Blue whispers in the deep night. The sound of subterranean rivers with their susurrus of messages, dream chambers that echo with marine life. The moon floats, weight shed. Once we hunted in the forest nearby where boar rambled. Indigo dreams: the tidal bore races, leaves whisper in scattering winds above. Pilgrims gather, healing sought and often enough found. Dreams can be difficult in their interpretation — eels and sea serpents writhe in pools and waterways, the waters that run fast with swimmers from afar. The interpreter waits.

Dolphins intertwine in love, marine life proliferates and tritons bear conchs and hold anchors. Life-bringing winds blow, by turns gentling and buffeting the Britannic shores. How will it all fare in this age that has turned its back on the life-giving waters? 

Whispers in the dreams; ensconced in the incubation chambers the pilgrims lodge with anticipation, hope wafting like incense. 

There are certain blues that contain secrets of the Deep: some try to unlock them seeping them in small pots, others try to gather their flowers or their prints. They resound your soul like a drumbeat; cerulean, cobalt, indigo, many are their names. Did your dream hold one, or perhaps more? The impossible blue flower — Novalis wrote about them, and I saw some damselflies bearing them; some have attempted to gather them on far reaches of the ocean, terribly far from shore, even underwater. Or maybe in an arctic mountain sky or high on a peak meditating out where the last colors fade in the twilight. Some say they have seen a small intensely blue dragon. 

Tolkien heard the whisper of Celebrindor on this hill high above the Severn, shivers of inspiration reaching from a ring dedicated to Nodens. O silver hand reaching across the centuries, bearing inspiration from the Temple of Nodens.

[Michael Routery is a Portland, Oregon-based writer and poet. He is a polytheist, a Druid, and an animist, devoted to the British deity Nodens. His work can be found in a wide variety of anthologies and journals, including Best of Eternal Haunted Summer, and Brigid’s Light; his speculative fiction novel is coming out later this year from Sul Books. Michael can occasionally be found online at BlueSky at routery.bsky and atfinchuillsmast.wordpress.com. He dwells in an old Craftsman house and magical garden with his husband, innumerable books, an unherd of cats, and a profusion of plants.]