Last night I dreamed I was showing you my temple

"Last night I dreamed I was showing you my temple," said Miss Lissie. "I don't know where it was, but it was a simple square one-room structure, very adobe or Southwestern-looking, with poles jutting out at the ceiling line and the windows set in deep. It was painted a rich dust coral and there were lots of designs--many, turquoise and deep blue, like Native American symbols for rain and storm--painted around the top. It was beautiful, though small, and I remembered going there for the ceremonies dressed in a long white cotton robe. I was tall then, and stately, with thick black hair that I wore in a bun. The other thing my temple made me think of was the pyramids in Mexico, though I'm satisfied it wasn't made of stone but of painted mud.

"Anyway, my familiar--what you might these days, unfortunately, call a 'pet'--was a small incredibly beautiful creature that was part bird, for it was feathered, part fish, for it could swim and had a somewhat fish/bird shape, and part reptile, for it scooted about like geckoes do, and it was all over the place while I talked to you. Its movements were graceful and clever, its expression mischevious and full of humor. It was alive! You, by the way, Suwelo were a white man, apparently, in that life, very polite, very well-to-do, and seemingly very interested in our ways.

"My little familiar, no bigger than my hand, slithered and skidded here and there in the place outside the temple where we sat. Its predominant color was blue, but there was red and green, and flecks of gold and cerise. And purple. Yes. Its head was that of a bird. Did I say that already?

"Skittering about the way that it did was so distracting while we talked that I took it up into my hands and carried it some distance from us and placed it on the ground with a clear-glass bowl over it. As soon as I'd come back and sat down, however, I heard a noise like a muffled shot. I went over to the bowl, and, sure enough, the familiar had broken through. There was a small hole in the top. I looked about and found another bowl, a heavy white one, very click and with very thick sides. My familiar was lying looking up at me curiously, resting up from its labor. It did not try to run as I put this while bowl on top of it. Almost before I sat down I heard another noise. When I went back, my familiar was rushing furiously about in the snow. Everything was suddenly now very cold. It was as beautiful as ever though, my familiar. How or even why I would do what I next did is beyond me, but I think it was a stupid reflex of human pride. For I understood quite well by now that all of this activity on the familiar's part was about freedom, and that by my actions I was destroying our relationship. In any event, not to be outdone--and suddenly there were dozens of your people, white people, standing about watching this contest--I next imprisoned my beautiful little familiar under a metal washtub. I paid little attention to the coldness or the snow and did not even think how cruel and torturous for it this would be. Surely it would not now be able to escape. I went back to where we were seated, you and I, and attempted to carry on with our conversation, which was about temples, and about my temple in particular. The sun was just setting, and it bathed the small, shiny coral structure in gold. It was a splendid sight. I felt such happiness that it was mine and I thought of the peace that came over me, deep, like sleep, when I entered its doors.

"Next we heard a rumbling, as if from a volcano, under our seats. As if power was being sucked along in streams from everywhere and converging at one spot under the snow. All of us, you, me, the white people dressed so strangely in high heels and fur coats, were drawn to the quaking washtub, which seemed now to be on the bottom steps of an enormous white stone building in a different city and a different century. We could not believe that a small creature, no larger than a hand, could break through the metal with its fragile birdlike head. We gazed in amazement as, with a mighty whoosh, and as if from the very depths of the sea, the little familiar broke through the bottom of the tub and out into the open air. It looked at me with pity as it passed. Then, using wings it had never used before, it flew away. And I was left with only you and the rest of your people on the steps of a cold stone building, the color of a cheap false teeth, in a different world from my own, in a century that I would never undersand. Except by remembering the beautiful little familiar, who was so cheerful and loyal to me, and whom I so thoughtlessly, out of pride and distraction, betrayed."

--Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar