Chapter One

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The moon is dark in the sky. She is hiding her face and her energy for the moment, tucked into her blanket of stars. This is the time of great workings and transformation. It is quiet around me, free of all industrial and manmade noises. Only the crickets form a wall of noise, a consistently whirring background track. I am walking in ancient woods, the shadows of trees rising up on both sides of me as I walk along a dirt path weaving amongst them. The branches of the trees are like limbs reaching out to touch me with gentle fingers.

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There is magic in the air and inside of my heart, which I ache to let in more. I take more deep breaths to center myself as I feel a fresh wave of tension move through me. This is all brand new and yet so familiar. The trees eventually give out to waist high shrubs that I brush with the flats of my hand as I walk by them. These plants offer me comfort, as all plants do.

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Soon, the path deposits me at the edge of a small lake with thick mists crawling along the surface of the water. Cattails and water cress fill the marshy edges where the land greets the shore. The lake, as the feeling of all water, calls me to cross over and to journey to somewhere unknown inside of myself. Hanging from a tree on the shore’s edge is a series of nine silver bells tied onto the branch with string. I yank on the string three times, the sound of their sweet chimes filling the air.

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I wait a few moments, breathing in deeply again to keep my mind from wandering off onto mundane content and drifty places. I soon see a large barge approach the shore through the thick mists. Three women in dark cloaks with hoods obscuring their faces are standing on the barge, which seems to be propelling itself through the water without any human assistance. The barge brushes the muddy shore and one of the women gestures for me to come aboard. I accept her hand to get on the barge and continue to hold it as the barge begins to move forward in order to keep my balance. Her hand feels warm and welcoming and also…familiar. I try to look at her face but her profile is blocked by the thick fabric of her cloak.

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Some minutes pass and we reach the marshy shore on the other side of the lake. Once I step off the barge and onto the land, I feel a swell of emotion rise up in me. I feel a very powerful sense that I am ‘home’, which surprises me. Although I have been reading about this place for a few years, it feels so familiar and comfortable in a way that I was not expecting. I also didn’t anticipate that it would be so easy for me to journey here.

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I look around me, taking in the distant silhouette of the Tor. I notice a path veering off to the left toward the apple orchard where I am to meet my guide. I follow the path, admiring the mature apple trees around me, in full Springtime bloom with a sweet scent that, again, brings up a feeling of nostalgia. The apple trees are ancient and, soon, I am in front of the Mother Tree, the largest and oldest of them all. Some of the branches have ripening fruit, some are decorated with blossoms, and others are bare. Fall, Spring, Summer, and Winter all represented in one gestalt. The tree seems to represent all possibilities and the acknowledgement that time is just an illusion.

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I approach the tree and introduce myself to her. I tell the tree what my intentions and desires are in standing before her. I ask for a guide to show me the way of wisdom and the great mysteries, both. I ask for my inquiry to be blessed by the Divine Mother. After a brief moment, there is a bright flash of light and I see a figure standing in front of me. My guide.

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I feel my heart swell immediately as I recognize my guide and we throw our arms around each other. We are both weeping with reunion, possibility, wonder at being together again at this time and in this place. It is strange to feel my ‘arms’ around her as I have never touched her before. She is my beloved friend, student, soul guardian or guiding spirit. She is now my teacher and guide.

Morgaine.

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“Welcome home, Jillian,” she says to me, when the emotions have eased enough for us to connect with each other. She doesn’t speak out loud but rather in my head and encourages me with a nod to not use my voice either. “You don’t need to use your voice here,” she explains.

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“It feels so familiar to me here. I am surprised,” I reply, wiping a few remaining tears away.

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“There are a lot of reasons for that feeling, which you will soon discover,” she says, smiling at me.

 

She is small, only as tall as a typical pre-teen child, with dark hair and dark eyes. There is a definite feeling of power emanating from her, along with a sense of her being used to leading other people and garnering their respect with her soft yet strong way of taking command.

