Sleep was elusive. Thoughts flowed in and about and through her like streams of water. They were too gently insistent, too restless to permit slumber.
The room above the old inn was beginning to feel confining, though she could not understand why. Perhaps it was the impending expectation of what lay before her. The task to be done. The waiting was difficult. She would savor the warmth and love of those beside her on the road, but there would be great relief when it was over and finished.
She sat on the bed with her head bent in a pensive manner; a scene all too often repeated for the woman. A solitary candle flickered on the table nearby. Her hands rested on her knees, with the palms turned upward, and within each was an object.
In her left hand was a wood carving. Lightweight, smooth, expertly crafted. The scene depicted a horse and a bear close together. They seemed to be captured in a moment of movement, as if dancing or circling about each other. Beneath their feet were long, flowing lines, indicating a river. Above the tall bear's head was a rugged outline of mountains.
In her right hand was a smooth, oval object, pale like ivory, about the size of a large egg. An odd-looking thing to one who had never seen such a thing before. Small holes ran along the side of it, and delicate, graceful letters of a foreign tongue decorated its surface.
Each represented precious things to her. Memories and people that she cherished, to the deepest core of her being.
She passed her thumb over the smooth ocarina, caressing the little holes. She could not read the writing, but she had been told what the letters said, many years before. Words of bond, union and eternity. Her eyes grew damp, and her vision blurry, as she gazed at it. A gift offered with such pure love, so much light and truth and hope from the one who had presented it.
The opposite thumb performed a similar path over the wood carving next. It was not smooth and cool like the ocarina, but rougher, with its textured, lumpy surface. There was a feeling of wonder, that the giver of this treasure was similarly fully of truth and goodness and hope. How is she so blessed, to have crossed paths with two souls who seemed to her, to be of the highest quality that any living being could ever achieve?
Across the room, she glanced next to another gift. Her heart pricked with a feeling no less powerful and poignant, though it was tainted with more than love and gratitude. Hurt was there. Sharp and bitter in her breast, radiating down into her gut. Images flashed through her mind, fresh and still vivid. Visions of beauty, of desperation, blood and pain, tears and anger, tenderness and warmth. Of being lost and found again. Of feeling somehow dead, though yet animated and breathing. And then realizing she was, in fact, more alive than she knew.
Sighing heavily, she set the two little treasures on the table, leaving them visible for the rest of the night under the writhing light of the candle-flame. Having brooded sufficiently, her head was now heavy, and she crawled under the blanket. Curling her knees towards her chest, and gripping the pillow to sink her face into its depths, she passed into slumber.
