I am not a stranger here

I am not a stranger here. Parts of me that for half a year have been dormant are seeping back into place. The constant fear and worry that Lampeter has marked me with is ebbing. I don't think it will go though. I find myself going cold at thoughts of what might befall my friends, guilty that I can do even less here than I could whilst with them. But I am not a stranger here. The months have not changed me enough to change the shape of who I am, I still fit into the life I built here. Walking Wednesday night I had...not an epiphany exactly, but a realisation of sorts, back from Alex and Laura's...I love walking at night. I never walk with a torch - even if I carry one I never turn it on. Thoughts of how to merge my two lives, how to strike the balance I've been needing were heavy, but not painful. The Poldew stream was my constant voal companion along the entire way home, and only one car passed, sheilding my eyes on the way I'm used to. The moon was only half full yet still bright enough to cast tree shadows, so still was the night that I could discern the individual twigs in the moonshadows. The woods still remember. They were watching me, unsure at first, and some things have changed...the ground is dark with bluebell foliage, the branches are nude with winter, a few great branches have fallen with the storms I've missed, more that I could not tell at night, but I still belong. No threat in the shadows of the trees, the darkness holds no fear for me, my footsteps near silent on the soft leaves from last year. I stood for a while, my arms pale in the moonlight, fingers like wan spiders against the dark moss on the beech, the oak, every guard that I visited. Old ferns, torn and toughgreeted me, young when last I saw them. It's...not hard, but a little trying to hold to that sensation, that sense of stillness, that everything will be alright. I haven't been still for so long, and couldn't remain in the calm of the woods for long either,but it's there for me, waiting. And pale primroses line the hedge as I walked, and naturalised daffodills, their scents both subtle and sharp. The road is narrow, I would not mind if it had gone on til sunrise. Boughs of hazel and ash, oak and beech, lean over the aged tarmac to form a bower, a mesh, a tunnel through which I and I alone walk. I haven't been alone in so long I had forgotten. My identity is in these woods, in these rocks, this soil, the sweet flowering of wild plants, the soft rustling of small creatures in the undergrowth, the steady drip of damp hedgerows and the distraction of the water. A deer startled by my head on the other side of the hedge, a young buck I think, small but adult in form. He darted a few paces then turned to watch me, gauging the threat, before tossing back his head, no more than a dark silhouette against pale winter grassland and shadowed holly and hazel and picking his way through what I know are dead fireweed, cow parsley, lesser burdock and the bramble that is devouring that abandoned meadow. There is no sadness here. Memories both painful and happy dissipate, leaving just what is. Even in pitch black, I can always find my way home. I just hope that canbe applicable to the rest of my life as well.