Gate: Strength

I stepped through the vision gate and found myself standing on a road made of cobble stones. The world shook in a massive quake and the road began to crumble and fall apart beneath my feet.  I tumbled to the ground and the earth split apart, casting the stones and I into the underworld through the open mouth of a gigantic serpent made of light who emerged from the void caused by the earthquake.

I blinked and found myself sitting in an enormous white flower.  The blossom waved and shifted in a light breeze as I peered through the wall of petals and saw I sat in a field of the same kind of flower in a glade beside an ancient forest.

Suddenly, I heard a loud noise and a sound like a giant’s footsteps moving across the ground. I ducked behind the petal wall as a frog, the size of a house, leapt by.  He was so enormous his movements shook the field, its attendant flowers and I, as if we were mere ants who walked in his shadow.

“I require a guide for this place,” I said, holding on to the flower for my life as a droplet of water fell from the back of the frog.  The water landed in my flower and formed itself into a tiny person made of dew.

“Hello,” said the dew drop. “Welcome to the Garden of the Gods, Flower.”

“I’m not a flower. My name is Heidi and I come from another world,” I said, leaning into the white petal wall as the frog left the field. “In fact, where I come from the Garden of the Gods looks very different than this. Which gods are these flowers dedicated to?”

“All of them,” replied the droplet. “None of them.”

“Well, which is it?” I said with a laugh. “All or none?”

“Dealer’s choice!” said the dew drop. Then he bounced out of my hand and led me to the stem of the flower, which was shaped like a playground slide.  The droplet jumped onto the stem and slid down its smooth surface with his watery arms raised above his head in delight like a child on a park slide. I sat on the stem and did the same.

When we reached the ground, we stood together in a forest of wild flowers, admiring the blossoms swaying far above.  “If we begin the journey like this, it’ll take ages. We must be larger than we are now to get anywhere,” the droplet said. “Can you help us grow?”

“Pretend to be giants? I do that all the time,” I replied and envisioned my friend and myself growing larger.  Soon, the blossoms became regular-sized compared to my body, but I kept growing and eventually towered above the field of flowers.  The dew drop sat in my hand in his vaguely humanoid shape and increased in size with me.

“Your imagination is too big!” he said, looking over the edge of my hand at the flowers far below. “You’ve overdone it. Take us back to the flowers, please.”

“Oops,” I said and began reducing our size by imagining we were a photo copy machine with reductive buttons. “Growing just enough is a tricky thing.” Soon, the dew drop and I stood among the flowers in a more appropriate size.

“Much better,” observed the dew drop. “I think we could make it to our destination in this form with the time given to us.” 

“Could take me to meet one of the gods of this place?” I asked. “I’d love to know the true nature of the ruling powers of the garden.”

The droplet immediately jumped from my hand to run through the flowers.  “I can take you to a god. I thought you were going to ask me something challenging,” he said. “This way, Heidi!”  I followed the watery figure through the field to the edge of a shadowed forest full of trees.  I experienced a sense of foreboding as we passed beneath their branches and the sun was blocked from my view.

“Dew drop, I have a further request,” I said. “If all of the gods are here, could you please take me to one whom I connect with on a deep level? I would like to talk to the one who would most benefit from an interaction with me at this time.”

“I know just the guy,” said the droplet, leading me deeper through the trees. “You’ll love Coyote.”

“Coyote? But I don’t know anything about him,” I said. “I’ve seen coyotes in my waking world but only from a distance and they always run away in fear.”

“What’s there to know? He loves to laugh and so do you,” said the droplet. “I bet you’re really scary in your waking world. I’d run away from you too.”

“I’m one of the least scary people in existence,” I said with a laugh.

“Prove it,” said the dew drop.

“How am I supposed to do that?” I said and paused for a moment in thought. “Well, were you afraid when you met me a few moments ago in the flower blossom?”

“I never give myself time to be afraid,” the droplet replied. “So I’m a poor example for your non-frightening powers of presence philosophy. Anyway, here we are fearsome Heidi. Be nice to Coyote, he’s an old friend of mine.” With those words, the dew drop gestured to a grove of nearby trees and then disappeared into the forest floor.