the picnic blanket, staring up to the balls of light. Each one in its turn, having once been as bright a star as any in this physical realm, began to dim and simply burned out and disappeared. We all got very quiet, and lazily watched the clear blue sky, that by now had begun to harbor another collection of various cotton candy like clouds floating silently over head. I remember bird song and rustling leaves before dozing off into a peaceful sleep. When I awoke, I found myself laying on my back in bed where I had left Helaina and Crystal tending to my back pain. For certain, it had diminished, but I knew that I would still be tender for a few more days to come. At least I didn't have to be there for most of the pain, and I had plenty to do and keep me company while I began the healing process.
Apparently the kids from my/(Lord Viskey's) "Council of Noble" were waiting in the wings, and livid with excitement for the opportunity to be with their "father". The first entity to take advantage of this opportunity was my ever animated "Minister of Entertainment," Angelica. She projected a mental image to me indicating that the relief shift workers had already replaced all the Council Girls duties for this weekend, and that freed up the whole gang for an adventure. Angelica insisted that we needed to go on a picnic, and Nicole spoke up immediately saying that she knew the perfect place.
In a moment or two, I felt the presence of Gabi, Manu, Terra, Noellen, Peter, Denise and Cindy, and we were in the northeast corner of the yard swooping in on a rather long "golf cart" appearing vehicle parked there. This was Nicole's "overland crawler" and I noticed that it had three rows of seats in it that would accommodate at least three passengers on each one. We were going to use it on a journey that would take us some distance away from our "Garden of the Galaxies" and beyond "Fantaris Secray" proper.
As I stood near by and visualized my entourage of small people piling into the thing from all four sides, I could see Gabi throwing up an arm and shouting, "shot gun!", which apparently earned her the honor of the passenger seat, front, far right side. I wasn't in any hurry to crawl in myself, because I was taking in the scene of all these elated kids, ecstatic to go on an excursion. Angelica suggested that "father" should have the privilege of the front seat, but I said that it was quite okay, and that I'd just sit in the back with my three "littlest" ones and enjoy the trip from there.
As everyone settled into the "buggy", Nicole was in the driver's seat, Manu was in the middle and Gabi was near the exit opening. The cart had no doors, just open sides and a segmented canopy just floating over our heads with no means of visible support. In the middle row, Noellen sat behind Nicole, Angelica in the middle, and Terra to the right side. Peter and Denise sat to the left in the back seat, and Cindy crawled up into my lap, in the back, right seat, for our exodus.
I reflected on previous soul flights where my "Overland Travels Coordinator," Nicole and I were in a one or two seat vehicle, and so I made the remark that "I didn't remember 'Eleanor' being so big". The overland crawler that I was thinking of, Nicole had named, "Eleanor", because that was an acronym for; "LNR", or "Land Navigation Rover," and it was decidedly more "intimate" feeling than this "jumbo sized" vehicle was.
Nicole turned and abruptly corrected me, saying, "She isn't. We're riding in 'Kate' today; this baby's my 'cat-a-crawler'". In an instant, the vehicle lunged forward, and I heard Nicole add, "She's my 'party cart'."
It was plain to see that Nicole had a large amount of pride for her overland vehicles, naming them, and defending their honor when one was mistaken for another, and it amused me to see someone so absorbed in what they enjoyed the most. For Nicole, I could tell, that it was the pure joy of feeling her soul in motion.
Just as soon as we began to move, there was nothing familiar about our surroundings. I could tell we were moving through some wide open space, but in a moment or two we came to a stop. Evidently, it was to pick up two more travelers. Stopping "Kate" out in the middle of an open field, I could tell there were short grasses growing all around for as far as I could see. It seemed like a hot, "late summery" sort of place, even as this cold January day slipped away from my mind. Surrounding us, the grasses were crisp, dullish green and dry. Standing there were two familiar children, I recognized as the brothers Mica and Jehwah. If I didn't know better, I could have guessed them to be Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn with their straw hats and cut off bib overalls.
While Mica piled in and "muscled" himself in between Terra and Angelica, Jehwah ran all the way around the back, to the left rear, where Peter met the larger boy's "high five" and crawled in beside us. From the seat just in front of me, Mica looked over his shoulder with a wide mischievous grin, and with an over exaggerated display of "getting comfortable", he stretched his arms up, out, and down on the girl's shoulders he was sitting in between.
Terra brushed his arm off her shoulder and proclaimed, "You're not that smooth goof ball," while Angelica brushed his other arm away with a more "subtle" indifference. Angelica looked at us all in the back seat, as if checking whether we were all ready to go again. She smiled at me and said, "Now you and Peter don't have to be the only guys there."
