Looks like they don't listen very well.
I looked out over the frozen river, at the Laurentian Hills on the other side. I felt a warm pressure against my leg, and I glanced down to see Charlie looking up at me with his typical mischievous grin. He took off again to bury his snout in a snowbank, looking for a stick. I smiled. Charlie loved his sticks. Must be the yellow lab half. The other half was a dachshund. It made for an interesting combo.
I looked out again across the frozen river. Wolves were known to run across from the Quebec side. On impulse, I said “Let’s go out on the ice, Charlie!” and stepped out. This sort of impulse wasn’t typically the sort of thing I would do, but I quashed any reservations and started walking across the ice toward Quebec. Charlie glanced up and bounded after me, porpoising through the snow due to the short legs he inherited from his dachshund side.
After a couple of minutes of walking out on the ice, I stopped. I had a strange sense of déjà vu. Unbidden, an image flashed through my mind, of a time when I was a boy of 9 or 10. I was out on the ice that time as well, on a different river in a different place. I had forgotten all about that. I had a different dog with me, a small shepherd mix named Lobo. I remember falling through the ice, and not remembering much after that. I was told that Lobo had dragged my unconscious body out of the water, but then was drawn under the ice herself. We never did find her, and it took me months to get over losing her like that.
Now, I was an older man in my late 50s. Charlie was our dog now, and my wife and I loved him to bits. Both of us loved him more than any dog we’d ever had, he was just so lovable.
I heard a whine. I snapped out of my reverie. Looking down, I saw Charlie looking up at me with sad, soulful brown eyes. As I looked at him, I noticed water coming up through the snow and covering my boots up to my ankles.
Realizing I was literally on very dangerous ice, I began backing up the way I had come. What the hell possessed me to walk out onto that ice? It wasn’t something I’d normally do. I was smarter than that!
Then it happened. My left leg plunged through the ice and into the frigid, flowing water below. I threw myself backwards, hoping the ice would support my body so I could pull my leg out of the water. The current had my boot, though, and I couldn’t get enough leverage to pull myself back any further.
When the rest of the ice gave way beneath me, it was as if it was predetermined, that this was the only possible way this situation would go. Now, my body was fully in the water with just my arms holding onto the edge of the ice. Charlie was right in front of me, whining and barking frantically.
My body was completely numb now, and I could no longer maintain my grip on the ice. As I slipped under the water, I looked up at the blue hole I had fallen through. The light became dimmer as I was swept along under the ice. Before the hole disappeared in the murky water, I saw a splash as Charlie jumped into the water. “NO!” I thought. “Don’t do this, Charlie! Go back home! Be safe!”
An extra burst of adrenaline allowed me to struggle through the water toward where I last saw Charlie swimming. Everything was growing dim, my lungs bursting from lack of air. My adrenaline fueled energy finally petered out. Just before things went black, I felt Charlie’s teeth on the arm of my coat. With the last light available, I saw once more those sad, soulful brown eyes staring back at me.
That was the last thing I saw.
*****
My last thoughts as everything went dark were incoherent, mired in a swirling fog. I was on a platform. Or not. It was dark, then light. I was floating. I realized I was remembering when I was a little boy, when I had fallen through the ice so many years ago. I had forgotten all about this part, but now it flashed through my mind as if it were happening right now.
As the light surrounded me, I saw a form approaching. It was mostly just a blob of light, but as it got closer I could see it forming into a vaguely human shape with dark spots for eyes. I remember I was frightened, but remained calm. I had my dog, Lobo, beside me.
The being drifted close to us and paused, silently looking at us. I could hear a voice in my head, coming from the being in front of me. It said, “Welcome. You are disoriented right now, but everything is alright. I am your guide, and I am here to guide you home. Your time on Earth is up.”
I remember being terrified at those words. I have a mom! I have a dog! Well, maybe “had” would be a better word, as I looked down at Lobo beside me. If Lobo was here, then that would mean she had died, too.
I looked back at the being patiently waiting. I sensed no ill will from it, in fact all I could sense was an unconditional love. I could feel my resolve wavering, as a desire began to build in me to follow this guide.
“Are you going to take me to heaven?”, I asked.
I sensed the being smiling at me. “Yes,” it said. “Though it's probably not like you imagine it to be right now.”
I noticed another light approaching. Turning to face it, I watched as the other being came up to float beside the first. I could see the focus of this new guide was on Lobo beside me. I looked closer at Lobo. I could see that Lobo was actually made out of light, as well. As was I. Lobo was looking at the new guide, and it almost seemed to me as if she recognized it. Him. Whatever. I saw Lobo begin to drift toward the new guide, which was emanating waves of love and welcome. I felt a great sadness within me as I watched her go.
