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Course there's a lot more characters out there than just Pirates and Hags. Border Guards, they come around from time to time to check you out and welcome you in to the Territory. Some are quite sleazy and open to bribes, easy to pass if you give them a token of what they tell you they need. Others take the job more seriously and they check what you're hiding inside your heart as well as the baggage you carry outside on your back. Generally speaking, Border Guards are an opportunity to play with your view of authority. Some of us boaters are even afraid to go into the Territory at all. Some of us want permission to change, we need to create a part of our selves to say it's okay to reach down inside and decide to abstain from the maps we keep lugging around.
Now if you have Border Guards guarding the Border, there must be a Border to guard. There certainly is. It's the first thing to find if you want to be in the Territory in a serious, no-minded way. Now Borders are just a little bit strange, they're not quite like the human characters that tend to abound when you boat around. Borders have more of a natural shape, they're shy like a deer, as cunning as cats and they're free as a butterfly. You have to approach in a gentle way, if you try to chase a Border they'll turn and just run away. And you don't want that, they're hard to find. You have to stalk them carefully, looking for signs that they leave behind as they hover and dance in enchanting ways on the edge of the everyday world.
Why go to all that trouble you say, why should you look for a Border to use when the Territory is simply right there? Just clip up your boat and go sailing away to wherever you want to go, the Territory is a state of mind you can slip yourself into once you know how it is. Maybe yes, maybe no. There's always a part of your personality that wants to be sure of where you are, to see where the Territory actually is in relation to the everyday world. The you in yourself wants to keep itself separate and view the Territory as something aside. So in the beginning it's a necessary thing to see yourself go into the Territory and watch as you come out again. And even when your you becomes more fluid and doesn't much care where the Territory is, even when you and the Territory are one, you'll find it's still quite a lot of fun to play with a Border that's only a story in some more essential activity.
You're bound to encounter Storytellers too when you're out there boating around. They're singular characters, always alone and prone to get up and go off on their own somewhere else. You meet these guys in unlikely places, sitting alone by the side of a bay with a few special things set out on a blanket they've spread out in front of their temporary place. You can buy what they have if you have the cash or a bit of panache to make a good trade. Whenever they sell an object to you, they tell the story that comes along with it. These stories can be a Territory map that will lead you to places you never even knew you were going to even though you've been heading that way all along. Storytellers are the part of yourself that knows where you have to go and why. They give you clues about things you can use and a story to carry you through to the end of your personal journey. By taking their story it helps to release the stories your mind has carried along for so long inside yourself.
You'll also find Healers out there in the Territory who do the same thing in a different way. Their remedies and healing touch are stories the body requires and needs. Lots of the maps that you carry around are stored in your body, and since this is so they have to be found and finally let go in a bodily way. These Healers are part of your personality too, if you can summon one out of yourself you can help yourself in amazing ways.
Gypsies are characters you might want to meet, they can do the same thing emotionally. Many of the maps that we hold most tightly are fastened in place with a feeling. Gypsies know all the secret feelings, the ones that you hide even from yourself. They might tell your fortune or play you a song, they might dance a dance that will carry you along to the place where your feelings are held. There's a place inside you that loves yourself more than the feelings you've stored about how you are and you're not.
Territory Taxi Drivers, they're characters all right and not just in
Territory ways. On land they drive and on water they boat, but they're always
around when you need a ride and sometimes when you don't. If you get inside
a Territory taxi you better have some Territory dough, at least a slug or
a squid or two cause the meter keeps ticking and the pay alarm rings any
time that they want. These characters are like the part of you that can
jump from one level and land on the next without a bridge or a safety net.