Eggs, Faerie Pipes & a Stunning Sunset

Yesterday, I felt… weird. Happily, I allowed myself to enjoy the eerie sensation.

It was still with me today which is unusual, but I was also foggy. (Still am…) Fatigued a little too. So I didn’t do much today.

Cat, on the other hand, was on fire! She was getting chores done right and left– taking care of winterizing the mower and chipper and cleaning the chicken coops and such. She had some extra eggs from that chore and cheerfully offered some at our “Faerie Tree.” That’s a hawthorn out in a cleared part of the field. We’re using it as a sort of shrine to the nature spirits of the land here. Reese and Sleep make a new offering every time they visit now, because if they don’t, their tools disappear!

I haven’t really talked about it much, but we have an on-again, off-again issue with apportating (or teleporting) objects. Really obvious things, like I’ve lost 4 pairs of glasses by laying them down, turning around for a quick second, turning back and they’re gone. Even if you search the whole house, they don’t turn up. Why my reading glasses I don’t know. After I made offerings at the tree, nothing further has gone missing for me. Reese had garden tools just go ‘poof’– until she made offerings at my suggestion. Even once-a-skeptic Sleep had weird issues, and so, on a lark, he left small dishes of whiskey. No more problems ever since, so now he continues. It’s quickly becoming a tradition to leave gifts at the tree. So between smudging and warding the house and area just outside it, and offering goodies further off, we seem to have stopped poltergeist activity completely. All is peaceful now– and has remained so for months.

Cat was getting an oil change this evening, so I was alone when an astonishing event occurred.

I went outside to close the chicken coop doors like I do every night. It was right at sunset, but you wouldn’t know it as the clouds were dark and gray from rain all day long. As I stepped outside the pen, I heard a haunting melody.

It sounded like someone was playing a flute, but an old-fashioned one. Maybe pan pipes? It sounded very pretty, but not normal somehow. More astonishing, it was coming from the back area of Heron Hold land. No one goes back there. As a matter of fact, it’s so full of briars and scrub, that it’s almost impossible to get to unless you know of a special path.

I listened, thinking it was a car stereo, or maybe one of our neighbors on the ridge behind our land playing music? But it wasn’t pop music of any kind. It was a single instrument, played beautifully!

As I walked down from our main area to try to figure out the mystery of it all, the pipes continued to play… but they repeated the same 3 measure tune again. Not a recording of a full song then. It was live music, at least a short piece of live music.

The weird thing is– I didn’t expect it to be a normal situation. Things have been feeling ‘off’ but I was approaching it like an adventure, without fear. I made my way unsteadily through the path in our woods down towards the Faerie Tree. As I walked, the light changed to orange, which was odd on such a dark and dreary gray day. Meanwhile, the musical refrain played out it’s third round, and I could tell it was coming from the Faerie Tree. I started talking aloud (I was alone in the woods, who could hear me after all?) “I’m coming! What do you want to show me?“

If I actually found a person playing pan pipes, I’d be delighted to make a new, quirky friend, but I knew in my bones that would not be the outcome. Getting closer to the music, there was an odd quality to the sound I couldn’t decipher.  It… got inside my head. Even now, writing this, the notes keep playing over and over in my mind. Like an earworm, but it feels like a delicious mystery.  I wish I could write music to share it. It was a simple tune, but so… compelling. And utterly original, as far as I could tell. I’d never heard it before, but it seemed similar to a hundred tunes I’ve heard, if that makes any sense at all, and probably doesn’t.

As I reached the edge of the woods and emerged into the wild meadow, the music faded away. And… there was a HOLE in the clouds just over the ridge that I faced as I entered the area. Through it, a burning bright orange sunset glowed, standing in stark contrast to the grays everywhere else overhead.

It was kind of like THIS– only more deeply orange and a little wider, with thicker rain clouds around it. But those light beam like rays coming out? Yeah, THOSE were shining obviously, likely due to the rain in the air. It was surreal looking.

“Wow! Pretty!” I said.

There was no one at the Faerie Tree, or anywhere else in the back area for acres. I was alone out there. Of course the ‘logical’ explanations went through my head, but none of them seemed to fit. And there was that odd FEELING of being drawn towards something. A strange sensation of intelligent connection. Hard to describe, but quite lovely.

Then I heard the refrain of pan pipes one more time– from the direction of the sunset! After repeating itself completely, it stopped, the final notes fading out. It sounded like something was flying away from me towards the sunset. There’s no house or neighbors in that direction. No country road. It made no sense.

Unless you believe in faeries!

So so silly– and yet..!

I bowed towards the sunset and thanked the fae beings who (maybe?) played me a wee tune. Were they thanking us for the eggs? I would have to let Cat know.

Eggs. ‘They’ like the eggs. Okay– duly noted! LOL!!

I also sang the notes back a few times, standing there alone as rain began falling on my head. I stood in the orange glow of that tiny bit of sunset and tried to memorize the notes of the short refrain. It was obviously a part of a much longer song. I began playing with it, adding to the end of it, trying to make it more of a song than it was.

It was a simple but effective religious experience. I get those sometimes.

Right then, I felt connected to something beyond myself. I felt… appreciated. Loved. NOTICED. That’s the hard part when it comes to divinity, actually feeling like some aspect of the Other gives a damn. But right then… yeah. I was being communicated with, and I tried to give it right back again and keep the dialog active.

I looked around a lot, not just at the sunset. Was there anything to see in that odd orange light? I half expected to get a glimpse of a weird animal or humanoid. Alas– no such luck.

It was a very brief sunset. Only maybe 5 minutes at most. It quickly faded back to gray and the ‘hole’ of clear sky it shone through moved along and got covered by clouds again. So I plodded my way back up to our house, a smile on my face and peace in my heart.

Weird. Weird weird weird weird WEIRD!
Literally weird. Like wyrd.

I shall share the experience with the other residents and visitors who honor the fae here, and maybe we’ll get more interactions. I guess we’ll see. At least this proved to be a nice contact with whatever dwells around this place. Most of the time, it seems like the land spirits are pissed and hate humans. To begin with, ours liked to harass us a little. Maybe we’re changing that though. We’re doing the old fashioned pagan thing where you honor those energies and treat them with respect. And… you bribe the heck out of them! Which seems to be working.

THAT was a really COOL experience!