The next night when he slept once more the figure of a woman carrying a basket of herbs came to his feet and said to him,
Each of us can only find a path that is suited to us, each path is separate, and each path is of equal value, but each path is not set in stone, see it for yourself,
In his dream the Blue Knight found himself on a great rocky plain, marked every step by a stone of each shape taller than a man might be. He walked in the stones slow and looked thereon. It seemed that each one was carved most marvelous with whorls as a cloud or water turning about near the passing of a stone in its course. Each large stone was also the place for a carving of a person that was into the shape of a stone.
Then Blue Knight traveled forwards and saw that all the small rocks about the path were carved with shapes and words and animals and birds and pictures and marvelous creatures above and below so that he must bend down and behold them clearer. Even the smallest stone of the path thereabouts were worked finely with spirals and knots most intricate. Soon in the day he heard a sharp noise again and again that was not stopping, and he must follow to it. He saw a man with a chisel and a hammer of stone working to make decoration on the stone, so he stopped to ask him the whys of it.
The Stone Carver told how each stone came to him a person who had lost the strength to change their stars and must be set there forever. He told how each child was come to the world clear with no shape to it or upon it, but that with time came the pushing and pressing of those about the child to force an image that was a man, with all the accepted ways of man or contrary-wise a woman. Each girl must become a woman and embrace all things that a woman must be, and each boy must become a man and embrace all the things that a man must be.
This gave the carver much sorrow, he wanted for each child to carve their own way in the world that they might be free to shape their own stars and do wondrous things. The Stone Carver told that whenever he found the stone that was clear and unmarked, he would rejoice, but that each stone that was deeply carved with a man or woman set, came with it sorrow for the carver.
The Blue Knight asked of the carver how could the children be aided in their quest. The Carver replied that, to begin, the great image of the Warrior which every boy must become, should be broken and that the children must be released to their own images.
The Blue Knight woke from his dream full of hope that the images that held us may be yet broken and the people may be freed. He took some food and water and tended to his horse Prosek who was tethered near.
The Guardians of the Cave 