Scribe Doll is working hard. She is buried under bilingual dictionaries, monolingual dictionaries, Roget’s Thesaurus, typing furiously with two fingers, and munching on Yorkshire Wensleydale with apricots. She is casting regular glances at the bottle of Jameson’s next to her CDs.
Thank you for all your kind comments and support over the past year.
May I wish you all a happy, successful, creative and dreams-coming-true 2014!
Scribe Doll
One of my recurring nightmares is missing Christmas. When I am under intense stress and feel like I am losing control of my life, I start dreaming that, somehow or other, I’ve overslept, miscalculated the dates, forgot to look at the calendar, or simply got stuck at work, and Christmas has passed me by. And I get very upset. I love Christmas. For about two weeks of the year. This year, however, I am resenting the seasonal bullying which kicked in minutes after Hallowe’en. I find myself cowering under its aggressiveness and wishing I could hide in a dark corner where I could fall asleep until Twelfth Night.
It’s four o’clock and, having worked on my translations since about six, I feel the justification – and the necessity – to get some air. Also, there is something I want to buy.
It’s time.
The first shop I enter tells me they’ve sold out. I have more luck in the hardware store down the street. I buy a box of twenty. I want coloured ones, this year. For the past twelve Christmases, I have used white ones. I want coloured ones, because I want to trust in their brilliant hues against the dark green leaves.
In every shop, there are representations of Santa Claus. An old man with flushed cheeks, paunch, bright red costume and vacant eyes, and who seems capable of uttering only the monosyllabic “Ho! Ho! Ho!” My heart sinks.
Keep that Santa Claus.
Instead, give me a Father Frost – a Sir Christèmas – with a knowing face, and a cloak like the earth – green and brown and gold, glistening with icicles and embroidered with frost patterns. A shapeshifter with hazel eyes and the arcane knowledge of Merlin, who knows words to move the elements, spells and incantations; who’s as old and wise as the earth. A winter Green Man whose silver hair will grow dark again, and pale skin will catch the sun, on the morning of the Spring Equinox.
I pull the box of Christmas CDs from under the bed. Bing Crosby and the rest of the Fellowship of Crooners. No. I cannot abide the saccharine this year. I take out a recording of Mediaeval carols, conducted by Andrew Parrott. Songs full of mystery, hope and awe. I pull my purchase out of its box, and disentangle the long, twisted green wire. I cannot face taking out my miniature Christmas tree, this year. Instead, I arrange the string of fairy lights over the fine branches of my droopy ficus plant. It belonged to a Bahamian friend I knew in Cambridge, thirty years ago. She gave me the ficus plant when she moved back to the Bahamas and so, for the past three decades, it has travelled with me from Cambridge to London, from flat to flat. I plug in the lights and a constellation of blues, greens, reds, yellows and pinks – like a comet’s tail – trickles down the dark green foliage. I want to trust in their brilliant, joyful hues and the promise they make me.
Trust. Christmas is about trust. Trust that magic exists. Trust that goodwill and love truly exist. Trust that words will be kept and intentions carried out. Trust that all will be well. After all, isn’t Winter all about trust? Trust that beneath the frozen, hard earth bright green shoots are sprouting, even though we will not see them for months, yet. Trust that the cold and bleakness will eventually give way to sunshine and blossoms. Trust that, next year, things will be better. Trust, though at times, you feel you have little evidence to fuel your hopes. And trust is about waiting. Waiting patiently.
The branches of the oak tree outside my window are bare. I strain to remember the luxuriating glossy green foliage that dressed it not three months ago. I strain to imagine tiny green buds sprouting on it once more. But I must wait and trust. Wait for the tree to be ready and trust that it will be.
I pour a few drops of pine needle and rosemary essential oil into the pottery burner, and put peel of an orange on the radiator. Their scents mingle and fill the room with Yuletide. It’s evening, and I light the red Advent candle on my table. I sit in the armchair by the window. Up in the sky, the Moon has a soft glow and a deeply sympathetic expression. Her beams are washing over the dark branches of my oak tree. I understand, she seems to whisper, trusting is hard, but do trust – all will be well. I catch a glimpse of something at the foot of the oak. I look down and meet the amber gaze of a fox. His eyes catch the headlights of a passing car. He shudders, cowers, but then straightens up and looks up at my window again. The Moon is speaking the truth, he seems to say. He looks peeved with my doubts. Trust, his eyes command. In their glint, I see something ancient and arcane. Suddenly, the fox is a fox no more, but a tall figure standing against the trunk of the oak. I blink and it’s vanished. Once again, the fox is staring up at me and his eyes are merry and wise. I stare back. For a fraction of a second, I thought he’d turned into a tall man with a knowing face and a cloak like the earth – green and brown and gold, glistening with icicles and embroidered with frost patterns.
