She set out to find her own personal magic, traveling first with Vesta, her wolf dog, then later joined by Kuth, a raven sent as a talisman and guide from the north. The trio experienced strange phenomenon as they journeyed across the middle, through an escarpment guarding the east, along shores and above on the cliffs of the great easterlies sea. She first encountered a wraith-woman as glimpse, gathering beach treasures thrown up by tides. Next as a shadow who followed, then attacked, her arrow grazing Vesta before Culleen whacked yew bow from her hands. In a dreamscape, she saw wraith-woman’s encampment, and wraith-woman’s bow sang a lament of longing and loss. Lost arrow imbued Culleen with some magic so, like her people, she now understood clacking raven speak. So, when moon was full and clear, she entered dreamed encampment and met her pale almost other self. In a trance, she rode with wraith-woman through moonscaped lands, back towards sea cliffs. At a stone bridge crossing an narrow inlet where inward sea met outward stream, she waited with her new friend for the tide to turn.*

After the tide had scoured fjord, it’s incoming waves as stampeding versions of their two ponies, wraith-woman, firmly holding Culleen’s hand, descended below the bridge’s stone abutments. Culleen still felt effects of her riding trance – they seemed to float down embankment and walk across water. Not possible her rational brain argued but then she had come seeking magic – not now the time, space nor place to question.

Wraith-woman drew strength from their salty trail, her paleness less opaque, her hand less ethereal. Hair shone with moon bright luster, eyes sparked dark against her pale face and day-break sky. Culleen felt small, dirty, disheveled. Off keel – her own sense of self drifting with tide’s treasures. “Soon,” wraith-woman whispered; “Soon to Spring’s waters.”