The Changeling

Well you can wake me up in the midnight hour

I'm gonna tell you just a what I seen

Many and many a moon ago there was a careless young mother. She was all of seventeen years, with clouds of wavy dark hair and a pretty smile, and this was her very first and only bebby. 

Her child was hale and robust with bright blue eyes and an agreeable nature. Many times, she was barely clothed for her mother didn’t see much point in wetting cloth just to wash it and dry it and wet it again. Fortunately for the wee girl, for girl she was, she was also of a warm metabolism and did not chill easily. An older mama might say that this mama was a bit lax and lazy in her ways. Ah, but she was a young thing full of songs and foolish love.

It was summer in that country, and truthfully all over the earth also. Many times, wee Millie would be left out on the green grass to sit and watch the birds and the trees and the flowers. She could not walk so her mother knew she could not wander. She was only six moons old.

Millie’s Da only knew that when he came home from the fields at night that his two girls were home and well and dinner was there waiting for him. He was a great believer in pie so most nights there would be a savory and a pie. Not really relevant I readily admit.

What neither Ma nor Da knew was that Millie had playmates to keep her company on those lazy mornings and afternoons between milky feedings.

Bunnies whispered secrets with whiskery kisses between. A great black bird flew over her grassy field from time to time, just checking. Poofy dandelion seed balls touched her lightly. With a tender forefinger Millie sent them flying.

Then there were sparkles and twinkles. Bubbles of shining pinkish light danced in complex patterns to her great amusement showing her things that do not translate well into speech, but then Millie was not yet speaking anyhow.

A great Cat with spikey tufts on its great questing ears sat just out of sight guarding Millie from fairies and the Changers. She only saw his green eyes from time to time, watching. Fairies did not tangle with the great Cat.

Of course, Millie was no changeling of old. She lived and did well with her young parents, but she was changed. As an older child she had sweet little dreamlike memories of those days in the grass with her playmates but no conscious recollections.

She knew she lived on a sweet little blue planet whirling in a great deep expanse filled with lights and stars and spirits and innumerable other bodies. She was a wise child filled with words beyond her years and later a wise woman. She was a credit to her teachers.

I suppose that in the process of living, if we have open eyes and open hearts, we all become changelings of this sort. Awareness grows step by step in like manner to how wisdom in mundane matters and intellectual knowledge grows.