There was a time span where Nicole bounced us along in her cat-a-crawler and I watched the menagerie of children interacting with each other in every row of seats. I was mesmerized by all of the spirited cooperation and buoyant playfulness between these kids, sometimes bursting into a choir of ditties and songs that inspired yet another level of elation amongst the caravan. They knew how to have fun with the least amount of effort. While Jehwah and Peter played some kind of game with their hands flailing about in front of them, Denise and Cindy were cuddling me. Denise on the seat to my left, and Cindy on my right leg, facing her "adopted" older sister. Each were perfectly content in an extended hug with me; one arm each, around my back and their free one reaching tiny hands and fingers to the other across and in front of me.
I could see that we were ambling along on a back county road. It was narrow, dirt based and lined with tall plants thick with rather large bobbing yellow flowers. I felt a serenity and a peace; the sensation of having a place to go and a purpose for doing it, yet being carried along with no necessary effort on my part. I knew that we were all in good hands with Nicole's determination and motivation for doing what she loved most. We drove along this sunflower lined dirt road till we arrived at an isolated place where three dirt roads converged and one grassy and overgrown path lead off from that intersection towards the remaining direction. We were amid a sea of yellow, save for one area that seemed like a tunnel of green and brown. Here, I found that we were at the beginning of a much wilder looking path, and I noticed how much taller the sunflowers were than we. In that moment, I felt like I was no longer an "adult" in stature, but rather about the size of a young boy, at about twelve or thirteen years old.
We bailed out of Kate and met a morning air that felt cool and comfortable, as if in perfect compliment to an "Indian-Summer-like" day. The sky was bright with patches of feathery clouds moving nonchalantly that allowed the sun to poke through for brief moments before it "shied" back behind another. The air was thick with the smell of pollen and a sweetness that was both pleasant and relaxing.
No one was perplexed over the direction we were to go. With the grassy path disappearing into a thick and wild canopy of trees, our little troop of explorers knew that it was the only choice to make. The path looked more like a set of twin trails; like parallel tire ruts going off into the distance. It was both inviting and mysterious, and I walked in the middle of the crowd, picking the left rut instead of the right because a mud puddle was in that one. As I got past that puddle, I could hear Noellen exclaim, "Ew-w!", and I immediately knew she discovered the puddle a moment too late. I chuckled without looking, preferring the mind image over the actual scene, and a moment later, I heard what could only be described as a loud, "thwap!", and I knew Jehwah found the same puddle in far more "decisive" terms.
We walked on realizing that this was an abandoned road, neglected by time and it came to an abrupt end, where large tangled trees obscured the forward progress otherwise to be made. There was a creek beyond these trees, and I knew this as what in earlier times, would have been the proper place for a bridge to be. For now though, it had long since been gone. A continuation of our grassy path was revealed, off to our left. It became apparent because of it's pressed down grasses that led up a very minimal rise along an area where "field" edge met "woodland" edge. When we turned for the path, I could see the moving vanes of a windmill almost silently turning in the fading "morning-like" coolness. As we walked in a little further, it was evident that off to the side of this windmill, and perhaps, a quarter of its height lower, the roof of an ancient barn jutted upwards towards the now, crystal blue sky.
As we got to the end of our "alleged" road, I found our access path had opened up into a wider field of shorter grasses surrounded by the woodlands, tall undergrowth, a meandering stream. Nearly at the center of this area, the sturdy looking old barn rested beside the "quiet creaking" of moving wind mill blades. In our approach to the barn, I suddenly realized that Jehwah and Mica were carrying two very large picnic baskets and that Angelica and Gabi were wrestling with a rather large, loosely folded clump, that turned out to be an oversized picnic blanket. Until this moment, I didn't even realize these things were being brought with us on the short hike.
Nicole had been leading our pack in all the way, and at this moment she shouted, "This is it," after which, everyone else shouted with glee and success and ran in to set up our picnic zone. By my account, I'd have to say that the grass was too short to be considered a field, but too rough and course to be considered a lawn. It was soft and gentle to the touch though, and quite inviting to lay down upon because of how thick it was. Three of the bigger girls spread out the blanket, placing it, I suppose, about thirty feet or so, out from in front of the barn. The boys set up the baskets right after that and before I could step onto the thing, Cindy and Denise had wrestled two over sized pillows onto the blanket and proclaimed that they were for me.
We lounged around for awhile; twelve kids on what could have been a Norman Rockwell canvas; out in the country, sprawled out all across a picnic blanket, playing and entertaining each other while enjoying our stash of Sunday flavors that never seemed to empty the baskets from which they were being removed. We laid about for a time, feeling fat and lazy until Manu lamented the fact that there weren't any clouds to see "animal shapes" in. Almost immediately, Terra blurted, "let's explore the barn." A unison of agreement reverberated to the proposal.
In the time that followed, we had crawled up into the hay loft, had fallen back into piles of loose straw, and had jumped from bales to a small puddle in the middle of the dirt floor just to see how far we could make it splash. The puddle was a remnant from the smattering of small holes we could plainly see in the old roof. It was evident that in our activity of raising a little dust, a myriad different shafts of sunlight were spotlighting our play. Oddly, the mud never made a mess on any of us, but we could all watch it splatter to the wall boards and framework of empty stable stalls.
