Madonna of Time

Snippets of a letter were left in the top drawer of the antique room in which I found myself on awaking. The dream had never really left. It was now present in the room's furniture. And, I thought, I had been dreaming.

Now it had a real presence in my life. Where had the clothes that covered my body come from? I could not recall having dressed in them. I was holding a small bible-like hymn book that had only songs that I could sing once, before I had lost my voice.

The bed I was sitting on, was covered by an antique coverlet, that I remembered from my childhood. There was a framed photo on the wall, of a place, vaguely, naggingly familiar, and yet, I could not place it!

Finally, in exasperation, I turned over the bed, and looked beneath. Was there some kind of hob-goblin there that held the strings of my past life in it's rough grasp?

I could not believe my eyes!

The appearance of a small elf-like creature slowly formed there and then intensified. It could speak, but I could only mime at it.

"Who are you?" I tried to ask it with my hand motions.

"I am Balthazaar" it sang in a not un-melodious voice. Then it grinned sheepishly, and crinkled up it's nose at me, as if I smelled funny.

"I have been sent by the Time-lords of BeTheeGone to retrieve you from this place, and take you where you aught to have gone!" it sang, in tones that sounded like bells ringing.

I opened my hands at it as if to say "and where aught I to have gone?"

I stared in astonishment as it once again transformed itself. This time into a landscape of a most amazing garden of natural beauty. I could only stare at it.

In a blinding flash it and I were gone into an ether-like pale dimension. There I waited, for what seemed an eternity, for a new feeling of place to come forward toward me.