To Meditate

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” -Swami Sivananda

The moons were high when I made my way past the line of wagons and to the streams edge. It was not warm enough for me to step into the flowing water but I longed too. I have always felt a special connection to water. Water, I believe, is the strongest and most enduring element on the planet. Water can not be held back, it cannot be stopped. You may build a damn.. but it will find the crack to seep though. You may bottle it but it will become the bottle. The sun may dry it out but it returns to us as rain. And water nourishes us all. I long to be like water, able to adapt, unable to be defeated.

I sat at the waters edge and settled myself, my eyes closed as I breathed, gently slowing my breath until the events of the day began to dissolve. I let my thoughts slow down, taking each thing as it came, accepting it, giving it a moment of my time and then gently releasing it. My hands were light upon my knees and the single braid I wore fell straight as a pin down my back. I sank quickly into myself. The world melting away around me until I heard only the rush of the water and my own relentless heartbeat.

This was home for me. This was where I felt connected to the world and yet …wonderfully disconnected. I could see more clearly here, this world between dream and reality. I began, slowly, to focus my thoughts on Trayu and my memories of him. The story wheel. I needed to remember the beads and what they meant, what they stood for.

Breath in. Breath out.

Flash.


"Asria!" Trayu ran towards me, I was seventeen and so newly with child we did not know yet. I turned towards his voice and the skies lit up with my smile. He swept me up in his arms and kissed me so hard I heard an old woman click her tongue in disgust of our display. Trayu pulled his head back slightly and tucked a blue flower behind my left ear. "The first bloom of spring." he told me.


A heartbeats moment.

I was holding my breath. The vision popped in my thoughts and my eyes opened. A kaiila thundered by, far to my left. A Tuchuck warrior off to hunt down a slave or a bosk or their own demons. I watched the back of who ever it was and felt tears slide silently down my cheeks.

"Asria!" it was Magda, she arrived beside me, reaching her wrinkled hand down to my arm and trying to pull me up. "She has a fever."

And I ran.