Alone time in the dorm (wotw) on Pecari Commons

Echo Elms

January 26, 2008 11:36 AM

Alone time in the dorm (wotw) by Echo Elms

Echo waited until Saul and Matt had both found something to do outside the room before he dropped his homework in a heap on the floor and dragged the library's aged maroon tome out from under the bed, splaying it open on the foot of his mattress.

He leaned over his knees to read the directions for next meditation: "Pulling up Weeds." It built upon other meditations, starting with basic grounding and centering, and easing up the internal ladder into the subconscience.

Once he was there--the distinction between actually being there and just thinking you were there, he had realized after the first couple of times, didn't actually matter--he imagined a stream and followed it to it's source. The book told him to do this. He tried to make it as real as possible. The ground was squishy and his bare feet were cold, but not too uncomfortably so, and grass and poked up between his toes. The stream didn't move to fast, it bubbled and there were lots of stones in the middle of it. He get interested in that aspect of the stream and started rock hopping up it while a deer cleared out at the noise, white tail up like a flag of surrender. He didn't consciously imagine bugs, but one bit him on the nose and he had to take his glasses off to rub it.

As he progressed upstream, the trees around the outside got so close together that the only light came from straight above. Soon, even that started to close out as the stream got smaller and smaller. Pricker bushes reached out and tore at his pants and arms and tangled in his shoe laces. Burrs stuck to him.

It was not so dark he couldn't see, and even if it was, he knew where he was heading. A greyhound appeared by his side and helped him keep the prickers back. It was so tall, Echo's arm bent upward to rest a hand on its soft, warm back.

The source, the greyhound declared after a time, and nudged Echo forward.

A young OneT stood in the clearing, head tilted to the side curiously. Echo realized he was was also small, smaller even than OneT. The two boys waved at each other from a distance, and Echo's view point shifted suddenly, so that he was not the boy, but the hound. The two boys were playing on their elementary school playground. They were giddy with some next idea and tagged and ran around, rough housing like kids do. They seemed happy.

He trotted up and looked between them, and nudged his younger self. He wagged his tail. Young Echo and young OneT came over and played with his ears. The scene shifted again and he was himself again.

Echo tapped his fingers on his knees and slowly leaned back and stretched his arching body, slowly remembering he was a third year wizard-boy. His mind was blank and open, like after a good sleep.

And one of his roommates had come back. Lovely. Not like he hadn't been caught meditating before, but it was embarrassing anyway. Sooner or later they were going to start calling him Zen-man or Swami or something. At least now that Saul lived there, him and Matt got along pretty well, so it wouldn't be too bad.

"It'd be cool to have a dog," he said, "Wouldn't it?"

21 Echo Elms Alone time in the dorm (wotw) 93 Echo Elms 1 5

Saul Pierce

February 05, 2008 10:41 AM

Are you thinking of getting a Heebie Jeebie? by Saul Pierce

Saul had caught Echo doing his yoga thing a couple of time before. It always went about the same way. Saul would burst into the room, already talking about something (today it was about his Charms essay and how he realized after he turned it in that he probably shouldn't have written that he had no idea what he was doing in that class), and when he waited for a response, only silence greeted him. Sometimes this was because the room was empty. But on a handful of occasions it was because Echo had checked out mentally and was on some beach listening to waves or wherever people went when they meditated.

And when Echo's mind came back to Sonora, he usually tried to distract Saul from talking about it. This was never a difficult task. Saul was, after all, easily distracted. Today was no exception.

"A dog?" he repeated, baffled by the idea. He'd never heard of anyone taking a dog as a familiar. Well, maybe a crup. Besides which, Saul had always considered a dog as something that went with a house and since the California Pierces did not have houses . . . they had no dogs. Aunt Regina had a cat, but Merlin stayed in her RV most of the time and he was too fat and lazy to do anything fun with, and the owls were always busy delivering post.

"I dunno," Saul answered the question. "We move around too much and a bunch of the places we stay at don't allow pets," Merlin didn't count; he was a familiar, "so we never had any." He grinned, "I bet we had them when we traveled by covered wagon instead of minivan, though." An old idea from his childhood suddenly resurfaced and he suddenly decided this was a plan he had harbored and intended to carry out for years, "Hey! Do you want to go on my covered wagon tour when we graduate? I think that would be so cool, to ride around the West in a covered wagon, just like old times. It'll be a huge adventure!"

1 Saul Pierce Are you thinking of getting a Heebie Jeebie? 82 Saul Pierce 0 5