I will trust, I reply. I do trust.
Scribe Doll
We happened to find ourselves in the same corner of the room, looking at a print on the wall, sipping our drinks. We gave each other a polite nod. I was trying not to look too starstruck. Ordinarily, I am quite blasé about being in the presence of famous actors. But this wasn’t someone ordinary – this was Peter O’Toole.
The first screen man I had a crush on when at the age of eleven, I saw Lawrence of Arabia. I am sure those innocent but deeply intelligent blue eyes contributed to my fascination with T.E. Lawrence. For months, I combed the local library for any book I could find about this man I saw as an unconventional, idealistic, free-thinker. My favourite scene in the film remains the one where Lawrence, with a theatrical gesture, extinguishes a match between his thumb and index finger, without wincing. One of the other soldiers, William Potter, tries it and burns himself. “It damn well hurts!” he says.
“Certainly, it hurts,” replies Lawrence with nonchalance.
“Well, what’s the trick, then?”
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”
It was a launch party at the Rose Theatre, Bankside, on a cold February night, about ten years ago. And so there I was, standing next to Peter O’Toole.
I cannot remember which one of us started the conversation. I think he made a comment about the print on the wall – a plan of the Rose Theatre*. Before long, we were discussing the symbolism of the rose throughout the centuries. We talked about Dante and his rose-shaped Paradiso. The rose as purity, as perfection, as essence, as beauty. In poetry, history, art and mysticism. His eyes shone as he spoke. He told me about a special rose he grew in his garden in Ireland. Eyes full of passion for knowledge, and impatient intelligence.
He asked what I did for a living. At the time, I was combining my thespian pursuits with my work as a complementary medicine practitioner. “You’re like Schiller,” he said.
“Well, he was a doctor,” I said. “I practise alternative medicine.”
I said I thought theatre was one of the most honest professions in the world. Peter O’Toole gave a cynical snort. “Honest?”
Yes. Honest. Theatre people are not in it for the money – not with the pittance we earn – but for the sheer, incurable love of it. Theatre people don’t promise to cure, build, manage or rule – or even change your life in any way. They just offer you a good night out, and a performance they weave their hearts and souls into. What could be more honest?
He heard me out. “What’s you name?” he asked, his eyes apparently trying to establish whether I was interesting or mad.
He suggested going to look at the actual archeological digs of the Rose. I was about to follow him when I noticed a small crowd forming behind me. “There’s all these people waiting to talk to you,” I said.
He did’t seem to hear me or, if he did, he chose not to acknowledge my words. He just said, with a hint of irritation, “Are you coming?”
And who am I to refuse if Peter O’Toole offers to show me around Christopher Marlowe’s old theatre? So I followed him down the wooden steps, into the damp archeological digs, sections partitioned with orange lights. “That’s where the groundlings would have stood. And that’s where…”
I was transfixed. I knew it was a moment to remember.
When we returned to the main foyer, I said goodbye to him. “What’s your name?” he asked again. I wonder whether he had decided between the interesting and the mad, by then.
A few years later, when I became a theatrical agent, I staged a performance at the Rose Theatre with my clients. Peter O’Toole was the first person I invited. Sadly, I did not hear back from his agent.
A couple of hours ago, when the news of Peter O’Toole’s passing away flashed on my computer screen, I burst into tears. He was a great actor. He was also brilliant to talk to on a winter’s evening, in Kit Marlowe’s old theatre.
*Please see also A Poesy Ringful of Stories.
Scribe Doll
I’ve been thinking about the guilt emotion. Wondering if guilt can sometimes provide a secure – albeit uncomfortable – hiding place. Guilt gnaws at our insides. It pinches so hard at the bottom of our lungs, that we cannot take a full breath. It tastes like tar.
