Arquaelis - WIP

The heat haze shimmered a good two inches above the ground.  The weather forecasters were saying this was the hottest summer in nearly 20 years with temperatures now on a daily basis reaching into the high 20s and tipping 30's some days.  As other people wilted and headed for the shade and the fans.  I languished in the heat and the sunshine, knowing when winter came it would be hard.

I laid flat on my back bottle of water at my side in a cooling carton.  Hands rested behind my head on the warm dry parched grass beneath me.  Like all other summers when the sun was high and the temperature soared there was a hose pipe ban in operation.  My legs stretched out before me and out of an old pair of scraggy denim shorts, a white t-shirt up top with a chequered shirt tied over the top and around my waist.  Simple sandals covered my feet and my ankles crossed over each other in a languid pose of contentment, which was echoed by the wry smile on my face.  Across my eyes lay a pair of dark non-descript glasses, allowing me to relax and enjoy the sun without having the feeling to put up a sun umbrella or place a newspaper across my eyes to focus.  I guess it also helped that not far away lay a tree whose branches provided a cool respite in its shadow from the heat.

Around me children laughed and played.  Adults complained about the heat and I knew it would be these same adults who would complain about the cold when the winter came.  Me I did nothing.  I sat and closed my eyes and let the heat the energy wash over me.  I was here for no real reason other than to observe, listen, watch and learn.

I reached across to my water bottle unscrewing the top and took out a long sip, a couple of trickles of water ran down the side of my lips.  I re-screwed on the top and placed it back into the container.  Yet instead of swallowing immediately I salivated upon the taste in my mouth, I swilled the water around my mouth, using my tongue, against my teeth and allowing the freshness of its flavours to fulfil me before allowing slow tender trickles of it to fall down my throat, providing a long-overdue refreshment to my arid lungs and throat.
Perhaps there is one other thing I should tell you that I left off from my description earlier is that around my pinkie sat what looked like an ordinary mood ring. It was not of those big bulky ones but a simple inoffensive ring whose opalescent colour swam around in a small stone encircled by what appeared to be fool's gold.  However if one should examine the ring more closer they would have noticed imbedded into the mood stone was a delicately entwined Celtic flame design, often associated with a long forgotten age.  For me it was more, it was a reminder of who I was and where I was from.

Now that I see I have your attentions dear readers I will leave my current history there and tell you a tale of another kind if you should chose to listen.

Years ago, way before the age of current human memory, I remember doing a very similar thing but the land was different then, very different to that which remains today.  The sun although shining was white in its pure brilliance, yet there was a slight chill breeze that floated of the clear silver river which flowed through the middle of the land acting as natural ventilation shaft.  The grass was fresh and succulent and green. A green so vibrant and deep and rich in colour it would put an emerald to shame.  The silver river flowed through a demi-gorge between the banks of the river on which I now sat and pearlescent silver crested cliffs on the other side, which gave the river its silver sheen.  Willow and Yew trees grew out of the rocks and over-hung into the river trailing white, pink and silver blossoms in its wake.  The energy of Arquaelis buzzed with its own unique essence of being and shimmered all around not so dis-similar from the heat haze found above the ground today.

The children sang and danced around in circles singing nursery rhymes and poems long forgotten.  In their hair sat daisy crowns and their clothes were made of white linen which was suffused with very fine and thin silver leaf, which meant that when the sun beams danced of their clothes it looked like pure diamonds were embroided into the clothing.

I lay on the embankment listening to the birds singing, the children playing wearing clothes not so dissimilar from the children but mine encompassed green and gold leaf too.  The green was taken from the flaxen of the leaves and the gold was the trapped rays of sunlight at early morning dew, usually at the winter and summer solstice when the sun as at its purest time. However if needed we could also collect these beams at Zagmuku and at Féile Moingfhinne,  nonetheless, because this collection could only be done at certain times of the year, it was a rare commodity and so was reserved for those clothes that were to be worn of the native ruling line of Arquaelis.  I personally hated that title, it meant people looked at me as some sort of God and revered me as if I was omnipotent, but I was none of these, and never would be. This gift only belonged truly to nature and even then if I am honest I don't believe nature was every truly omnipotent either.  But still as I laid there on the embankment I could feel the energy around me, the flow of it against my body flowing over and around my contours, absorbing into my blood stream, I could sense every shift and movement of my land by lying there and immersing myself into it.
What I always found fascinating when I lie mesmerised by the energy that currently surrounded me was how it changed, ebbed and flowed with power pending on the month and time of year it was.  It was currently the middle of August and so Arquaelis buzzed with high energy, life and enthusiasm but come a few weeks this would start to ebb away, in the surroundings it would not be so noticeable but being connected to the surroundings like I was now it would be more potent a more powerful clutch in the feeling of its life source flowing away and into the outer worlds that surrounded us.  A world which we were free to transcend into, at any time we wished, but only to watch observe and see never to communicate or interact with.

The seasons here were as fresh and as new as seasons anywhere.  Autumn was alive with Ruby blood reds, golden yellows and stark browns.  Winter with the snow on the ground was beautiful. The snow was so pure and white that it had that rare tinge of blue that you only get in the purest of snow falls, although in all honesty I am unsure if you will have seen it here.  Spring itself was somewhere between the budding life of summer and the freshness of autumn joy with the colours budding forth of what was currently in full flow in front of me now.  

I always found I was at my most tranquil and calm when I was connected with nature in this way.  The world somehow seemed more right, more pure, more innocent, less destructive and less dangerous.  I remember seeing myself that day in the world where the colours were less bright, where the senses were dulled and what I once knew was no longer true and that I would be looking back trying to remember if my home was an illusion or a reality.  For those who lived in the world of dumbed senses I knew Arquealis would always be an illusion of the senses, like an Oasis in the desert, but to me it is and was as real as you and me are now.

Here my life was simple, with simple pleasures, my tasks few but my responsibilities were many.  So when I find these times to enjoy these simple pleasures I take great joy in embracing them with a fear of loss and anxiety, which I was only to come to know too well.  This day was no different from any other. I had risen early, usually at the same time as the waiting staff and went and helped them with their duties.  For me it was a task that I was not assigned to do but enjoyed doing as it meant I could spend time with the people I loved, had grown-up with and played with as a child, when my rank meant nothing and my future unclear.   I pulled water from the brook, the well and the waterfall.  The water was pulled from these different sources as they had different tastes, textures and sensations and therefore provided different needs pending on what was needed during the course of any one day.