On a snow-laden tundra, where the North Wind forever bares her icy jaws, a lone man wanders, throughout the storms of sleet and ice. Head hung low, but his spirit hanging lower still, trudges among the drifts of cruel, Queen Winter’s frigid domain. Who is this man? What is his purpose? What is his destiny? Of these he does not know any longer; strife, war, and battle have scarred him heart and bone. His face is rugged and handsome, but it is marred with bitterness and grief. His stature tall and strong, but bent over by the raging storms of turmoil. His eyes a soft and gentle blue, but they twinkle with tears and pain. He has given up on love and loyalty, and has commended himself to the hands of the wily wilderness. His heart aches; his hands quake; his feet bleed; he knows his life wanes and lets it wither away.
He belongs to no one, and no one to him, so he wanders the cold, forlorn wood till his spirit is released from its corporeal shell. We walks like this till one clear, starlit night; something happens that transforms his hopeless life. He stops to listen carefully, to a mournful sound in the grove of evergreen trees. Sweet and soothing is the song, yet laced with the cry of pain and helplessness. His heart-strings tugged, and his weary spirit aroused, he is called to find the owner of this ethereal voice.
He arrives at the grove and, lo! A pure, white dove lays on the ground, shivering in the brutal wind and bleeding at the wing. At the pitiful sight, the warrior’s heart melts it’s icy chains and now glows and bleeds in sympathy for the delicate creature. His rough face softened in compassion, his eyes now weeping in sharing the bird’s pain, he gently stoops down and tenderly cradles the creature in his hands. The dove resting in his cracked and beaten hands, she notices their scars and battle-torn skin. Looking intently at them and then looking into the eyes of her rescuer, she sheds tears for him, just as if she was sharing his pain as well! The compassion of the peaceful creature reclining in his hands touched his spirit so. Gathering the sweet-natured dove close to his breast, he weeps as if the bonds of bitterness broke from his bound heart, and his tender tears blessed the wound of the bird’s wing. Together they weep for each other, feeling each other’s pain more then their own, each of their own tears falling on one another’s wounds.
Then something mysterious happens in this beautiful, precious moment; the scars and cuts that inflicted the two creatures magically washes away in the tears they shed for each other! The compassion of the pain that connected their sprits so closely healed their ills from the cordial of their hearts. The world is dark and the air is cold, but the warrior is lonely no more; he has found a friend, by giving his laden spirit to a suffering soul.
General