But, in a strange kind of way, it is self-inflicted punishment and so, by definition, under our control. Please don’t punish me – I’m already punishing myself. And at least I know the limits of my discomfort zone.
“I feel guilty.”
Response: “Oh, you mustn’t.”
Result: Twofold
1. You think feeling guilty makes you a better person and exonerates you from the wrong you have done or are doing.
2. The other person’s response helps validate you as a good person, thereby providing a kind of forgiveness.
“It’s all my fault.”
I would believe “It’s my fault” but “It’s all my fault” rings the alarm bell of doubt in my head. Considering that, by the law of averages something is seldom 100% just one person’s fault, vocally assuming a disproportionately large portion of responsibility inevitably makes me wonder why you would make yourself out to be worse than you actually are. Is it (unconsciously) to make yourself look like a good person… better than you actually are?
“I’m a bad person”
Cue for me to say, “Of course, you’re not!” Instead, what I sometimes want to say is, “So are you saying it’s in your nature to be ‘bad‘ and therefore you feel let off the hook from trying to improve?”
Here’s news for you.
Guilt is not the equivalent of soap and water – but of a mirror. Guilt is not a hiding place to wallow in – but a call to action. At least the person who does not feel guilty is possibly unaware of doing wrong. What’s your excuse?
Just wondering… Could be guilty of ignorance on this one.
Oh, and yes, I am guilty of all that, too. How else would I recognise it in others?
* Usual exceptions apply.
Scribe Doll
A sea of people rushes forth as soon as the traffic lights turn green. A faceless crowd all looking down as they stride. I dodge them to avoid collision. I try in vain to catch someone – anyone’s – eye. A man’s large frame clips my shoulder. My shoulder bends back, like on a hinge. Like the rearview mirror of a car caught by another vehicle. I am winded, surprised by the hardness of the impact. Not a body made of soft flesh and warm blood, but a chunk of metal. I turn back but the man keeps walking. He hasn’t noticed. I continue crossing the street, against the tide of individuals following an invisible corridor of their own. They’re not looking right. Not looking left. No one looks up, and I think how the only way you can let in change is by taking your eyes off the ground and looking up at the sky. Even just for a moment. Trust that during that moment you will be shown something else, something new, something better. A sea of people following invisible corridors. Not even dreaming of change. I am suddenly frightened. I look up. I have to. Otherwise, I’m scared I may be swallowed up by the crowd and lose my self. Above, in the dark early morning sky, a streak of rosy glow. I want to breath it in.
Trapped.
At the entrance to the building where I am to meet my client, I slip into the narrow pie chart semi-circle gap of the revolving door and push against the heavy glass. On the other side, the street noise of traffic is replaced by the echoing of steps against the gleaming stone floor. Metallic sounds, distorted and chaotic. Stone floor, steel bannisters, glass front and wall partitions. Glass lift that will soon take me up like a shuttle through the void. The electric light bounces off every hard surface and stabs into my eyes. Like a concentration of laser beams. Grey. The humans whose shoes are clicking against the stone floor are wearing grey. Gunmetal grey, pearl grey, ash grey, lead grey. Grey. And black.
Hardness.
Green. There is a huge, symmetrical Christmas tree in the lobby. There is something robotic in the regular intervals between the identical gold and red baubles, something eerie in the blueish whiteness of the fairy lights.
Cold.
It’s too early for Christmas. Nearly three weeks to go. Every shop window sparkles with tinsel and bright flashing lights. There is nowhere to rest your eyes. Your ears are assaulted by crooners whose names no one under forty knows, singing of snow, jingles and chestnuts. On television, a stream of slushy, saccharine-seeped seasonal U.S. films about characters who are too sentimental, too naive and too nice who, in spite of financial constraints, seem to have large houses crammed with expensive-looking Christmas decorations. Acquaintances tell you they want to see you before the 15th. They have important commitments closer to Christmas.
I look at the synthetic Christmas tree in the lobby. There is no promise of warmth or inclusiveness in all this overwhelming advertising of Christmas. Rather, it is like a warning siren to all those who don’t fit into the “normal” social set up, so they get out of the way of the approaching avalanche, lest they be crushed by it. It’s a Christmas for those with children, those who can be with loved ones, those who have cars in this city where there is no public transport to link people together on the day we are told we should not be alone.
Bullying.
