A Curious Incident

by Slash guest author Will Belford

Dear Abbott,

A curious incident occurred here in Transylvania recently. Heavy rains fell during the last wheat harvest, breaking a drought that had lasted most of the season, and much of the crop had to be stored in a damp condition.

Normally, damp grain would not be kept, but due to the drought it had been a particularly poor harvest, and many of the peasants were forced to keep all of it in the hope that they could dry it out.

It has since been one of the wettest and coldest winters in living memory, and much of the peasantry have been forced to bake their bread and brew their ale with moldy grain.

A misfortune I hear you say, but hardly a catastrophe. True enough, but last week the townsfolk in a village nearby gathered for their winter solstice feast. I attended, as a representative of the faith, and attempted to enlighten them into the meaning of Christmas with some limited success. Despite a lsithgt hint of mold, the feast was a great success, with large amounts of food and ale from the winter stores consumed, and general jollity at the prospect of the not-too-distant Spring.

In the mid-afternoon though, when normally you would expect the people to be sleeping off their lunch, a strange thing happened. Instead of wandering off to their hamlets, the people stayed in the great hall and the feast developed into what can only be described as a bacchanalia. I myself was swept up into the general sensation of euphoria and found myself dancing with the peasants.

Shortly after that, I began to experience visions. When I stepped outside the hall, the daylight was extraordinarily bright, and the trees and grass seemed to be breathing as if they were sentient beings. One fellow was perched in a tree and appeared to be talking to it, a couple were sprawled in the snow, closely examining the grass, while a third man was convinced that his horse was a messenger from God and was bowing to it, much to the amusement of the crowd as they began to spill out of the hall.

Before long, the entire village was caught up in a wild dance in the market square. The sun had come out, but it was still close to freezing, yet everyone seemed oblivious to the cold. Soon the people seemed to be in some kind of altered state in which everything around them was infinitely fascinating.

I began to see strange shapes in the clouds and snowdrifts, and when the sun set, I could make out the constellation of Canis Major quite clearly. By this stage I was convinced that I was in fact one of Orion?s hunting dogs, and had gathered a large pack of the village curs around me with the intention of going after wolves. Only the onset of night and the sharp drop in temperature prevented me from plunging into the forest. It was clear by this stage that many people were in a state of some lasciviousness, and as the sun faded, couples began drifting off to the huts.

Returning to my lodging, I slipped into an ecstatic kind of waking sleep, in which I saw the workings of God revealed to me with perfect clarity. I attempted to record some of the things I saw, and describe the sense of complete understanding that I was experiencing, but in the morning I found my notes were a scrawl, and those parts that were discernible consisted of aphoristic statements that hinted at a greater knowledge without revealing its true nature. Surely I had been visited by an angel!

The following day, the villagers were somewhat sheepish around me, as if they had revealed some aspect of themselves that they had rather kept hidden, but I cared not. It had been an enlightening and extraordinary experience, for which we must thank our heavenly father. One of the old men of the village told me later that he had only seen the like once before in his lifetime, and that too had occurred after a wet harvest, when he was a small boy.

Who knows what it was? I seek no explanation, rather accept it as gift from God that has opened my wide eyes even further to the world he has created.

Your humble servant,

Father Canis.