We are in a campground which is heavily wooded. There are gravel roads and worn footpaths. The day is sunny, but the shade under the trees is heavy, with the fully-formed leaves of summer. It is neither particularly hot nor particularly cold, but simply comfortable.
There are two groups of people in the campground, at odds for some unknown reason. This is not the
friendly competitionthat occurs in some places and campgrounds, with two groups that come from different areas for a regular contest. This is an aggressive, in-your-face conflict, with shouting, threats, and occasional fisticuffs.
At one point, as I am traveling alone from another area of the campground back to our encampment along one of the footpaths, I am accosted by a group of men that appear to mean me physical harm. I am severely outnumbered, and I know that if I try to make a stand against them, the results will be heavily against me. I dodge, weave, and evade, more than once managing to free myself from grasping hands that cannot quite hold onto my wrist, my arm, my ankle. I free myself from one assailant by springing off of a small rock, placing my feet against his chest, and kicking off. As I run and turn a corner in the path, I find more of them waiting, but I somehow manage to evade them as well.
Returning to our encampment, I find that the two groups have decided to participate in an archery competition, to try to use friendly sports as a way to reduce the tensions between the two groups.
I am a decent archer in the dream, but not exceptional. I can hunt, but a lot of that is patience and close shooting. I am not sure that I would be able to contribute much to our team, but almost all who are archers (which is almost all of the encampment) are going to participate, so I go into my tent to assemble my archery tackle.
The tent is a modern nylon dome tent, about five feet tall in the center. My archery tackle, however, is
traditional, a D-section longbow, wooden arrows, hip quiver, leather bracer, leather archer's glove. The arrows are not target arrows, but rather have diamond-shaped hunting heads. These are the arrows that I have with me, so these are the arrows that I will use.
But when I emerge from my tent, the rest of the archers in the encampment have gone. I ask one of the few remaining in the encampment where they have gone, and I am told that they have gone to the competition, which is to be held in the southern section of the campground.
I do not know where that is, or what route to take to get there. Perhaps they saw my hesitation, and decided to go on without me. Perhaps there simply wasn't time to wait for me. In any case, if I still want to participate, I will have to find my way on my own.
At this point, I was awakened by our elder cat's semi-regular early morning howl (which will not stop until someone gets up to go find her, to be actually seen by her), so I arose to find her, calmed her, and then started preparations for my day.
1 comment:
Good telling.
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