“I am so happy to be back here,” I say, again surprised that I would feel that way.

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“And we are so happy to have you here. This is the first time we’ve been able to do it this way and it is exciting. It opens up many possibilities.”

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I want to ask so many questions, I am fairly bursting with them. But I have also learned, through frequent dialogues and surrogacy experiences with Divine Mother, to surrender to the experience rather than try to understand it all with my mind. There may be a phase for questions but, more likely, things will be revealed as I am ready for them.

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“I feel your curiosity, filled with desire, and it is good,” she says. “You have become a powerful heart priestess and, now, you will reclaim your power as a soul priestess.”

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“I like that…heart priestess.”

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“It is what you are, Jillian. I experienced for myself the great benefits and worth of your heart healing magic. And that will be very valuable for what is coming up and what you will experience and what you are here to eventually teach and share with others. I have some idea of what that is, but your process, as with all of ours, is in the Divine Mother’s hands.”

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I love feeling our familiarity, which comes from nearly two years of connecting with each other.

 

And, now, it feels like many previous lifetimes of being in communion and deep collaboration.

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I want to ask her what is coming up for me but, again, I feel how it is the mystery and the surrender which lends such a sense of poignancy to the journey. I enjoy being a student, especially with a teacher who deeply respects my gifts and my sovereignty. I also understand that even Morgaine doesn’t know exactly how things will unfold for me and that she is surrendered to the unknown around all of this, just as I am.

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“I have a gift for you. You can bring it back with you,” she says, extending her hand out to mine. A bright red, shiny apple appears in her hand and she offers it to me.

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I accept it happily and tuck it into my pocket. I don’t know how I will ‘take it back with me’ but I appreciate the symbolism of the apple as wisdom and feel how receiving it means more than it appears on the surface.

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We embrace each other again and she reminds me that we can connect anytime; I just need to speak out loud to her and she will be there. I weave back through the orchard, board the barge that is waiting for me, and make my way back to the far shore. By the time I land on the shore and am walking through the woods to return, I already feel a sense of blessing and appreciation for what I have discovered and where I have journeyed.

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My heart full and eager to share with my husband Wayne and our soul family friend Christopher what I have experienced, I say a final goodbye and thank you to Divine Mother for the welcome. I breathe in the feeling of reunion and sense of coming home. I breathe out the anticipation for what is coming next and where I might journey inside of myself in this magical landscape.

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I breathe in and out, a smile on my face, then, finally, leave Avalon to return back to my home on this dimension.

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**

In truth, definitely proving Avalon existed in the earthly realm may not matter much. The varying perspectives and the scholarly cases for or against her existence pale in comparison to Avalon’s greater purpose......She is the focus of all the Mother’s Daughters (and sons) - a goal, a template, and an endless source of inspiration. Avalon is a beacon, shining out from the maternal waters, promising connections between the women of today, continuing the forgotten knowledge of the women of yesterday, and serving as a promise of constancy for the women of tomorrow. - Avalon Within, Jhenah Telyndru

*

I return to Avalon the next morning, in the early hours before dawn and before the roosters on the sanctuary, which is our sustainable sanctuary in rural Mexico, have begun their wake up calls to greet the new day. It is still cool outside and I am even wearing a light sweater as it is late September and beginning to get cooler. Once I settle into my chair, I breathe deeply, in and out, at least nine times. My mind tugs me away a few times and I gently bring it back to the present. I repeat the same ritual of walking through the woods, and brushing the shrubs with the palms of my hands. I call the barge by ringing the bells three times, landing on the other side of the water after taking the barge across. The three priestesses nod to me in greeting and, also, they seem to know me. I still can’t see any of their faces, but I appreciate the sense of welcome and, again, reunion. Also, strangely, they seem to have an air of respect toward me that I don’t understand, similar to how they would treat Morgaine, who is the current Lady Of The Lake or High Priestess. The Lady Of The Lake is the ruler and leader of Avalon, making the final decisions about both everyday matters and metaphysical, magical, contextual issues.

