Eel Dreaming

There was once a boy who was lost in this world, troubled by a loss of identity he could only glimpse through things he was told were "not real". Certain animals became special to him, spoke to him through his ancestors. One of these was the eel.

He followed the eels in the mornings and afternoons and they showed him how the land works. He knew the tree they were part of, the tree with the same wood as their meat, the same tree that followed them through seasonal cycles and lived the same way. One night he woke to see the sky out of the window full of shining spirits. This gave him the same feeling as the eels, and he was comforted. Those spirits stayed with him and watched over him. Later, in adulthood, they would take a stronger hand in guiding his life and work.

As a teenager he abandoned that path of spirit to chase girls, drink, fight, and do all those things young men are expected to do. But this was a shallow life, and in time he lost his will to live. Then he found out more about his ancestry and heritage, and all the Dreaming of his childhood suddenly made sense. He returned to that path then, and found to his surprise that the eels and the ancestors were still there for him. They'd never left him.

There were other totemic animals that played a large part in his life as he grew in strength and knowledge, but the eels were the ones who taught him to adapt, to escape, to hide, to cross different environments like the eel crosses land and water. They taught him to survive, and helped him recover his heritage.