After I finish teaching this client, I make my way to another one. Another building with a glass revolving door, a glass and steel front, a gleaming stone floor. Between two blocks of concrete, I glimpse the Shard. Its jagged point pierces through the soft blue sky. The sheer unexplainable violence of it constricts my throat and brings tears to my eyes. Why build something so aggressive?
I am early, so I stroll along the grey City streets. Men and a few women walk past me, mobiles against their ears, or in their the palms of their hands while they key in text with strokes of their index fingers.
A church. I notice a little church with a steeple, with a little pond outside the front doors, and a couple of stone benches. It’s too cold to sit outside, so I turn my ‘phone onto silent, and venture in. I read on a leaflet that this church was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Fire of 1666. I hear music filtering through the thin glass door, and am filled with a sense of longing. I walk in, genuflect and cross myself. Gentle organ music caresses the fresh white walls decorated with gold trimmings. I sit on a pew and the dark timber creaks. I inhale the comforting, warm smell of wood. I close my eyes and let the music seep though me, fill me with its colours, and bring all the shreds of my soul back together into my body. Peace.
Wholeness.
“Good morning, Ma’am.” The security staff smile as I walk up to the chrome reception desk. They see me week after week.
“You know, I’ve just discovered a lovely little church not far from here. It’s so peaceful. Do you know it?” I say.
The smile freezes and the eyes look away from me. “No.”
It takes me a while to understand. That’s right. I said “church”.
On the Tube, on my way home, there is a baby boy in a pram. He is fast asleep. I smile and try and catch his mother’s eye but she doesn’t see me or her child. She is sending a text message on her mobile. I look out and notice a glow on the horizon, against the darkening sky. A bright golden light that turns into a deep orange with shades of pink. A glorious sunset. I look around the Tube carriage, needing to share this moment with someone – even voicelessly, just with a look. I search for eyes but see blank stares into the void. White earphones insulating from the world; smartphones with games, e-mails or text messages distracting from new ideas and experiences. The horizon is now a pool of fire that spreads like a cauldron brimming with magic. With life. I feast my eyes on the intense colours. I look around again. I want to shout at the other passengers to look at this miracle.
I see an old lady staring at the horizon. A dreamy expression in her eyes. I lean over. “Isn’t it magnificent?” I ask, my tone too excited, and too familiar, but I don’t care. She smiles at me, without the slightest hint of surprise. “Yes,” she says.
We turn to look at the shifting of shapes and colours in the sky. At this manifestation of life.
Hope.
Life.
Scribe Doll
My sister and I first met nine years ago. Half-sisters, technically. Just two of the numerous offspring scattered around Europe by a father who was – it would appear – irresistible to women.
V. and I studied each-other across the table of a bistrot off Regent Street. She appeared to me a down-to-earth, non-nonsense Lancashire woman who had inherited our father’s aloof expression and tight jaw. Seven years my senior, she held two degrees, one in Philosophy and one in Psychology, and responded to my spontaneous speak-now-think-later comments with pondered rationale. She listened to the summary of my bitty life and patchwork career, thus far, with what I took to be a blend of disbelief and disapproval. I sat there, hoping she would not order dessert.
“Shall we meet again?” she asked.
* * *
V. and I sit in a café in Notting Hill. She talks about her children, her husband, her job. A lifestyle light years away from my own. A background alien to me. In between forkfuls of fried egg and chips, I tell her about translating, teaching and the latest installment of my personal life.
Afterwards, we stroll down past the charity shops and browse through second-hand books. I pick one out for her. A Scandinavian thriller. I know she will enjoy it because I will not. I do not bother waxing lyrical about Salley Vickers’s Miss Garnet’s Angel. We stop at the cinema and pick up a programme but cannot agree on a film. We have not been able to, these past nine years.
* * *
V. is sitting on my bed, leaning back against the headboard. She is wearing bright-coloured socks. Odd socks. I am lying on my side, propped up on my elbow, at the foot of the bed. The light is fading outside my windows and I have arranged as many candles as I could find around my room. Perhaps it is their warm glow that makes us speak in soft voices. We dip pieces of orange in a bowl of melted chocolate and walnuts in the middle of the bed. I get up to blow on and rekindle the red hot coal disk at the bottom of my small copper cauldron, and the frankincense crystals start sizzling again. A swirl of smoke rises up and spreads across the air. We both love the comforting scent of frankincense. From my portable CD player soar the gentle vocal tones of Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin Desprez and Guillaume Dufay. We both love Early music. Harmonies to fit mathematically in the gothic vaults of Mediaeval cathedrals. V. is an atheist, I am a believer, but the music touches us both deeply in a place were we connect.