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Once again when I step on the shores of Avalon, I feel a strong sense of returning to my home. I walk through the apple orchard and meet Morgaine at the clearing where the great Mother Tree stretches its vast canopy over the land. Morgaine greets me immediately and gestures toward two benches that are facing each other, carved out of oak.

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“These were not here yesterday,” I say, as I sit down across from her.

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“No, I created them so we would have somewhere comfortable to sit and talk,” she says, taking a seat across from me.

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I am reminded immediately that as familiar as this dimension feels to me, it is very different from the one I experience as reality. “In my day to day life, everything around me feels solid and needs to be moved around physically with hands and some effort. Avalon seems to be more like a holi-deck, where things can be created whenever you want and whatever you want.”

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“That is true to a certain extent,” Morgaine says. “There are laws here, although they are different than the ones in your world. Anything we add in Avalon needs to be natural and to organically fit in with the energy here. These oak benches feel like they have always been here. Certainly one of your multiple story, high-rise buildings would not fit here.”

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I nod, feeling how much more comfortable I am, in the simplicity and natural surroundings of Avalon, than I was when I lived on the eighth floor of one of those high rise apartment buildings in a busy city.

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“Of course you feel comfortable here,” Morgaine says, reading my feelings. “This is where your soul goes in between incarnations.”

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I feel a rush of excitement at receiving some ‘new information’ about my soul and its history. After more than ten years on a healing and growth path, like any seeker and student and teacher, I get a ‘high’ from a new discovery or experience of altered consciousness reality from the usual one. I had been aware of angelic realms, other dimensions including the faerie dimension, although I had not felt a sense of visiting them before. I can’t deny the feeling of recognition and familiarity that I feel about Avalon and it makes a kind of heart sense that this would be because I return here when I am disincarnate and in between lives.

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“You come here to Avalon as a resting place and a place to digest what you have learned and discovered during your earth incarnation. When you are here, you act as Lady of the Lake or high priestess,” Morgaine explains.

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“But, what about you?”

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“When you are here, I am incarnated into another lifetime on earth. We take turns and are rarely in the earth dimension, as we will call it for now, together. Or here together on Avalon, for that matter.” 

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“But, you came to me over two years ago and made your presence known as an disincarnate being to me in the earth dimension. Has that happened before?

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“No,” Morgaine admits. “You had opened up a portal through your SoulFullHeart work with daemons, as you called us disincarnate souls who acted as soul guardians to a human we were ‘assigned’ to by the Divine. We have commonly also been called, ‘spirit guides’. Your work made your access to my dimension unique. You felt that daemons needed the ‘humans’ that they watched over. Daemons needed to be felt in their pain in watching humans suffering for so many lifetimes without being able to do much about it….and in the pain of separation that many of them feel from the Divine. You received guidance from Divine Mother to work with your own daemon and to offer this work to others, who could then awaken to their own soul guardians. You felt a relationship could be established that would be mutually beneficial and could potentially lead to great consciousness awakenings.”

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I start to remember the first time I felt the presence of an disembodied energy hovering over my left shoulder. This was several months after leaving my former teacher Daniel’s group called Emotional Body Enlightenment (EBE) under a paradigm called Theohumanity for which I had been involved with and served as a facilitator of for almost five years. It was a painful time period in which the rejection and sudden expulsion from the group were a struggle and intense digestion for me. I had only been dating Wayne for three weeks when we were offered an ultimatum over email to either take a year off from seeing each other or to leave the group because we were co-dependently grabbing at each other. We chose to be together even though it was unknown if our relationship would continue to open up. I had also been increasingly feeling that an unhealed shadow in Daniel was playing out in cult-like abuses of power and authority; exclusivity and elitism; and a closed system of leadership where Daniel was the only one ‘enlightened enough’ to make decisions or create anything new within the paradigm.

