"Lost and Found": "Melissa"

nock, knock, they're here! I sent them," said the voice at the window, a lovely sprite smiling at me as I sat in the office of St. Clair Shores. I'd been researching some mythology when a shadow fell across the desk and I looked up to see her enchanting face peeking in through the foliage of the tree. "I didn't send that woman, though." A battle-axe of a woman marched down the hall past the office declaring loudly and definitively that, "This place is filthy!"

I know it was a dream, and therefore not bound by 'logic,' but these appearances totally baffled me. I leapt up from the desk chair to forestall the woman stomping down the hall. My attention was diverted, however, by the sight of a number of women and children gathered out on the lawn, between the water and the front entrance, looking longingly toward the inn. When I turned back to the window, hoping for information from the sprite, she was gone.

Before I could stop the battle-axe and ask who she was or why she was there she marched back out the door. I was baffled. There was nothing filthy whatsoever about the inn and I wanted to argue that point with her but decided I'd better turn my attention to the women and children on the lawn. They seemed hesitant to speak, but I was patient with them and eventually learned that they had nowhere to call home. 'Home' was a blessing lost to them. So I invited them into the inn - there was plenty of room.

I urged them to make good use of the toiletries and robes and linens in the rooms. When they had wandered slowly away I realized that there were two little ones, a boy and a girl, standing alone in the lobby. Unlike the other children, who were there with their mothers, this boy and girl were alone. They were not even siblings, but friends who'd met during their wanderings. The little boy spoke for both of them and informed me, "My name is Ham and her name is Sam." They stood there, small, hungry, dirty - thoroughly vulnerable.

The only thing I could do was to lead them to one of the rooms and move between entertaining one and bathing the other. Eventually the pair were clean and wrapped in those over-sized, but very warm, terry robes. I led them downstairs to the office and snuggled them in the chair at the desk with some pencils and paper. I told them I would go to the kitchen to find some food and hot chocolate and be back as quickly as I could. While the milk came to a simmer on the stove, and some of the women shyly entered the kitchen, I searched a box of items labeled "Lost and Found" to see if there were anything for Ham and Sam.

When I returned to the office, tray of goodies and a 'found' item in hand, I nearly cried out to see their shining tousled heads nestled close together as they whispered to one another. I felt sweetness, unutterable unbearable sweetness pierce me - a bolt of lightning - when I introduced Ham to the small cuddly stuffed piglet I'd found in that box. "I think he's been waiting in that box just for you, Ham," I whispered. My throat choked and my eyes filled with tears when he offered Sam the chance to hold the piglet while he finished his drawing.