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Mariah was now living on her own for some time and while she was not overly happy about this situation she was not sad either.  Winter had set in and she was going around in an inordinate amount of clothes, so much so, that she was in danger of becoming a pile of warm woolen rags. Sometimes her leg got caught in her skirts and would not go in or go out as she teetered on the brink of falling over into a bag of barley she had acquired. 

When the weather was rainy she liked to set off the turf fire and cook up some barley cakes and wait for a leathery crust to form all around the soft insides and enjoy herself, not knowing when to stop her eating. The warmth and the sweetness filled her to overflowing with no indications of being too full until she was a few cakes too many inside. 

She had one too many cabbages to deal with and was suspicious that too much cabbage was not good for her aches and pains. At the same time, she always ate cabbages when young and was reluctant to see the cabbages rot right in front of her. 

She got a recipe last year, for the cabbages, from Druid Bernie who wanted her to make some for him also. It involved grating up cabbages, and mixing them up and then putting a little salty water on top and every day for five days pushing down the contents daily to get the air out, so the veggies would safely ferment. She found she likes this mix-up of vegetables and they lasted in her cold larder during the winter months. 

She had a big dream of being in Druid Bernie’s kitchen, when she sees an enormous butterfly, about four times that of normal size, near her. She puts out and raises her arm and this butterfly lands on her arm as her eye rods adjust to seeing this butterfly, which is mostly whitish with black outlines on it and some decoration in black. The butterfly walks up her arm and stops at her throat and all the while she hears the butterfly breathing. Then she brings it over to a friend and the butterfly does the same thing again, breathing and going up to her friend’s throat. 

Then there is some argument between the two women, about Mariah having to do some writing,  but Mariah wants to leave it on her friend to do the writing. Her friend is sitting on a tallish stool and she says she cannot, as her hip is hurting her. 

Mariah recalled another recent dream where a butterfly is trying to enter her mouth and she woke up as it was happening. 

She would drag these dreams off to her dream group and see if she could settle out what they were about. She thought they were linked to her laziness for writing certain books and how she often lets herself off the hook paying attention only to her aches and pains. She resolved to write in short spurts and see where that got her. 

Druid Bernie had not been around for a while, as he had not come back from his autumn wanderings. She was hoping he would come back so she could discuss with him the big changes in her life and get some input from him. She found herself bragging on how she was no longer living with Uishneach and at the same time, not feeling good about such bragging. She knew that something nearer the truth would be that she was pushed into living alone from a deep impulse inside, which left her time for her prayers and meditation.

She was spending more alone time along by the river and writing and watching the moon and dipping into the river. She was also getting time to meditate in the night or in the morning when she had the time to herself. 

She was going more on intuition relating to what she was eating and feeling good in general. She also had time for some body work where she used heated stones to move those complex muscle lumps from her thigh releasing her hip bones and her ingrown toenail into not hurting her half as much. 

She had been writing about an imaginary lover, mostly inner man, and thought she had a few more limes to write. She dreamed of him on the solstice night, the darkest night in the whole year. He was in bed beside her and Mariah asked him how he got in, as she had two locked doors between her and air outside. It gave her a fright as she perused his lips so near to her own. He said one of her daughters let him in. Her dream went on to have him morph into a skinny guy that was not unlike her father. She had to think again about this sameness between her inner man and her father. Perhaps she was carrying around more of his images and influences than she would like. The end.

I hope you can enjoy the above winter story. While it is the darkest time of the year , there is so much more time to be in moonlight, starlight and for dreaming and imagination. I wish you all the best holiday greetings, and a great openness to love, what ever your persuasion. Keep praying for me and I am praying regularly for my readers. Love from Rose. 

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