The Game of Shepherd and Dawse Read Free Page B

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    Nothing went to waste from the animals in Shepherd Wood and nothing else went to waste either. There was no such thing as rubbish as there was a use for everything. As people here only possessed exactly what they needed and nothing more, no one ever had the need to throw anything out. What would be the point? If something broke - which was rare, as everything was made to last then - it would be carefully repaired in a way which just gave it more character.
     
    The society of Shepherd Wood didn’t need control structures and never had any person who wielded more control than another. The community did however have the Wise Council. These were members of the community who were at least 100 years old – considered young for the Council, as people in this era could and did live to ages of up to 300 years. The reasons why people lived so long were a combination of things: pure food, a lack pollutants in the air, water and soil and especially the intrinsic ability to self-heal. If a person was guided to move on to the next plane of existence, they would allow their bodies to degenerate and then they would pass over.
     
    The members of the Wise Council lived for as long as they could because that was their purpose – to stay around and help as many people as they could. The Wise Council didn’t deal with the kind of counselling we think of today. The sorts of issues they counselled on were things like giving advice to someone who had tried to master something but who wasn’t having great success or sharing stories and tales from the past that had been passed down by other Council members throughout the ages.
     
    No one ever put themselves forward to be on the Wise Council as that would have been disrespectful. Instead, other people would nominate you. The nomination process would happen over many years, if one of yours friends gave you some very good wisdom on a certain matter you would repay that person by finding the most attractive stone you could find and then place it outside their house as a way of saying thank you. It would also serve as a memory marker so that whenever either party looked at that stone it would remind them of that wisdom that had been given and accepted. Over time the amount of stones would increase outside a person’s house. The more stones you had the more people would come to you for guidance and the more guidance you gave the more stones you would have.
     
    When a house had a complete stone circle around it (which would take many years) the person would then automatically become part of the Wise Council. It was a great way of having those who were naturally wise to be in the best position for the benefit of the whole community.
     
    There was one topic, though, that would be a regular theme and that was the topic of love. But even in Shepherd Wood, love didn’t happen in the same way it happens today. In today's society, people work hard to convince themselves they've found true love, whereas most of the time it is nothing more than two people who get on rather well, minus the odd argument here or there. In the days of Shepherd Wood, a union was made only when two people had found their exact other half of themselves. When they found this person, it was a celebrated occasion. They would live in perfect harmony with each other for the rest of their lives and would never do anything hurtful to one another, as that would be like hurting themselves, which is something that no one ever did. The phenomenon of self-harming came into existence at a much later time, after the interbreeding of the two different tribes took place.
     
    Finding this perfect love was never a given nor guaranteed, even in this idyllic, beautiful place and way of life. Those who did find true love were very well respected and much celebrated. There was no jealousy from the other people who wished to find love, as the people who had found love themselves would show the others how to bring that union closer to them.