It welcomes. It calls.
“Your core,” Leela says. “Your power.”
“Yes…” The shadow at the back of my mind shifts, and my stomach tightens. The sun rotates below me, and I recognize the cause of my disquiet.
The crescent-shaped eclipse branded into its fiery surface.
The memory hidden in my mind finally shakes off the shadows.
I stagger back, a hand on my chest to hold my heart in place as it attempts to shatter my ribs.
“You remember now, don’t you?” Leela says softly.
She is the unspoken part of me. Sheisthe shadow. She is the unknown parts given form, and she knew. She always knew.
“What do I do? How can I?—”
“Breathe,” she says. “Do not think as Araz. Think as Iblees. Become the god who hatched this plan. The one who knew what might occur. In that moment as you were taken over, in that split second when you were invaded, you made a choice. But you did not make it lightly. So think now. Remember it all.”
Her words are balm to my frantic senses, casting me back to that awful moment. To the sense of defeat. To knowing that I must stay. I must anchor. But that moment isn’t where it began.
It began eons before that. When I was alone and wandering. Slowly going insane. There was no sleep where they putme. No blessed oblivion to pass the time. No becoming vast consciousness and waiting to be reincarnated. Nothing but gray. Until I heard him.
A friend, he said.
A confidant. Created by my will. That is what he told me, and in my addled state, I believed him.
He kept me sane.
But in the moment of release, in that moment when I found my vessel, when I was to be whole, when I believed that my creation would disperse, he proved to be not of my making.
He revealed his true power. Revealed himself to be the primordial evil.
And in that moment, I did the only thing I could.
I fractured. Just a sliver. Enough to take the shape I’d believed that I’d givenhim.
I cannot claim my power because I am not whole.
A part of me exists outside of this body. But even though I cannot claim my core power, I can direct it. Use it to send a signal. To reach that sliver. My power can become a voice. A message. A prayer.
I lean over the stone wall and reach for the sun in the chasm. “Find what belongs to me. Carry my voice where the veil cannot.”
The sun throbs softly, and my heart echoes the beat, pulse spiking as the burning orb spits out a single ember—teal and gold and breathing. It rises and crests the stone wall, floating across the sands and coming to a halt five feet above the dunes where it flares bright blue, cutting a seam into the air.
A doorway.
A cool breeze kisses my fevered skin, and a sigh brushes my senses. Tears prick my eyes as nostalgia rolls over me like a crushing wave.
I know this place, but it has been too long since I visited it.
I take a breath and step through the crude doorway into the heart of my dreaming.
Leela doesn’t follow.She remains at the seam, a watchful sentry. The part of me ever alert tohim.
My feet, now bare, press into soft earth, cool and welcoming. Butterflies with teal and lemon wings flit around my face, brushing my cheeks as if in welcome. The starlit sky watches me in silence.
There is a path made of white pebbles leading to the grove, but I stay on the earth, exhaling as soil sinks between my toes, grounding and healing. Slender silver-barked trees rise around me, evergreen and fragrant, hung with fruits that have no name, only explosive flavors.
