Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn't
a coincidence you dreamed about the earthquake. It was a dream of precognition.
Something fantastic is happening in your dreams. The dreams of the past month
are a story--and not one you made up. I think...I think someone or something is
communicating to me through my dreams, crazy as that sounds."
    Sonoran Desert, Arizona
    At first she did not believe the shaman when she
talked about shape-shifting. To become a wolf, bear, or eagle was not possible,
thought Margaret. But from what the shaman said, it sounded like she'd be in
the mind of the animal. A mind-meld type of thing, where she would be able to
see what the animal saw, know things from its perspective. The whole idea
scared her. What would it be like to lose the sense of her body entirely? She
remembered dissociating to cope with the abuse in childhood, remembered how it
felt to be less and less there. It had taken a lot of work to not feel that
mind and body were separate. Would this bring up the old responses? Was it a
form of dissociating? Could her mind get stuck in the animal's mind? That
shaman had better have some good answers.
    Cape Fair, Missouri
    I can't believe it took her two weeks to
figure out what was going on. She's not a stupid woman, but she is human.
Sometimes it's difficult to depend on their obviously weak powers of
observation. Thank goodness the California earthquake made the news, or else
she might never have put it together with her dream that predicted the quake. I
wonder how she will interpret all this. Mrs. Philpott is a fairly pragmatic
woman, and I am sure she is not going to be happy about the planet talking to
her in her dreams.
    It wasn't such a shock to me since I've heard
that voice my whole life. Well, maybe not so directly and loudly as recently (a
planet with attitude can be pretty loud), but it was familiar to me. Still, she
should be able to understand what is happening. She's read the same books I
have--actually they were her books--that discussed the problem: human culture.
    I never read any books until I moved in with
Mrs. Philpott. My life was a miserable, yet sadly normal, experience. In my
first year of life, my previous owner, Carolyn, decided she wanted a calm cat,
one that wouldn't scratch her or her furniture. Without any consideration of my
feelings in the matter, she had my front paws de-clawed one day. Carolyn wanted
a designer cat, designed to her specifications, to fit in with her designer
life. She saw me as a live exhibit in her cult-of-decoration lifestyle. When I
refused to conform to her rules of captivity, running off into the woods behind
her house every chance I got, climbing trees she thought were impossible for me
to climb without claws, and generally not meeting her every whim as the
perfectly precious Siamese that fit in so well with her oriental-theme living
room furniture, she refused to feed me.
    I subsisted on lovely little sparrows and rodent
kills until she forgot why she was angry at me. The final straw that led to the
turning point in my life came when I arrived at the front door wounded from the
previous night's fight with a stray determined to take over my territory.
Picking me up, unaware of the various puncture wounds and scratches covering my
body, Carolyn proceeded to fly into a rage when drops of my blood soaked into
her white linen suit. Muttering about how she should have had me "fixed," she
drove me directly to an animal shelter to be "put to sleep."
    Mrs. Philpott happened to be in the shelter that
day looking for a cat. Her fifteen-year-old feline had died a month before, and
she was ready to share her life with a cat again. Rescuing me from the clutches
of the overly-perfumed, overly-coifed Carolyn, Mrs. Philpott took me directly
to her veterinarian, and then to her home in Cape Fair. The past four years
spent here have been idyllic for me, and I think I have filled a void in Mrs.
Philpott's life as well.
    Tonight, however, will be another turning point.
I wonder if she will