The Seventh Direction

PART FOUR: Force and Form. Episode 100

                                                                         ["D/A" narrates —A.A.]

Strolling on down the overgrown trail, headed for the thicket, I felt my elemental-body as I walked. I thought I would, but I didn't "feel" that much different than when I was a physical body. Lighter—for sure; and of course a whole lot younger. But I was still the same me, the very same Isness deep inside. That hadn't changed. Nor would it. Well, it might. Everything changes, in some way, at some level. Maybe during the course, my Isness will grow to be brighter? But if it does, how will I ever know?

Up ahead, a faint glow shone in the thicket. Like a beacon. Not that I needed it to find my way, I could do that blind! It was light, it was force, it was a vibration still resonant and glowing in the thicket. It was an atmosphere brimming with lasting energy—long-lasting fractal energy, I think so, what with Lady El and Grandmother and Master J' and Aces and me and Dorothy and Toadz (and Baby) and all that had gone on in there before? Well, it had not gone on . . . not exactly. No. Here in this world of force, it was still imprinted upon The Invisible, there within the thicket. One fine energy in there—mixing it up, here and now—with its own created-visible elemental form. I could see the thicket glowing.

Farther down the trail, a ways, between the thicket and Wood's End, there was undo commotion occurring. Extremely undo. I stopped in my tracks. Time to try it out? Why not.

I'd seen Master J' and Lady El do their "inward searching thing" before—many times before. I'd done it myself a time or two, with modest success. But now it was time to upgrade the process. So, with my eyes turned inward (inward searching), I dove in . . . and . . . though firmly rooted to the ground, for I could feel energy pouring through my elemental-feet and into Mother Earth, I rose slowly up, up, and up (no broomstick, no umbrella, no magic wand) and drifted slowly forward to just beyond the offshoot trail, which led back to the thicket (in a roundabout way), whereupon I stopped, hovered, and "overlooked" from well above the undo commotion. Yikes!

Below, two freaked-out hunters, all out of breath, huffing and puffing, scrabbling up the path, were desperately trying to escape Valley Forest—it sure looked that way. One of them had brown, muck goo all over him, nearly up to his neck. The other one was mucked, too, but only on his gloves and arms.

"I ain't goin' back for the gear and the guns. No way," Big Muck said. He was freaked out, all right. 

"Let's just get the hell out of here," Little Muck said. "Jeeeez, man, I told you 'bout them stories, didn't I? No one . . . NOBODY comes in here! But noooooo, we just had to, didn't we? Now do you believe me? Can't you move any faster?"

"Not with this crap all over me," Big Muck replied, trembling more-so than Little Muck. There was an aura roundabout the two, similar to the thicket's glow, but contrary in that it was a sinister, black aura—theirs or something else's . . . or a combination of both, likely. "And ya, Zebediah, I believe you, awright. Ya! But I wouldn't of if it hadn't a happened. That gawd awful thing? Hell's bells, Zeb, I thought I was a goner. I thought we was both goners! And that other thing? Help me out here, will ya!"

Big Muck had stopped talking, his focus supremely bent on moving his trembling-self further up the trail. Stumbling on, closing in now on the offshoot trail, their incredible freak-out scenario meanwhile replayed itself brilliant and fast-moving on the screen of Big Muck's mind. —Those crazy soon-to-be Mucks, and their recent scrabbling down the slope, past old Gnarly Tree, guns on their shoulders, packs on their backs, the meadow ahead glittering in moonlight, the ground broken open, brown muck goo oozing out . . . a yawning chasm. All the while, on the horizon, a host of buzzing, black winged-things (morphing so quickly I had to trust my intuition!) appeared—first like hungry locusts, then like ghostly, black steeds stampeding, toward The Mucks—as if from some other dimension (morphing so quickly I had to overlook myself!); and a bright light burst in my mind, devoured that dread dimension, and shuttered it closed. Yikes! No! Through the bright light, the dimension unshuttering, reopening (OPEN!)—the hungry locusts recouped the vision, now circling back (leaving?), from whence they came, rising up, smaller, above the mountains, up and up, shaping a . . . a hawk-like form disappearing over the horizon. (Take a breath.) (Wow.) (Take two. Big Muck's mind:)