The numbers add up

18. Welcome 18. 18 will be my number from now on. Few people come to these woods that I have visited for most of my life. The salmonberries are fat and red and sweet, waiting to quench my thirst. The stream still speaks to me and the birds speak to each other. I still hear the trains, so many more now, but they are distant. Where I go there will be no trains. 

I walk 18 steps and 18 steps again and each time I look up and find myself in the soaring temple of yet another forest goddess or god, the ground strewn with the offerings of their faithful. I thought one day I might learn their names but perhaps someday I will come back. This forest will always be here unlike the ones that are cut away and linger as ghost trees mourning their lost loved ones. Still learning how to take pictures with this thing, but I'll have to travel light. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten it used but I have to make the money last. It's all I have and it's not that much now… about 18 saved. At one time I thought I could get a car, but that will have to wait. 

But another forest and another Goddess waits for me. Deep in the woods across the water Cougar rises to her feet and stretches, her tail moving slowly. She waits for me, too. There's no home for Cougar in the land of humans on this side of the water, but over there she is free. So few days to go. Thirteen? To the end of the term, end of term, like a birth. My birth. Breaking free of the shell that has protected me and stretching my wings.

I go to look across the water, and like before the only clouds in the sky are over the mountains. So much life over there, too many people over here, swarming on the beach to take things. Over there are people who love the sea, honor the gifts of the sea, take care of the beach for the sole reason that it deserves to be  treasured, as the birthplace of us all. Soon I will walk the shore with those who respect it. 

No. There are good people over here. But they are not my people. My own people wait for me, I know it. In the hours I'm afraid, and let others tell me I should stay on my side of the water, I remember that knowing, seeing the place and knowing it was my home. Here my people have fled. Or been exterminated. Or driven to the ground by cruel people with gravel, with the grave in their souls. Like Cougar, I go back to the woods, to my home. 

Angel, I hear your voice in the stream and your hand warming my cheek when I walk into light. I won't let your words die. I won't let you die. That would mean darkness wins.