I watched the boys entertain themselves by tossing dirt clod bombs into the air, then laughing as each exploded into a dust cloud that was quickly carried away in the breeze. In all of this, there were some pigeons, that once roosting in the rafters of the hay loft, had now become curious over all of the commotion. I watched as they launched from various openings, to fly out and up repeatedly. In flight, they would make wide and graceful arcs in the air above the barn roof then turn back to settle on an open perch once again. They seemed to be more joyful of sharing our presence than being perturbed at our activities. A few even seemed curious enough to fly down to the ground where the girls were sitting in a ring, making ornaments of tiny colorful flowers plucked from the ground.
I was at a little distance from them, perfectly comfortable leaning against my two plush pillows, but I could see how Terra and Nicole worked with nimble fingers weaving and lacing small flowers and stems into natural jewelry. When Nicole was done with her miniature creations, she handed them to one of the other girls sitting near her. Then, with upturned wrists, she would invite a bird to land in her palms. It was as if the pigeons were trained. Miraculously, one or another would fly down and right into her hands, settling in as if it were going to nest. Once it seated itself, Terra would put her power of concentration to work. Taking one of the miniature flower arrangements from whoever happened to be nearest in the circle of girls, she would then pass her hands over the pigeon in Nicole's palms. Suddenly, as if she were a magician, when her hands moved away, the bird appeared to be wearing a pretty suit of shiny materials and jewels.
The bird would launch itself and fly away from Nicole's palms, and then the routine began again with Nicole, the other girls, Terra, and another pigeon that was waiting close by. The birds would fly off, one after another and each one had a suit that seemed unique to the individual bird itself. None of this ornamentation interfered with their flight though. This being proven when each would go into an acrobatic arc with unrestrained feathers from beak to tail, taking them up, to, and around the windmill in this bright heavenly daylight. I got the impression they were actually showing off their gifts by trying to find the perfect place where the beautiful light accented their ornaments the best. When the last pigeon was graced with its majestic outfit, and we paused long enough to watch them all showing off in flight, the birds one by one, flew back to the rafters through open windows and doorways of the barn. By the time they had landed, each sparkling little suit seemed to dematerialize leaving unruffled feathers in their natural condition once again.
Terra requested that Gabi and Manu should take Cindy and Denise out into the surrounding field. She pointed to where some scruffy looking plants grew beneath the tree line at the field's edge. I heard Manu tell the girls to look for "foofers" because Noellen was going to show us some of the constellations she had flown through with "Fast Dash". The girls returned to our blanket with armfuls, or with up turned dress hems made into pouches for what looked like perfectly rounded "fluffs" of seed heads. They were kind of like goat's beard or dandelion seed heads; spherical but airy looking in shape. As she took them from their collectors, Noellen complimented the youngsters for bringing back a good assortment of sizes.
Noellen collected them from the four littlest girls of our troop, one, two, and sometimes, three at a time. Then, after looking each one over with admiration and approval for her companions efforts, she turned her palms up and nudged the foofers skyward. They rose as if caught on the slightest of breezes and floated until directly over our heads where they very deliberately halted and began to rotate in place with an invisible buoyancy. Terra watched Noellen's manipulations, waiting for the proper count of these fluff balls to move into their various groupings. When they had risen sufficiently and began to rotate was taken as the sign for her turn to go to work on them. Then, with Terra's piercingly intense gaze, she pointed to each little foofer in its place in the sky. In that instant, they would begin to glow even brighter than the surrounding daylight. It seemed like they were actually catching "on white fire", and with this effect, they immediately began to look like stars forming various clusters in the greater universe at large. Needless to say, this event earned itself the utterance of many "Oohs" and "Aahs" from each of the craned necks watching.
Soon, it became a game of challenge for Terra. Noellen would name off a constellation and Terra would proclaim, "Ooh; I know that one" or, "That one looks like this." She would then move her pointing fingers to the various glowing balls and rearrange them as if they were invisibly locked to her finger tips. Though the foofers were being moved rapidly and with little effort, they would rarely get into their final position before Noellen would hurriedly name off another constellation. Eventually, Terra couldn't keep up with the changing names and her previously attempted arrangements. Soon, she had everybody laughing out loud when the balls began to scatter or collide. Terra conceded to Noellen's game by saying, "I guess its true that the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing."
Eventually, we all ended up on our backs, on the picnic blanket, staring up to the balls of light. Each one in its turn, having once been as bright a star as any in this physical realm, began to dim and simply burned out and disappeared. We all got very quiet, and lazily watched the clear blue sky, that by now had begun to harbor another collection of various cotton candy like clouds floating silently over head. I remember bird song and rustling leaves before dozing off into a peaceful sleep. When I awoke, I found myself laying on my back in bed where I had left Helaina and Crystal tending to my back pain. For certain, it had diminished, but I knew that I would still be tender for a few more days to come. At least I didn't have to be there for most of the pain, and I had plenty to do and keep me company while I began the healing process.