An Awakening

An Awakening
BLANCA

The warm caress of a lunar breeze has my eyelids fluttering open, and the soft prickle of lavender grass, poking at my flesh, turns my lips with the kind of smile that only breaks when you’re at peace. The sight of what resides above me confirms that I have in fact ascended from the mortal plane of constant torture and without wanting to miss another minute of this place, I sit up with a start.

The vast black of the open sky, painted in portions of glittering neon stars and swirls of luminescent dust has never been clearer than it is now. In fact, as I gaze around at the sparse landscape of mottled purple moss and yards of lavender grass, my eyes catch on the piles and piles of porous ivory stone that mark the different corners of a six pointed star. Something I never realized they did because their likeness has been forever shrouded in the odd glow of a dreamer’s sleep until now. 

With a gasp, I realize something else as well. There is no fog. Not a wisp or a curl, nor feathered curtain to hide behind. Nothing is muted. Nothing. Everything around me is cut and crisp and clear. Very un-dreamlike…

Something has changed.

I don’t think I’m asleep this time, which could only mean one thing…that I’m not. That I’m actually, really here, on that rock that dots the nighttime sky and despite the open happiness I felt in thinking I was dead when my body gave out on me in the field…I don’t want to be…dead.

Because I heard him. 

I heard Max.

There was this long, devastating moment, when my chest felt raw with pain and I knew that there was no way in the world that Max was possibly going to make it to me in time. But still I reached for him, and still, he ran for me. I swore that I caught him. I really thought I did.

He had come for me right near the end and all the fight that I’d allowed to bleed away at the hands of that monster Gamma Corlys came surging back inside of me when the devastation in Max’s voice pricked my ears.

It was like that moment in town square, when I saw him and he saw me. When I realized he would have been mine had fate been just a little bit kinder this life. It was my neck beneath the blade again and the cheers that rang for my death. The look in his eye when I stretched out my throat and lined myself up for the end, was the fear of the acute possibility that the lever might be pulled before his order and he would be helpless to stop it. That was in his voice this time as I lay broken in the dirt. Not fear for me alone, but for him too. 

I’m not ready to be dead anymore.

I’m not ready to give in.

So why am I here? She has told me time and time again that I had to endure, that the pain and suffering would be great, but that it was not my time. And yet…

This is her home. The Moon on which she resides. 

On those few occasions that the Goddess had something difficult to share with me or too important to simply whisper in my head, I have gone to sleep and found myself waking upon the very same lavender grass as I am now seated, but she has always been here to greet me.

If I am here to pass on or to transfer to a different reality or else be sent back to Earth and reborn, I am going to beg to be sent back. To give it one more shot.

A twinge of pain squeezes in my chest when I think on all the chaos that erupted in those final moments on the field. I can remember Corlys’ killing blow, raised with purpose and so horribly brutal that I scurried like a dying insect, in a panic to maneuver out of his reach while he declared himself some kind of self sacrificing hero that had been tasked with delivering Max from the evil that I represented. Then the scream that ripped from my throat as Corlys’ death blow became the only thing in my vision.

A crash. A growl. A warm body stretched over me.

Then…Max’s arms…the warmth of his chest. His mouth on my ear as he cradled me close and whispered for me to stay with him, that he finally had me and that if I just held on a little longer he would give me anything I wanted and he would never let me go. Those promises of his had poured into me, soothing me, lulling me to sleep and I felt myself drifting away, but I refused to leave.

So now, I stand up and spin in a slow circle, yelling, “Why am I here?”

Nothing. Not a peep.

“I want to go back!” Again I yell.

Once again. Nothing.

“Moon Goddess?! Please!!!” I’m crying now, running toward the rock piles and around them. Racing through the grass on each side of the endless mound, I try to head straight on, hoping maybe if I get to the other side of this blasted rock I will find her…the Goddess…and I will make her send me back.

But I run, and I run and the only thing that changes is my love for lavender grass.

Dropping to my knees, I raise my eyes to the sky to scream yet again, but a light blazes up above. A hot starlike flare that rips through the black of space and soars like fire around me, warming my skin and bathing everything aglow with white.

I close my eyes.

Something begins to burn inside of me, sluicing through my veins like a current and charging every cell in my body with a vibrating hum that sings like faceted glass.

The sky and the moon and the stars have been swallowed by this anomaly and within it comes an awareness. An awakening that has too long been buried by sorrow and grief. It calls to me and I reach for it. Once I touch it…something in the light howls and the burning stops. 

Something, somewhere has started beeping again and I groan.

Someone gasps, “Blanca?”

I open my eyes.

Blinking once, then twice. A familiar face takes shape above me and I can’t help it…I begin to cry.

I’m not dead after all.

But I am pretty damn sore.

I don’t dare try to move, but I have to ask, “Where’s Max?”