Tales of the heart #4: the traveller
once upon a time…
… there was an extraordinary young man who was brought into the world at the meeting of two cultures, with the passions and longings of both his mother and father coursing through him. From his father he inherited a wolf spirit – strong, wild, playful, inquiring, sometimes reckless, always loyal and unfailingly brave. His mother shaped his human soul with respect, thoughtfulness, intuition, love , and endurance. With these rhythms beating within him it is no surprise that he cast his eye around the world hungry to know the taste of other places and other people. So he began travelling, moving through new lands with ease and confidence, being welcomed into peoples’ homes and lives where he was able to feed his appetite for knowledge and learning and share his laughter, generosity and fascination with all things. He gathered many friends and experiences on his travels, adding them to his heart store where the strings that held him to his mother and father and their families and their countries were carefully tended.
Always at the end of a journey he would return to the place of his birth because he knew it was his duty to care for and protect the memories and stories of his people.
One day he arrived in a country where the original people wore a second skin, patterns and designs that were tattooed across faces and bodies, a ritualised showing of strength that also envelops the wearer in story and beauty. And so he sought out a master in this art, someone to adorn him, to transform the layer that held him in the world. He found what he needed in the front room of a tattoo studio on a busy city street. He sat and talked for hours, over days and his story unfurled, the history of his lineage, his land, his passions and his beliefs. These the magus wove into a pattern and etched into his skin with ink and needle so that now wherever he goes, this extraordinary young man, this traveller, he wears the map of his heart and his home and so he is free.