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I was praying daily even several months after leaving the group for Divine guidance, support, and help as all of my previous friends, my spiritual teacher and surrogate father figure, and the work I felt was my soul purpose path were abruptly shut down to me. My burgeoning soul mate relationship with Wayne provided depths of nourishment and connection that I had never known before and, most of the time, I was amazed at how the love between us served as a balm to the pain of rejection and isolation.

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Because I had been journaling and connecting with parts of myself (or subpersonalities) for many years through Daniel’s parts work connection process, it was an intuitive reaction for me to want to connect with and get to know this energy that I felt must be my daemon or the soul guardian aspect of my being. I discovered that the daemon seemed to hold access to and was fiercely guarding over my soul gifts, including my writing capacities, intuitive and psychic gifts, and connection with the Divine. I first read about the term ‘Daemon or Daimon’ from Ken Wilber, who described them as one’s inner guide or wisdom, and it was originally offered by Socrates as his ‘Divine muse’ and the term means “soul” in Latin.

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As I began to connect with my own daemon, who was initially named Atama and was masculine feeling, I felt my intuition deepen with more access to my soul courage. I also felt more clear and confident about eventually serving others again as a space holder, healer, and spiritual teacher. Atama and I embarked on a journey together, a relationship that was indeed, mutually beneficial, and eventually he ascended back to his own dimension after helping me (among many other things) create and co-offer with Wayne a spiritual and emotional transformational healing way of life through connecting with the Divine Mother and subpersonality work first called Breva Healing and then, SoulFullHeart.

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Then, eventually, I met Morgaine who appeared as my Daemon but, also, as the current Lady of The Lake in the Avalon dimension. Most of our connection was focused on Morgaine’s wounding and pain from many lifetimes. I helped act as a bridge between her past experience of a fearful and impersonal Goddess to a current, alive and personal connection with the comforting yet catalytic Divine Mother. She healed quickly and eventually she ‘left’ as my personal daemon and claimed her role in the etheric realm as an ascended teacher, representing the archetype of Morgan Le Fay or Morgan of the Faerie in the King Author mythology.

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“I’ve missed you,” I say to her, feeling my love connect with her love. For the last year, my primary focus has been on leaving Canada and then establishing an off-grid, sustainable sanctuary on a remote sanctuary in South Western Mexico, about three hours south of Puerto Vallarta. My attention has mostly been on practical matters and the huge acclimation process I experienced going from industrial society to living off grid, growing our own food through three natural gardens, and living without internet, refrigeration, electricity (other than one solar panel), cell phones, etc.

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“I’ve missed you too,” she says. “Although, I am always available to you and I have been checking in on you often there at the sanctuary.”

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“I’m so glad that you are my guide here in Avalon. I was hoping that you would be and that you wouldn’t be too busy.”

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She laughs. “There is no such thing as being too busy in this dimension. Time is an illusion and so is busy-ness. So much stress caused in your earth dimension by the illusory concept of time.”

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I nod, agreeing with her, although my lifestyle at the sanctuary is pretty free from monitoring time or even days of the week or months. We take our responsive cues much more from nature’s seasonal changes, which impact us in various ways, mostly related to gardening and natural building. It has been many years since I ‘punched a time clock” or felt any kind of stress due to deadline pressures or that sort of thing. But, for many years and especially as a working single mother, that reality was very true for me.

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“It is good, the way life is for you at the sanctuary. It’s the reason that you are now ready to connect with me here,” she says.

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I feel a swell of appreciation for where I am in the present moment, even as it has been at times a difficult process of letting go into trust and surrender.

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“Where is ‘here’ anyway? Is Avalon a parallel universe or dimension?” I ask, risking to venture out with some of the many questions that I have.

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“Avalon lives in the collective unconscious and even in the consciousness of some souls in your earth dimension. Usually these souls have visited or lived here in between lifetimes and some of that memory carries forward to their earth incarnation. Avalon is also an archetype representing a sequestered and safe natural setting for exploring the mysteries, the healing arts, connection with the Goddess or Divine Mother, performing magics and great workings. It is, yes, a parallel universe to yours, although at one time in your human history it existed in your dimension.”

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“Yes,” I say, familiar with the story through reading Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books and the book which provided the means for me to travel to Avalon called Avalon Within by Jhenah Telyndru. “The first Lady of the Lake pulled it ‘into the mists’ to protect the priestesses and Druid priests who lived there and were constantly under threat of being persecuted by the Romans and the Christians.”

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“Yes, that is the story. Along with help from the Queen of Faerie, Avalon was placed in an in-between place only reachable to those initiated into the ways and mysteries of lifting the mists over it. People still sent their daughters to be initiated here for awhile, but eventually, Avalon faded into the realm of myth to those in your dimension. It’s physical counterpoint in your dimension is the town of Glastonbury, England. People say that they can feel and access the energies of Avalon there which they can because we are, in a sense, hovering right over them!”

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“So, how am I able to be here in Avalon now? I mean, I followed the process offered by Jhenah Telyndru called Immram and that helped me to get into a meditative space so I could visualize travelling and being here. She offers that the immram is a Celtic tool to access the realm of the Otherworld. She says it is similar to Shamanic journeying and Kabalistic pathworking.”

“That is the method that you drew to access Avalon, but there are other ways too. The main thing is that the soul is ready for what it will experience here and so it finds a path. Yours is, as is your heart and body.”

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“There is a way that this all feels too easy, Morgaine. I mean I often thought that I wanted to experience parallel dimensions and universes, yet I assumed that it would be some intense experience that required a greatly altered state of consciousness. Even that I would need to use herbals or something. But, this feels just like the fantasy play or virtual reality I am so familiar with, spending much of my childhood and even adulthood, until I met Wayne, engaging in.”

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“What you call ‘fantasy play’ and ‘virtual reality’ was actually you experiencing bringing multidimensional access into your everyday life. You had etheric visits with other people, able to connect with them in much deeper and easier ways than through their conscious personality, so often ruled by their false self and ego. If your parents had been psychically sensitive, they would have validated your gift and multidimensional access rather than subconsciously encouraging you ‘to give it up and get real.’”

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I think about this, letting in the reframe of what I had felt was primarily a way to cope when life was unfulfilling for me. “I mostly felt it was due to my active imagination.”

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“What is imagination, but the soul’s capacity to feel and experience beyond the physical? Some of it is ‘made up’, yes, but feel how amazing that is. You can create your own experience of your reality which, actually, all humans have the capacity to do. Also, sometimes what you call imagination is actually much more real than what you are claiming is ‘reality.’”

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“My head hurts now,” I say, laughing. I can feel my mind drifting off and on as we are talking, sometimes tracking and being distracted by what is happening back at the sanctuary, including the approaching lightening of the sky bringing dawn with it and soon breakfast time with Wayne and Christopher.

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“That is enough for today. We will have plenty of time – if time was real, that is – to explore all of this. There is one more thing I want to share with you before you return,” she says, as she begins to get up and move toward the path out of the orchard.

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“Yes, please,” I say, getting up to follow her.

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“This is the first time that you or I have been able to consciously connect with Avalon from an Earth incarnation phase. I don’t know what that means exactly but the possibilities it opens up could be tremendous.”

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I feel the significance of what she is saying, but I don’t fully get why it is such a big deal. Again, to me, it feels quite natural and maybe even as if I am just ‘making it all up’ on some level. It feels that way to part of me anyway, even if Morgaine offers a different way to look at it.

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We move together down the path and she stops for a moment and turns to me. “I am to give you a symbol that you can use to connect with me. I’m not going to show it to you now. Just keep your eyes open for it as it is everywhere.”

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I am intrigued by this and immediately file it away for future discovery. She sees me off on the barge, waving from the shore with one of her small, delicate hands, the gesture offering the sense of the unknown experiences to come, along with many new possibilities.