Suddenly, Lobo stopped and looked toward me. The other being was still. I moved toward Lobo, and enveloped her with my body. As I did, I felt a growing circle of light coming from within us, and expanding outward. Love. It was all the love I had in my tiny body pouring into Lobo.
My guide moved to us, and said, “This sort of love was one of the things you came to Earth to learn. It cannot be taught. It can only be experienced. Lobo will go with her guide, and you can come with me. Lobo isn’t going to the same kind of place you are going to, but for her, it is what you might call a ‘doggy’ heaven. This won’t be the last time you see her.”
“What if I don’t want to go?” I said, surprised at my own courage. “What if I want to go back home, and take Lobo with me?”
My guide was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You don’t remember it yet, you are still too close to your Earth life. But shortly you will start to remember your time here, in your real home. This is where you are from. Before you chose to be born on Earth, you also chose when you would die in this life. This is that time. You decided this was how you would end this life."
“Well, I change my mind!” I shouted at him. “I want to go back!”
Instead of being angry with me, I continued to feel waves of unconditional love from my guide. “If this is what you truly desire, we can of course do that. But there is a balance to everything, and everything has a cost in these worlds. The Soul that is Lobo has chosen to come to Earth to love you in this life, and this is how she dies. She does not have your ability to refuse this, as she is not as mature a Soul as you are. You have had thousands of lives as a human on Earth. She must go with her guide.”
A wave of unbearable sadness came over me as I watched the other guide draw Lobo after him. Then I watched as Lobo’s light body flared up, almost drowning out the divine light from the two guides, and she moved again to stand beside me, merging with me so that we were inseparable.
My guide was silent again. Finally, he said, “There is a way.”
[Continued below, due to reddit character length limitations]
[Continued from above]
As that final scene played out in my mind, I awoke to find myself surrounded in darkness. There was light, but it was far off. I remembered everything, now. I looked beside me, and there was Charlie. I felt sadness and guilt that he had to die trying to save me. I looked up again at the light. It seemed closer, now. It was getting larger. Within a very short time, it had reached us and enveloped us. I found myself and Charlie floating in a white fog, or mist. Coming through the mist were two figures. I started as I recognized both of them immediately. They were the same two guides who met Lobo and me all those years ago, when I first fell through the ice as a little boy.
I sensed love and amusement from my guide as he saw I recognized him. “Welcome again!” he said
I tentatively moved toward him. “I remember we met when I was a boy and almost died, but then I don’t remember what happened after that. I have to say I’m confused. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”, I asked.
“Of course,” he answered. “As I mentioned to you when you were here last time, before any Soul comes to Earth to be incarnated, they choose how they will die at the end of their life. Sometimes it’s a short life, sometimes it’s a long one. Yours was supposed to be short.” He paused to look at me, then carried on, “But, sometimes there are… alterations… that are permitted. As long as they do not upset the grand plan. We gave you another 50 years, but your dog, Lobo, wasn’t permitted to return with you. At that time.”
“At that time?”, I said hesitantly, a sense of realization beginning to dawn on me. I looked down at Charlie’s light body beside me. It looked somehow familiar. I had seen that light body before. I remembered all the other dogs I had owned throughout my life. Lobo had never left me. “Lobo? Lobo??!”
Sending out vibrations of pure joy, Charlie/Lobo leapt into my light body and for a moment we were indistinguishable. Even though neither of us had our physical bodies, I felt the distinct sense of a wet, sloppy tongue licking me all over my face. All I could see for several moments was a blinding, white light.
When the light died down, I looked up again at the two guides. Except now, there were a dozen guides. They completely encircled Charlie and I. They seemed to be conferring among themselves. I glanced around at them nervously.
One of the guides whose Soul colour was a very deep purple detached itself from the rest, and approached us. “Charlie,” she said melodiously, with the faint sound of a flute. The voice sounded female, and very ancient. She held out a hand, and seemingly unable to resist, Charlie moved toward her. The dozen Souls surrounded Charlie, and multi-coloured light streamed from each of them, aimed straight at Charlie’s light body.
“What’s happening? What are you doing to Charlie?”, I said with panic in my voice, even though I sensed no ill will from any of them.
With a final burst of multi-coloured light, the dozen guides withdrew from around Charlie. As the light died down, I looked at Charlie’s light body closely. It was changed. As I watched, I noticed parts of his light body that weren’t there before. In fact, he looked like the rest of us, a light body that was vaguely human in shape.
My guide approached me again. “I said some alterations were permitted. At the beginning of your life, Charlie was almost at the end of his ‘training’ on Earth. Just like life does on the Earth you just left, we evolve here, too. Every living thing on Earth is inhabited by a Soul, all at different stages of development. Soul’s purpose is to gain enough experience to attain the next level of advancement. With Lobo’s actions in giving up her life for yours, and doing so again as Charlie, that was enough. The next time Charlie is incarnated on Earth, it will be as a human. There, he will continue to love, learn and grow in that form. He has earned this advancement. He will incarnate with his immense capacity for love, and touch everyone around him.”
