Anomalous Schnarr

Monday, February 19th, 2018 —> -12˚C / +10˚F —> clear & ‘dark’ in Atlantic Canada @ 2:03am  ( ridiculously early or, “I shouldda gone to bed already-” ?) on Jeff Bender’s Birthday ( I think it’s Jeff’s birthday… ) —

Kaeren Isn’t new here, but she dyed her hair and wore her warm weather wear –

— After a long day working in the fields, Kaeren looked a bit spooky by firelight. She isn’t new here, but I am and this was the first time we were on the same crew together – planting vegetables, herbs and flowers and wondering whether the cattails and water plants in the river flowing down through Keltic Valley – Excuse me – ‘Keltic Vale’ — were a problem or a good thing. We decided to seek advice from the local Forest Elves – At which point Kaeren laughed – “The locals told me I’m the first half-elf they met from ‘off-world’ – I thought they were crazy – but yeah, I can see in the dark, and I swear, the last time I saw a decent mirror and looked at myself – man – I could swear my ears have grown -”

— She hasn’t had it easy since she ‘landed’ here and her boy-friend got dragged off by family members who were dead in our world, and who told him he’d died in this one. He came back, they’re not keeping them apart, but a family matriarch he never met in our world is sick and wanted to see him before she left this world, so he’s gone again, and Kaeren could have gone with him, but they think she’s a half-elf and the oldest ones still living, “-don’t like half breeds.”

— Things certainly do get complicated around here. Makes me wonder how many ‘Quantum Physics’ lectures I’m really glad I didn’t sleep through – But knowing something is possible doesn’t necessarily help you cope with the shock of ‘waking up in a parallel world’ that you firmly believed was somebody else’s fantasy.

Aquarina – ( That’s my best guess on how to spell her name ) Is one of the local Forest Elves who will actually talk to strangers.

— “Aquarina” was the only local Forest Elf who would have anything to do with us. I took one look at her and thought, “Uht-oh, this one looks like trouble -”

— But after spending the afternoon with her showing us around – helping us identify the local healing herbs and plants we could eat, and plants we should never eat –

Aquarina in natural light – on one of the rare occasions when there was no fog obscuring the distant landscape.

— We came to the conclusion that she was an ‘eccentric’ creative type. She’s a musician,   ( calls herself a ‘Bard’ ) who has reputedly ‘messed around’ with music’s healing abilities – and has been so successful at that – the rest of her village changed their attitudes from treating her as someone they warned their children to stay the heck away from – into sending those kids – with adult supervision – to learn her methods of playing the various stringed instruments she collects and treasures.

— She definitely is a ‘character’.  But her laugh is spontaneous and contagious.

— She told me later that she’d been an orphan at a very young age, has no memory of any family – was taken care of by a very supportive & musically inclined Half-Elf and when that person died she was taken in by a group of Forest Elves who look at Half-Elves the way people back where we came from look down their noses at ‘half-breed trailer trash’. – But she was perfectly happy to go off by herself and ‘commune with nature’, and seems to have learned to empathize with strangers in the process.

— The dark green glasses she obsesses over are the only thing she has left that belonged to the woman who took her in as a toddler, filled her life with music and love – And, judging from the looks of those glasses, my best guess is that woman went missing in the old hippy days in our world and was presumed to have been be the victim of kidnappers or worse.

— Almost sounds like a happy ending to an unfinished story.

— H.J. d’A —