Spirit Guide

I am on the beach with a boy named Remi, at the place where Brandon and Brighton meets. The slope leading to the highway is directly before of us, and we are standing on a small niche of earth between that slope and a tree which is directly behind us. On the ground in front of us, at the bottom of the slope, in the niche where we stand is a little altar or memorial, comprised of shells of different kinds, and I know intuitively that this display is not man-made, for it is a dwelling place of faeries, where the shells are their home.

The boy named Remi crouches down and begins to rearrange the shells. I knew it would upset the residents of those shells, but he does it anyway, and then he leaves for work.

Suddenly behind me appears, a large, pale being dressed like an Arabian genie, with bright blue crystal eyes, the pupils of which are ebony black and slitted like the eyes of a cat. His ears are pointed like a goblin’s, and the rest of his features despite his rotund form are sharp. His arms are huge and spread eagled with no discernible fingers at the ends, and the rest of his body is pretty much the same. He is bobbing up and down like a balloon at a fair, and I am not afraid of him, for I know he is my spirit guide.

Suddenly we are inside the shells themselves. Somehow our forms have contracted and we are as tiny as the People who dwell therein. Inside the shells are dark, with a dim red glow, like a museum at night. Between me and my guide, whose name I never learn, and my mind’s eye, there are glass cases behind which are faerie artifacts and whole worlds within the world of the faerie shell dwellings. Worlds within worlds, like those Russian dolls. First I was in our world, then in the smaller world of the faerie shell dwellings within our world, now seeing littler worlds than even that within it. I wonder how much smaller can I get, and how many worlds exist that are both larger and littler than my own.

Suddenly the boy named Remi joins me and my guide, on my tour of the worlds within worlds, within the faerie shell dwellings within the world of our own.