Charlie and I looked at each other. He smiled at me. “We’re going to have some fun, now, huh?”, he grinned. “I can’t wait to go back to your home! All these lifetimes, I couldn’t go with you. I had to go with the other dogs, which was a lot of fun, but I was ready to move on! Now I can be with you here, too!”
I grinned right back, and both of our light bodies flared up again in a blinding light.
“Are you ready to go home, now? Both of you?”, my guide smiled at us.
“Sure!”, I said. “Um. What happens now with us?”
“Well,” said my guide, “Just as Charlie was your guide and companion over many lifetimes, now it is your turn to guide and teach him as he begins the next stage of his exciting journey. You have advanced enough to join us and become a guide yourself. So, once again, welcome!”
The dozen other guides began to glow brightly again, as they surrounded both me and Charlie this time. A large flash of light, a sense of blindingly fast travel, and we were home.
This is really really good. I love this take on the prompt. Great characters, great reolution. Well written. :)
Thank you! This is my first try at one of these things. For some reason when I read the writing prompt, I felt like writing this. It wound up being a bit longer than I thought, and there was a another sub plot I wanted to include, but I needed to wrap it up.
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I'm old school, I learned before the internet. If you are learning pipes, they aren't really a self-taught instrument. You do need a competent instructor. Ask around for references, as you do not want to learn a bad instructor's bad habits. Good luck unlearning those later. I understand that with Skype, you can have an instructor half way around the world who can monitor you during lessons and correct you as you go. That might be an option.
Regarding moisture, yep, that's normal. Those little cheerio sized sponge things that others mentioned are great, though they won't stop all the moisture. You just need to take the chanter apart and blow out the excess moisture in the top half of the chanter. Be very careful to never touch the reed.
Regarding aching fingers, that is a sign that you are gripping too hard. That's normal as you concentrate while learning. Just as with anything, practice will allow you to loosen up. In the meantime, focus on relaxing your fingers as you play.
Also, if no one has corrected you on this yet, before you get too far, ensure that when you play, your fingers are straight, not curled around any of the holes. That's a hard bad habit to unlearn, better to start off right. It's far easier.
As an aside, I'll bring up age. Typically, the older you are, the more difficult it is to learn to play the pipes well. For instance, if you start in your mid-50s, you will be able to make noise, but the sad truth is you'd never be able to play in a grade 1 band. Which is fine, 99% of pipers never play in a grade 1 band. I just used that as an example.
I don't know how old you are, but learning as a teen is much better if you can manage it. Kids tend to pick up this sort of thing more naturally, whereas adults have forgotten how to learn like they did as kids. Adults tend to want to break everything down and over complicate things, getting bogged down in details, whereas kids "just do it".
Probably one of the most important things to know if you want to be a competent piper, is you need to develop a "critical ear". You need to be able to know if what you are playing is right, or if the notes are in tune. And you need to be able to know if you make a mistake or are not in tune. If you do make a mistake, especially in the beginning, stop what you're doing and correct it. Way too many people let mistakes go (laziness?), so they never learn to correct them and that builds up, and soon their ear becomes used to bad playing and they think it's normal. Learning to spot your mistakes as you're making them, and then correcting them, will go a very long way towards making you a competent piper. Recording yourself and listening to the playback helps with this, too.
Good luck! This isn't an easy instrument!
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Hey Macleod, get off of my ewe.
Up till now, I've been spending maybe a grand a year on the gem store. Now, I will most likely be cutting back that support. Maybe I'm alone in this, maybe I'm not. But when NCsoft sees an overall drop in revenue, do you really think they'll sit there and go "We done f***ed up", or will they see that as justification that they were right, and lay even more people off?
On a side note, when I was looking at the list of names, I was pretty shocked to see Gail was among them. Like, what the hell, NCsoft... I really do not like you.
Yes. It's an aggressive act and should be answered by governments as such.
Except Trump's government.. because it benefited him by getting him elected.
Honestly, is what he uses his email for so important that changing it would have earth shattering consequences?
I would put a forward on his Rogers email to the new email address, and start up a gmail or outlook web account. Inform everyone of the change, and then ensure he doesn't log into the old email again.. delete it, change the password, whatever it takes. Force him to change.. short term pain for long term gain, kind of thing.
I had a real answer ready to go. My boss passed around a group photo of his kid's piano recital yesterday. The kid is white, everybody else was Asian.
Unless your answer had to do with a "stereo type", then you didn't have a real answer ready to go. :p
