Where will the quest lead me? The lashing rain ahead of us is like an encouragement, an invitation in the tide of my life. Ever since the reconciliation with Finn, I keep asking myself how does luck descend? I was forlorn and beaten down by the persistence of triumphant animals. They always seemed to get the better of me. Then Finn with his mesmerising grin, his green eyes and pliantly soft voice, brought his coda into my half addled brain. I would stand transfixed with fear, when he would calmly stroke the fur of the animal, the coat of a friend, the rough hide of a creature, and they would all be transformed. His endeavour was remarkable in its solicitude.
'Is there a potion?' I eventually asked him, 'Something I can take to enable me to outwit marauders who try to inveigle me?'
'No,' he sighed, laughing his quiet assured laugh.
'No secret. Just ask yourself what happens when the light goes out? That is the nature of all animals, they live not by light but by instinct and smell. You must become like them, in their skins.'
I tried it much later in life, and do you know, it worked.
Even now, as his body steams beneath me, steaming still, glossy and fierce, I am aware that an animal's wildness can be tamed. It is like a history foretold.
The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule
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