Tomek's Life

   Tomek thought about the long, strange road that had brought him to this isle.
From his student days, where he'd been something of a political hell-raiser.  And the women he knew then.    To his days trying to make a living as a sculptor.   In the artist community.   Then a try, a jab, at the corporate life, living in a tower of glass.   But wistfully, looking out the window everyday, past the port to the ocean beyond, and thinking there had to be something more out there.

   Then, like am anthropologist, — or like some 'new-age' spiritual seeker, — he went off to live with a primitve tribe, on a distant isle.   Learned to become a 'shaman', a spiritual 'medicine man.'  When he returned, his folks thought he'd gone nuts, — with a spear and a loincloth and all.   He'd returned again to the isle, — and this time he lived alone on top of a mountain, hunting in the mornings, and — and meditating all evening, sitting high in the eagle's nest, atop the giant 'Eagle's-Rock' spire.   Seeking the 'vision spirits'.    
Inner wisdom.
But he began to have dreams.   Dreams of a woman.   Dreams of a woman with long flowing hair, that came floating through the mists to him.   Dreams that haunted him; wouldn't leave him.   
Who, this unknown woman speaking to him in visions?
Dreams that finally set him on her trail, sniffing her out, in the wind, — until his ship had crashed here, upon the reefs, and the seaweed hairs of the Motherland.   

~

   He heard a wildcat scream.     The snarling, spine-curdling wails of a large she-cat in heat.