We talk of fears. No one we know understands our fears like V. does mine and I, hers. No one else has been through what we have gone through in our early childhood, though countries apart, and which has left the same indelible marks in parts of our soul no one can see. Only she and I fully understand that particular kind of overwhelming longing for happiness, but also the sabotaging urge which springs from doubt. And we can reveal those wounds only to each-other, because only with each-other do we feel safe to show our vulnerability. And so, as we do, each holds up a shield to protect her sister from the world.
We talk of plans and achievements candidly, without fear of undermining or envy. Each one knows the other will bring all the bricks and tools and work she can, to help her sister.
Once we stumbled. One of us was happy, the other unhappy. One flying high in the sunlight, the other toiling in the shadows at the foot of a mountain. And envy slithered into the heart of the latter but she showed great courage. She went to her sister and revealed her feelings of envy. The happy sister accepted the revelation like a precious gift. Together, they went to the river, and washed the envy with the water of understanding and forgiveness, and resumed their journey, holding hands that little bit tighter.
I push the bowl of melted chocolate and the plate of orange pieces closer to V. and tell her of something that occupies much of my heart and mind. Something which may change my future, only I dare not hope. I dare not believe.
V. looks at the chocolate but cannot eat anymore. “I think you should believe in this,” she says. “I really believe it will work out.”
Then she smiles at me and her eyes twinkle. They have grey and blue in them. Mine have brown and yellow. But we both have the same green flecks.
Scribe Doll
Really, really sorry. Just too much work.
Next week, for sure.
I don’t like poetry. There. I’ve said it. Go ahead and tell me that’s as bad as not liking children or animals – or art. Well, I like most children. I love animals. As for art, I like it – as long as it’s Art – and not an attempt to make lots of money by the deliberate act of shocking.
Perhaps I started with too sweeping a statement. I do like some poetry. My idol of the genre is Alexander Pushkin. His poetry is akin to music. It skips, tumbles and glistens like a brook in the sunlight. It is positively effervescent. I love the mathematical verses of Ronsard, Racine and, especially, Corneille. I enjoy the sensuality of Petrarca and Veronica Franco, and the wit of Trilussa. I have a soft spot for Rupert Brooke, though I get the impression that admitting to this is unfashionable as confessing to liking the music of Frederick Delius and the rest of the cow pat school of English composers. So sue me. Of course, I much admire Seamus Heaney and adore Dorothy Parker. These are only a few of the poets whose work I enjoy. There are others, but these are the ones who spring to mind on a Sunday afternoon as I am trying to finish this blog post before it gets dark, and the heating comes on in the house.
My chief objection to poetry, as a genre, is that – too often – it is used as an excuse for bad writing. Words are mis-spelt or mis-used, splodged on the page in apparently random order – presumably to give an impression of originality. Punctuation is left out – apparently to break free of constrictions. Grammar is ignored – perhaps in sign of artistic freedom. If you applaud, transfixed by the result, you are welcomed into the inner sanctum of those who understand. If, like me, you have the misfortune “not to get it” and – worse – actually say you don’t like it, then you are dismissed as an insensitive, narrow-minded ignoramus. “Poetry” becomes a shield against criticism. No prose writer can hide behind such a label. We have to sit there and take it, and accept the brutal fact that if the reader doesn’t “get it”, then it’s because it’s just written badly. No. No excuses.
At the wonderful writers’ group I sometimes attend, when members read out their prose, everyone feels free to comment – no matter how qualified or unqualified they may be to do so. And that’s fair. However, if a poem gets read out then, after an awkward silence, most listeners will preamble (yes, I know it’s a noun, but I am exercising the prose writer’s freedom to turn it into a verb) their comments with pussyfooting such as, “I’m sorry, I don’t know enough about poetry”, or “I don’t think I’m qualified to comment”.
Just what gives poetry diplomatic immunity? Let it be stopped and scanned at customs like everyone else.
