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<P>The Dream</P>
<P>We often sign our names "in service to" and we find ourselves in discussion of it. But what is it? To me it’s that one shining moment when we are no longer playing the part, no longer living in the year 2004, no longer leading this mundane life, and no longer on vacation. It is when we lose ourselves to another time, another place. Lord Robert Fergus, who some of you know, others do not, once told me that the greatest service we can do for the dream is to enhance it for everyone around us. There are times when we find ourselves in the dream amidst our friends. There are times when like a muse, the dream finds us, very much alone, amidst our friends. I think that no matter how many people feel it at one time, the dream is a very personal thing. Each of us will feel the dream alone, and in our own way. I call this simply, the way of the dream. </P>
<P>Fog. </P>
<P>The fog had rolled in thick that night, thicker than he had seen in a long time. So thick that man could pass not 15 feet from you, and if silent, be invisible. The warmth of the night permeated him, the fog and darkness surrounding him. Walking slowly, so as not to be noticed on his short trek, feeling the sticky fog, the crushed grass beneath him, the almost palpable moonlight which did nothing to light his way, yet only to light the fog, and thereby thicken it. Seeing first the towers stretch into the sky as they came slowly from the darkness, simply a shadow within the fog, and then the gate. Tempted to stand in awe of the site, watching the castle walls loom out of the night to him, calling to him. Stay and stand he could not, and his feet would not be still, nearly breaking into a run at the site of home. Through the gate and bounding up the stairwell quickly, to the catwalk above the gate, and to the tower to the right. Climbing quickly into his tower, his post for!
the watch. From the tower he would see the earthwork battlements as mere shapes. Deadly cover for what lay behind them. He knew beyond a doubt that they had placed the siege engines, the ballistae, and the trebuchets behind those same embattlements. </P>
<P>In the distance he could hear the drums, the drums which would stir his soul to battle, not the drums of the celebration, but the drums of war. His own heart pounding the beat in time with them. Distant torches flickered and would try to cut through the fog to him, but only a point of light would make it, marking the enemy positions. A gentle wind, enough to move the fog about, enough to let him peer into and be drawn through it. Was that movement? Even now was an enemy creeping closer to his castle under cover of night and fog? Fear threatened to grab hold of him, always the fear before the battle, never during. Again a gentle swirling, the drums sounding closer, the torches….had they moved? Were the drums closer? Was it but a trick of the mists? Again a flicker of movement in the fog. Anna, why would she enter his thoughts now? The answer came to him, simple enough. "Tonight, I will die."</P>
<P>The story you have just read is what happened to me. During the course of the war, I went to the fort at night, like I am prone to doing, and a fog had settled in. The Dream started to hit me as I was watching the fort as a deepening shadow, almost as if I were watching the dream come closer to me, and yet slip away in the fog. I continued the walk to the fort, watching the shadow in front of me define itself into the fort. I think that I was still on vacation until I actually climbed into the tower and looked around. At that point, the vacation ended, and I was quite literally in the dream. The dream was no longer something to think about, it had, for only a moment, a moment that stretched into eternity, become reality. The shade pavilions were but shadows in the fog, and they were in fact the earthwork embattlements. The drums were no longer for the dancers, but were for the stirring of a soul to fight, and if need be die, they were indeed war drums, and the torches wer!
e not something simply to see by….they were in fact the guide-ons of enemy pickets. There was only one person in this body seeing this, his name was Ian Macleod, Rob had ceased to exist.</P>
<P>Wanting to go back to the dream,</P>
<P>Ian Macleod</P></DIV></div></html>