“Old Friends”

“After a steep climb, Lucinda arrived at a small meadow. Straight before her grazed a herd of ten bharals, horned mountain sheep with bluish-gray coats. The sheep looked up at her and then slowly made their way over to where she stood. The leader of the herd knelt down only a few feet away from the hiker. The others followed his lead. The herd leader seemed familiar to Lucinda. She walked over to the kneeling creature and lightly placed her hands on his snout. The bharal’s outsized horns resembled small elephant trunks. Their eyes met, the honey-brown irises of the sheep gazing contentedly at the woman’s. The moment that she touched him, Lucinda experienced a flash of remembrance. This gentle creature had grazed and rested next to her many times, as she meditated on the meadow in the quite distant past. He had been her friend of longstanding. How he came to be with her now, she knew not. He must have reincarnated in the same form and the identical place where he had lived before. Certainly, the proximate location of the cave, a spot that had attracted Saints over millennia, proved an attraction to this wise animal soul. He understood the benefits of being in the presence of the Enlightened.”