Elf Salon ~ featured elf
The Elf Salon spotlights different elves from the Gallery and tells the stories of my encounters with them. It will be updated periodically, so please check back the next time you're in the neighborhood. The Salon is now featuring:
Pease
Fireside visions
Pease drowses by the fire. He is sprawled on the floor in a semi-recline, back propped against a brown wooden something I can’t make properly make out. The light is dim inside the small cottage, and I can hear someone moving about nearby. Pease’s wife, Margid, is puttering about, clearing the supper they have just shared and tidying up. She calls to Pease, telling him to get off his lazy bum and get on with his chores.
Pease’s eyes are shut but I can tell he is "playing possum." Evidently he is not fooling Margid either. Goat needs tending and the cows need milking and she is not letting him forget it. Finally, with a snort of annoyance, he heaves himself to his feet. "Only way to stop her nagging," he mutters under his breath as he grabs his coat off a hook and stomps out the door.
I follow Pease out of the house, apparently unobserved. He is smaller than I had expected or realized at first, barely topping 4 feet. He looks solid, hearty, weathered ~ into middle-age, but not yet old. There is a peculiar sweetness to his expression as he stops to take a deep breath of the crisp twilight air.
Even in the fading light, I can see that the cottage is quite small, with neat, well-ordered grounds and garden. There is a small, tidy barn in back of the house.
I follow Pease into it as he prepares to do his milking. The two cows are enthusiastically loud in their greetings, obviously more than ready to be milked. For some reason I am nervous, hesitant to approach him.
Finally, I call out to him, saying his name somewhat timidly. He startles and looks about, not seeing me. I wonder if I am fully present in his dimension, and, (with some help from Cougar), harness my energy, bringing myself into focus as completely as possible. After a moment I step out of the shadows and call again.
Pease leaps to his feet and glares at me. It is a penetrating glare, not really hostile. He doesn’t seem to recognize me at all, justifiably suspicious of a stranger suddenly appearing in his barn. He wants to know who I am and what I want.
I explain that I have painted his picture, even though I’ve never met, or even consciously seen him before, and that I’m trying to solve the mystery of how that came to be. I show him the image I have painted.
He relaxes as I speak, "humphing" a couple of times here and there, whether in interest, disapproval or disbelief, I cannot tell. When I am done, he turns back to his milking.
After a long period of silence, in which, apparently, he has given the matter some consideration, he turns and gives me another sizing-up look. "Oh. Yes? That would be you, would it?" he says, more to himself than to me.
Hoping to draw him out, I offer that somehow I know his name and think that a certain rhyme tends to make him angry. Is this true?
Unexpectedly, he throws his head back and cuts loose with loud guffaws of laughter. "Oh, yes, that was it, then. I remember now. The lads was at it again that day, they was."
Between snorts and bursts of laughter, he manages to tell me that "the lads" are the sons of neighboring farms who come to his place and help him out from time to time. They had been "on about it" until he lost his temper completely.
"And did you throw things at them?" I asked hesitantly, thinking of the sound of crockery breaking.
"Nothin’ I couldn’t spare." he assures me with a broad grin. He tells me he was so riled up after chasing the lads away that he went into the house to have a few beers ~ "just to settle myself down, you know ~ and drifted into a kind of trance in front of the fire. That’s when he saw me in the flames. I was in my studio, painting a picture of him. He didn’t know who I was, or why I was painting him, but he also didn’t let it bother him.
Pease loves to watch the pictures in the fire ~ especially after a beer or two. Sometimes they’re of places or people he recognizes ~ like the time he saw one of "the lads" go down a well and knew he had to go fish him out ~ but mostly they’re scenes of strange places, and people he’s never seen before. He enjoys the scenes and finds them interesting, but doesn’t make much of them, unless there’s some obvious need.
"Does Margid see them, too ?" I ask.
"Humph" he snorts, "She don’t waste her time in front of the fire, like Old Pease." Apparently Margid likes to make things. "Always busy, always doing, she is," he says, shaking his head.
I am fascinated by his casual acceptance of these visions. No, he doesn’t try to figure them out, or decipher them, he tells me, he doesn’t see the point to that. He’s content just to watch them come and go in the flames. I get the idea that he views them as a kind of entertainment.
"They’re for watching, not doing," he says. He "guesses" that I must have been watching him the same way (more or less) that he was watching me.
I don‘t have any better explanation at hand, so I ask him some questions about himself. How does he live? What does he like to do?
He and Margid are country folk, he says. They live a simple, quiet life. Most of their food comes out of their own garden ~ potatoes, onions, turnips, beans and lettuce, mostly, and a few very hot chili peppers, that Pease likes to munch right off the vine. "Margid don’t like ’em, they’re too hot for her. But I sure do!" he tells me with enthusiasm.
They get milk from the cows and Margid makes the butter and cheese. She also makes the beer ~ "She do make good beer" says Pease, smacking his lips appreciatively. "The lads" help out sometimes, especially when they go to the market-gather to trade. There’s also some hunting in the woods nearby, although Pease doesn’t do much of that ~ "The lads, they bring us plenty of meat in trade for beer." Pease does likes to fish, spending the day at the lake whenever he can.
No, they don’t have any children, he tells me in response to my query. He doesn’t seem to want to elaborate on this.
I can’t resist asking him one more question on the subject of his visions. "Don’t you ever wonder if they’re ~ you know ~ real?" I ask him.
"Real?" he echoes, "Well, I see them, don’t I?"
Not wanting to argue that, I tell Pease that I’ve enjoyed meeting him and thank him for talking to me as I take my leave.