STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                           Part Fourteen



                One night I dreamt of my room in Bath.  I saw the willow pattern punch bowl in my window. I saw a tiny green shoot push its way through the dark earth.  The sleeping, dreaming seed that had lay dormant all this time, had at last decided to grow.
                 I sat up in another strange bed in another Spartan hotel room.  The floorboards were bare, the mattress was thin, the sheets and bolster were of white cotton with a thin blue stripe.  The half opened shutters showed me another blue sky, another hot day.  I had been travelling for many months through France, Switzerland and Italy.  I had seen their rivers and their chateaux, their mountains and lakes, their cathedrals and their ancient ruins.  I had wandered through their landscapes from city to town and they had filled me.  I had no need of the past's memories or the future's dreams, they had left me, and for the first time in my life it had been the present that had overwhelmed.  Each passing moment had been lived, breathed, seen and felt.
                  But that morning I woke to my first day in Florence and I was lonely.  I longed for love.  I sat with a Russian doll I had recognised from my paintings and immediately bought in Switzerland.  She lay open in my lap.  I pulled each one apart, daughter after daughter, until I reached the last tiny figure that would not open.  It was me.  But it was not a child's love I longed for.  I had grown thankful for my barrenness.  I was glad to be excused the bearing and rearing of children.  My spirit had grown too selfish to be drained into others, yet it longed to meet its reflection, it longed to meet itself in another, it was lonely and crying, it wanted to be held but it still feared the destroying arms of evil and possession.  I wanted to be held and hold a sibling spirit that would see me and know me and never stop my flow or my journey.  I wanted to hold and be held by George.