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Enter Raethania |
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Stepping outside I find myself face to face with the edge of the aspen forest. Lush and green, it is richer and more vivid than anything I can remember. Before me is a grassy path that beckons me forward. As I walk between the trees, I notice that the air is sweet in my throat. The light breeze cools me without chill. The grass buoys up my feet as if it lives specifically to be walked upon. The colors and textures around me are more intense than anything I have seen in my life. It is all I can do to move forward down the path and not just fall down in an ecstasy of sensory bliss. Yet the beauty also gives me the will to move on. Filled with an elation I have not known since earliest childhood, I begin to travel into the forest. Sunlight filters through the treetops, speckling the forest carpet with dancing motes of light. My ears are tickled by the calls of more bird calls than I can count. Small animals run through out the forest without fear, and in the distances I can see what appear to be herds of various kinds of larger animals. Deer and elk perhaps. Though the trees are the species I remember from earth, they are much more than my memory holds. Aspens have always held a quick awareness, but these are the most aware I have ever encountered. They sway with the rhythm of the wind and the movement of their thoughts which move through my mind like the whisper of slippered feet on a wood floor. The joy I feel is obviously not solely my own. It is apparent that everything around me takes an intense joy in being alive. My fears of walking alone in a strange land evaporate in the sunshine of this forest of emotion.
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rich and deep red. From my vantage her eyes appear to be black, or at least dark brown. As sunlight moves across her hair I realize that it is a deep blue, so deep that when not in direct sunlight it appears black. "Yes I am" I reply, "I am enjoying myself more than I have in my memory." She smiles at me with a smile that, though she is differently colored, is no less bright and lovely than the first faery I met on the beach. "You are the shadow dreamer" she said "here to see the potentiality of Raethania." She flew down from her perch to land beside me. I noticed as she flew that her wings did not move in a blur like my first guide, but fluttered in the manner of a butterfly. "I am Ophelia, your next guide." I held out my hand and she shook it with a smile and a little giggle, as if she found it to be a quaint and somewhat silly custom. "Pleased to meet you" she said with solemn formality, though her eyes twinkled with mirth. "What kind of being are you?" I asked. "A fae of course" she replied. "We are among the most numerous of the self aware beings in this land. We inhabit every zone except the renewal zones and we are of every form and color." She was so lovely I could not help but ask a silly question, half in jest half in earnest. "Are you married?" "Married?" she asked. "What do you mean?" "Are you bonded exclusively to another?" She compressed her lips in tolerant pity. "What a sad place you must come from that one could be bonded to another. How could any being belong to another being?" "Well, its not really like that" I said, "Each agrees to spend their life with the other and pursue an exclusive physical and emotional bond. It can be quite a wonderful thing." "I suppose so" she said without conviction, "but we do not need it here. When two feel a strong empathic and physical connection, there is no need to make it something formal. It endures as it should. When they have explored it as far as they are able and are ready for new experience, they part." "What if one of them wishes to part before the other is ready?" I asked. This time she looked at me as if I had spoken something obscene in an obscure language. "You do not understand" she said, "I can see this" She fluttered into the air and away from me for a moment before coming back to land next to me once again. The expression on her face was controlled and serious. "In this land, no being is unaware of the emotional environment of another being. As the emotions of one flow, so the emotions of the other flow to match and vice a versa. If one begins to feel ready to move on...the other cannot help but feel the same. Who could stay with someone who's emotion has begun to reject them? As one feels the need to move to new experience, how can the other, who knows what emotion flows, cause them pain by refusing to grow as well?" "I think I understand" I said. "No need for marriage when its between empaths...there is always trust based on knowledge and awareness of the other." "Yes" she said. "Come" she took my hand. "Let us begin the next leg of your journey."
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