One would think working with books would be a peaceful job. Just a few days previous, however, a patron attacked me when I jumped between him and the guard. I wasn't thinking when I landed between them. The guard was older, the young guy hitting him was on drugs or something. When I scrambled to get the guard out of harm's way, he ran off. He was scared and I didn't blame him. But it left me hanging there alone and scared, facing the angry young man.

I looked around and saw the staff standing watching me as if in shock and disbelief. No one called the police, no one used the panic button. The guard finally recovered enough to dial the number on his mobile. The police came and took the young man away in cuffs. Something changed for me that day. I suddenly felt alone for the first time in my life, though I had often been alone in the past.

My daughter and I went for coffee and talked. She had been pushing me to haul down some barriers. She said we were our own worst enemies. She said I needed to find out who I am. I still hadn't told her anything and how she knew I was wrestling with myself, I don't know. She's been like that since she was around four. You know the kind, four going on thirty. Ancient soul, and all that.

My dreams had been sketchy since my first viewing of Rings. They were like a cut up comic book with illogical sequences and strange colors. I had prophetic dreams when I was younger and seemed to know things I couldn't have known when I was a kid.

My father, the crazy Irishman, had a gift with animals. He was the only one who could ride his half blind stallion for instance. Dad would just touch the haunches of a fidgety horse and it would calm right down. I had birds land on my shoulder or outstretched finger unafraid. Not your common, run o'the mill family.

Anyway, my dreams for the next few weeks after seeing "Rings" were weird dream spawn. They weren't the kind of dreams you get at night. After the third viewing of LOTR, I found the Legolas picture that altered my life forever and my dreams became intense.

I found the picture on the net (Studio Stills I think - if not, write me and I'll give proper credit) and it wasn't like any of the others. Legolas looked less like Orlando Bloom and more like someone else. His face seemed a little fatter, well, fuller anyway and he had a look much older than his real life twenty something years. He looked like a real elf being in that picture. The first time I saw the photo I recognized the person it portrayed even though I didn't know who it was. I mean, it was like I had known this person before, a long time ago, and he was somehow special to me. More than special. He was a significant other in my life. The picture exploded a childhood memory into my mind.

As a child I had put a piece of wedding cake under my pillow to dream of the man I would one day marry. I dreamed he was blond and had once been in jail. Later the dream became someone I named Michael White Feather and he became dark haired. A lot of his features changed gradually over the years and he took on the qualities of a Native American, but the intense look in his eyes never varied.

Years later when I married, my husband had been blond as a child, had dark hair as an adult, was part Native American, and had once been in jail. But he didn't look anything like Michael White Feather. So Michael disappeared, destroyed along with my dream of a 'normal' life. Even after the divorce years later, White Feather never came back and his eyes dimmed into my subconscious. Until I recognized them in Bloom's Legolas and his original face returned in full to my memory.

The dreams immediately began to manifest in logical order. They were like a continuing saga and stopped when I awoke and resumed where they left off when I slept. At what point I drifted into the first dreamscape, I don't know. I awoke in a forest and scratched the back of my hand on a limb as I passed.

Around me was a fog with beings that walked slowly by. As if in slow motion, then speeding up to real time, they appeared first as cloudy, unfocused shapes in the fog and finally as beings. I glanced down once at my own body to see if I also appeared cloudy, but was myself in total features and clothing. When my gaze returned to the beings, they had come more into focus and seemed to be turning their heads to glance at me as they walked by. Finally they became fully visible. Several beings stopped to look directly at me. Their most unique feature was that every one of them had ears that peaked in well defined points!


Click here to read anthropological data collected


A crowd of perhaps thirty had materialized before one of them finally spoke. Of course I could not understand his language. Spanish from college was the only language I possessed, so I just stared up around me at all the beautiful faces. And it was then I realized there was not a homely feature among any of them. Well it was a dream, I thought, and you can do anything in a dream.

The being in front of me had stopped speaking and half turned his head as if listening to something. He then turned back to me and began speaking in English, but of an archaic type of which I could only interpret a few words. He gestured finally for me to follow him and I did. While I felt a bit apprehensive, fear was not a factor. After all, I had studied a number of cultures during my undergrad years. And as a beginning applied anthropologist, I had done some work among homeless persons and some Native Americans. Although relatively new at my craft, I was more or less in my element.

While we only walked a hundred feet or so, I felt the passage of time and by the time we came into their village I could understand what they said. The first being's name was something like Cuinean (Kwuh-NAY-yun), and at first I thought he was the Chief or Head Man. It later proved to be that they didn't have leaders but they had heads of clans.

Cuinean seemed confused at first as to who I was and how I came to be in the forest. I was just as confused so I couldn't tell him. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the nagging sensation that I was dreaming all this. The longer the dream went, the more real and less like a dream it became. The village, for instance, first appeared to be houses built inside old tree trunks. Then the 'houses' became real, grew in size, and became a village that blended into the forest. A stranger could walk into the forest and never see the houses. Some of the Elves lived in caves or other natural homes. But Cuinean's village lived in the forest.

Elves often spoke with one another on a telepathic type of basis. They spoke in pictures, which was agreeable to my visual acuity. This type of speaking was much more enlightening and communicative for me because of my verbal disability. A picture can reveal so much more information and says a lot in less effort than speaking. Cuinean said that I was 'loud' and 'brash' when I first pictured. Eventually I learned how to not 'shout', but I think I gave a few Elves headaches in the meantime.

While I never witnessed trees move or rocks jump or any sort of 'magical' feats, I did see magic of a different nature.


Read the Teachings of Cuinean
Go on with the story
Return to first page