strange encounter

As the day wore on and daylight faded I grew tired; tired of the adventure, tired of talking to Patience and Sox, too tired to even care about feeling tired. It seemed to me that all paths would take me in the same direction. Wherever I travelled I travelled with myself. I would have to go back to the gate and start again. I would have to find the surrender box and give up even more....pride, joy, hope, I would have to learn to live in the moment.

I lay down thinking I would rest awhile. The day drowsed; I felt the warmth of the late afternoon sun and the sound of birds and insects busy all around me and my eyes began to close.

When I awoke, there was an old woman sitting near to me. I recognised her for I had met her once before, in another time, in another world. She was me. I reached into my bag and pulled out my secret item - my mirror and looked at my reflection. My own true self peered back. I looked like the old woman, lined, sorrowful, wearing black.

"What you will see in the mirror is a reflection of your state of mind," the old woman said to me. "and I am a physical representation. Fill your head with doubts, with pain and sorrow and I shall appear to you as a crone, fill your heart with joy and I shall come to you in the colours of the rainbow."

"I don't understand," I said. "I don't know how to be happy, I don;t know how to forget the pain, the hurt, the losses. I want - oh I really really want to do so, to "move on" as they say in the so called real world, but it is so so difficult."

We sat in silence. Then she said "I think you need to eat," and began to gather wood for a fire.
"Come." She beckoned and I followed. She showed me which plants were safe to eat, which might be poison, she showed me where to find food for my animals and how to prepare it and then she taught me how to build a makeshift stove on which to cook my meal. The food was so simple, but nourishing.

"Nourishing is a word you need to consider," she said.

"How do you know what I am thinking?"

"I know because I am your true self......have you forgotten our previous meeting?"

I stared at the old woman, bewildered.

"I thought that that was a dream, a metaphor for something."

"This is the country of the enchantress my dear," the woman said to me. "All things are possible here."

By now it was dark and we sat together silently in the firelight. I could not help looking at my companion, trying to understand, but her face remained inscrutable.

"Nourishing," she said suddenly. "I said that you should consider the word and you are wasting my evening by trying to sort out your feelings about me, and about what my meaning could be. What you really need is to decide what will nourish your life. Just as the body cannot live without sustenance, so too with the spirit, and your spirit is starved of joy and courage. This is why you have been allowed to travel along the Serpentine Road. You have to find both of these and more or your journey will not succeed. You have been granted two companions for the road and you will find that they might teach you both how to be joyful and how to be courageous."

I called my little dog over and held her close, allowing the warmth of her body to melt a little of the ice that had formed around my heart. The old womans clothes began to slowly change colour, from black to red, her face lost some of its lines, her hair regained a little colour.

"If you don;t love yourself, noone will love you," she said suddenly, as if in explanation. "I am going now, but I will be with you along the Road, look for me when you least expect me."

I found myself alone once again except for my animals.

"This is the strangest place I have ever been," I thought.

"There are stranger places," the woman's voice sounded in my ear. I turned but there there was noone around. "Just continue down to the shore and you will find what you find."

I knew that I had to make a detour from the Serpentine Road and go where I had been directed. In the morning I would go in the direction of the sea.