Story. ) "Star" / from STORYCHASER: Sketchbook of Solitude / A Novel

Storychaser . . . Listening Art . . . A Sketchbook of Solitude . . . A Novel . . .


            Star

                

JUST AS A PEBBLE, when thrown into a pool, creates a series of ever expanding concentric ripples, so was it the way of things in the life of Raef Aylingson. Inwardly, as a stone thrown into this world, perhaps there were circles of influence, he thought, spanning from the initial vortex of one’s fall, spreading unto the outer limits of all thought and experience. Geographically, he could see this same picture in yet another sphere. And from his perspective, at the very edge of it. Perhaps from the furtherest out he could see the furtherest in.

  In the innermost centre of this picture was a city, and on the edge of the city, a suburb, and on the edge of that a village, and on the outskirts, a few scattered farmhouses. Furtherest away was a single cottage; simple, painted white and well kept. Beyond this was a bit rough rolling pastureland soon rising to woods and high hills, and beyond these were the wild moors.

  Raef had lived in this cottage for most of his life. He had been born in the city; but he had grown up here, far away from it. Here he had educated himself; and become a writer; and ostensibly a shepherd of a small flock of sheep. In this cottage he had been living alone for the past six years, ever since he was seventeen; because then his family had moved back to the city, and he had chosen to stay behind; to look after the cottage, he said, and to tend their smallholding. But, more truly it was to maintain the solitude which for him had been all the university he felt he had needed – the school of the soul – of which he would always be a student. His heart seemed to have been set in him from birth toward the Quest of Life; to seek and to learn from the world all around him convinced that he would find. And, through all that had happened to him, during the last few years – through the star and the finding of a wayward sheep – he had become at heart a chaser of the inner story; a searcher of living truth.

  On the evening of 4. March, each year, Raef could be found sitting outside the front door of his cottage, leaning against the wall on a wooden bench there, and in a more somber mood than usual; for this was a day to be remembered; the anniversary of the day of the first finding.

  He sat now as he always did in the evening before he went in to read awhile, his grey cat on his lap, gazing out before him at the familiar countryside; but, on this day of days, the night seemed always to be bathed in Mystery’s keep; speaking of ancient secrets about to be revealed in the wavering moonlight. The wooded hills beyond the pastureland, and the distant dark moors where he had found the little image, they always looked nearer on this night; but his hopes of ever recapturing even one of his former extraordinary experiences there seemed to him even more far off; and his heart sank within him.

  Yet only for a moment; he looked up. The shapeless cloud cover had drifted away and the stars shone down. Suddenly he remembered the opened window, and the wind tossed pages on the floor in his room. No wonder he had unconsciously drawn that pattern of stars, only a few nights ago – one group of stars in their curious constellation; his sub-conscience had been searching the deep he realized; even teaching him, leading him to remember a strange, little object, and how he had found it so long ago, on this night.

  Then it occurred to him that he had been ‘sitting still,’ waiting for ‘it’ to happen, for too long. It was exactly three years now. Perhaps he should have gone back to the site of the falling and the burnt circle of grass; he had often intended to. Maybe that would be the place of ‘the finding;’ the physical place returned to literally, rather than relying on his continual internalizing of it, waiting for ‘something’ to happen, within him; which could go on forever. Why had he not he returned there, he wondered? If the thing had happened to him in the first place, because he went, then perhaps, if he went again, something would happen again, he reasoned. Or perhaps it had just been a dream, and it never really happened at all.

  Inadvertently he made a small movement. Stella must have felt it, for she leapt off his lap; and with her tail held high she shot off into the dark, rapidly vanishing into the shadows of the little garden. He saw her for a brief moment; her silhouette on top of the jagged, upright narrow rocks of the old stone boundary wall, just before she disappeared altogether, on the other side.   

  For a long time Raef sat and wondered. Then as he would always do on this evening, in memorial, he reached inside the breast pocket of his plaid shirt, underneath his old sheepskin jacket, and took out the small treasured object, wrapped in a scrap of red and green material torn from an old shirt. He unfolded the cloth carefully and laid it on his lap. He stared at what it contained for a moment, before picking it up and holding it in the palm of his hand. It was a sacred thing he felt; something to be handled with love and respect, for this truly was a wonderful thing.

  At that moment the moon shined especially bright and the little silver object in his hand seemed to reflect its light; or, was it shining of its own accord in its own light again? He could not decide. Then the tail of a cloud passed over the moon and still the thing shone brightly. He chided himself for his unbelief; of course the star shone out of its own self; just as it had from the beginning. It was not a thing of this world. He had known this. But the cares of this life had dulled him, and his faith in the unbelievable had dimmed. 

  The little silvery star in his hand was now truly glinting; from it were darting tiny beams as of fire. Of course, STORYCHASER lived; this beautiful metallic star had found its twin: it was full of a living light! 

  And once more he was as he had been a chaser of falling stars; and on the frosty night, of another 4. March, three years ago this night.

                                                                  *

            Back link to previous cameo:
            Writing Saga # 28 / Cameo 1; "Destiny" / STORYCHASER; Sketchbook of Solitude: a Novel
          

            Forward link to next cameo:
            Cameo 3;     / STORYCHASER; Sketchbook of Solitude: a Novel