Gwydion awoke from his meditation.  What he saw deeply troubled him.  There was a white stag walking through a forest of dense oak and aspen.  The stag came upon a glen and paused at the edge of a clearing.  It looked aground pensively and continued to walk through to the stream in the clearing.  While the stag was drinking a white horse galloped through and broke the calm of the water.  The sky darkened with clouds rolling in.  As the horse left the water it burst into flames.  Where the white horse once stood was a spooked white pony that kicked and galloped away.  The stag continued to drink through all of this when suddenly a giant gold eagle appeared from the sky.  The sky turned black as night and spilt blood as rain.  The stag’s white coat turned pink from the raining blood.  The gold eagle, stained dark red from the blood, swooped down and gutted the stag.  The blood of the stag and rain mixed with the water of the brook.  The stag dissolved into red and flowed into the stream.  First the water boiled and then it stood still.  The gold eagle turned completely red and saw it’s self in the reflection of the water.  Then the scene faded and Gwydion was left in his druid circle.

Surrounded by trees in his clearing, Gwydion removed his gaze from the wood pensieve, closed his eyes and recalled his vision.  A sense of foreboding grew within him.  A gust of wind entered the glen and a chill ran down his spine.  He washed his hands in the water of the pensieve, gathered his runes from his pouch and poured them into the water.  Touchstone in his left hand, he closed his eyes and cast his right over the water.  Finding his center he lowered his hand and grabbed the first rune placing it on the edge of the wood.  Continuing the ritual until he had chosen seven he opened his eyes and gazed at the runes.  Ansuz, inguz, eihwaz, algiz, jera, nauthiz, raido.  Future, fertility, defense, protection, harvest, need, journey.  But fertility, defense, and protection were white and the others red.  Red means positive, and white negative.  So the runes actually read: future, barren, beaten, vulnerable, harvest, need, journey. But what do they mean? cursed Gwydion.

He gathered grass, flowers and leaves from his clearing in the forest and began to make a druid-crown.  This crown wasn’t for wearing, but protection while entering a deeper mediation, the dream-sleep.  His body would remain unconscious but his mind would be awake.  Well, not quite his mind, but his spirit, which would leave the physical plane and enter the spirit-realm.  He would have to leave his thoughts and constraints behind with his body to be able to perform the feel-think.  He though the name was ridiculous because it included that which one cannot do in the spirit-realm: think.  For if one tries to think whilst there, then the mind follows the spirit to the spirit-realm.  If the mind leaves the body, then it cannot return and the spirit which has already left is trapped in the spirit-realm.  It is a very dangerous task, the dream-sleep, but Gwydion was driven by need.  He had to know what his vision meant.  He finished the druid-crown and added the final touch, a green branch from his heart-tree – the largest oak in the forest.  It sat at the center of his druid circle with the pensieve carved into a knotted stump that was once a lower branch.

Gwydion removed the remaining runes from the pensieve, replaced them with the seven he drew, lowered the druid-crown into the waters of the pensieve, placed his touchstone in his mouth, closed his eyes and lowered his head into the water, worried about what he might see.