She awoke in the dark, separated from the night sky only by a thin and permeable cloth. She could feel the stars singing out in the dark and laid wrapped up and warm in her flimsy shelter until dawn light shaded the sky. The grass was jewelled with morning dew and mist lay on the ground like an ethereal cloak.

I remember the afternoon I met her. I had wandered down to the rocky beach by the house I had moved into some months prior, in the cold and windy February. The weather was starting to warm up now, after a short and gloomy rainy season. I wasn’t brave enough to get in the water yet, it still felt chillingly cold on my feet, lapping vestiges of the winter, but as I looked out across the rippling turquoise water, I saw a woman gliding over the sparkling sea. 

She is slim and delicate-looking, a young woman shining in the beauty of her youth, she is nonetheless past her first blooming and into her self-contained strength as a woman. She still has the unfettered freedom of young womanhood, without a babe or serious lover to anchor her in the protective, but sometimes restrictive shell of a family.

She is the wise ancient one of the sea, a witch that seems to hold all of the secrets of the world. Her cave is wondrous to behold, with shells and pearls, living coral of every hue, as well as drowned statues, coins and ingots, stretching back many thousands of years. Tales and stories of this wise witch spread into every cranny and canyon of all the seas and oceans.

In the beginning, all was dark. Rich, warm, velvet and silent. The dark was like a blanket, thick and welcoming. It was safe and infinite, welcoming and tender. However, nothing changed in the darkness, no time passed and nothing happened. It was static and endless.

I lay nestled and protected between high sumptuous bosky slopes, where honey sunshine drips through the tree branches weaving their magic, to dapple my sacred waters. I am a nexus in the winding path of this bright and sparkling river that murmurs and sings with prayers of wide skies, Atlantic winds and flowering gorse.

Once there was a woman that wanted to sail to the other side of the wind. Whenever the wind blew, it blew her away, and no matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t fight her way through to the other side. When the wind dropped, she couldn’t find it again to try again.