A couple of my friends are poets. Live and let live. Until they said they were performing at a South London pub, on Guy Fawkes’ Night. There comes a time in every friendship, when you feel that your it’s-the-intention-that-counts credit runs out, and you have to put a drop of actual physical oil on the inner mechanism of your friendship. In other words, you can no longer get away with “Good luck – let me know how it goes”. You have to take your posterior over to where they are performing and support them for real.
And so off I trekked to the pub in South London, to the thunder of fireworks. Fountains of colour exploding against the black sky, then trickling down to the horizon.
I took a front seat – my loyalty might as well be in full view – did my best to plaster a smile over the grumpy owl expression on my face, and prepared to clap. My friends were announced from the stage.
A. should have been an actor. Tall and silver-haired, he spread his arms wide, and the entire pub audience fell into them. He turned up his palms, and inspiration seemed to rain into them. He recited his poems. Clever, quirky, subversive, sad, teasing. A jester unafraid to speak out because he knows who he is. From life’s injuries and lessons, he has sewn a cloak embroidered with stars. He admires them and does not attempt to pull them down from the sky.
C. frowns. Ash blonde hair against a pale and weary face. Too young to be weary but then his fair head is much, much older than the shoulders it rests upon. He is Mercury, skipping at full speed. His words are full of passion, anger, longing. Hard words, like a stone circle. Yet there is a laughing sprite dancing in the middle, leaping over a bonfire. A grinning imp.
N. stands up. Her heart-shaped face is framed by a greying blonde mane. Her voice is lithe, like a girl’s. From her lips cascade diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires and rubies. Her words are like gemstones that glisten in the sunlight and the moonlight. Like a waterfall tapping a tune on the smooth rocks below. Like fairies flying over flowers.
I clap. Wholeheartedly. I smile. Wholeheartedly. Afterwards, I praise them. With all my heart.
I am proud to know them. There is magic in their poetry and I have fallen under its spell… at least for one night.
Scribe Doll
“Some are saying it could be the worst hurricane since 1987,” my friend said to me, yesterday, in response to my blasé attitude. That’s when I sat up and took notice. Until that point, I confess, weather warnings and news reports had somehow failed to drive the point home.
I remember October 1987. I was in Cambridge. I remember seeing a bicycle swept by the wind a foot off the ground. The sound of glass milk bottles flying through the air and smashing against brick walls. The wind howling like a banshee through the skylight of my attic bedroom. The large tree that fell against a wall at Emmanuel College, its branches shattering the windows of an undergraduate’s room. A couple of days later, I remember the uprooted elm trees lying in the mud of an overflowing Cam, in Grantchester Meadows.
When I woke up this morning, the radio had more weather warnings to convey. And they had given the hurricane a name – Saint Jude’s Storm. Saint Jude, which falls on 28th October. Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. I looked out of the window at my oak tree, its branches now almost bare, swaying in the wind. He is the Merlin of trees. An old storyteller. This tree also knows my tale.
People are advised, wherever possible, to stay at home, tomorrow morning. Winds are expected to reach 80 mph. Some train services have been cancelled. A meeting I was supposed to attend, has been postponed.
Throughout the day, the winds grew more blustery. I checked my supply of candles. I bought some extra food. Comfort food. Potatoes, for baking in their jackets. Garlic, for roasting with olive oil. A loaf of walnut bread, to slice and spread with orange blossom honey. A bar of white chocolate and a bottle of ginger – in case the storm keeps me awake tonight.
This time last year, my friend L. sat in his flat in New York, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to sweep by. He e-mailed me today, and urged me to keep away from my window, if nothing else. Before I go to bed, I will move my work table, and my laptop, which stand right by my sash windows, further away. But not yet. For now, my curtains are still open, and I am monitoring the street. Earlier on, today’s strong winds suddenly dropped. Everything was still. Not a sound, but for the odd car whizzing down the street. I wondered if it was the proverbial calm before the storm. Then it started to rain. A slow pitter-patter on the pavement. The few leaves on my tree began to glow in the amber street lights. Now, the rainfall is heavier, drumming in the my window panes, and the leaves on the tree are swaying, stirred by an invisible breath.
Before closing my curtains, I look at Merlin, my oak tree, the old storyteller. I know I can trust him with my tales. I know he will keep them safe.
I have so many more stories for him.
So I ask him to stand sturdy tonight.
Scribe Doll
Scribe Doll 