For a long while, no one spoke. The humming beneath the stones had softened, settling into the earth … and was now sensed by them as a distant vibration …
The five friends stood quietly beneath the emerging stars, with a full moon on its way.
Then Moire notices something.
“Where’s Caela?”
They turn to find her at the great circular stone in the center of the ruins.
At first, they thought she was resting.
Then Solina gasped.
Caela’s body is floating a few inches above the rounded stone slab.
She floats effortlessly, suspended between earth and sky.
“Caela!” Amara cried out, taking a step forward.
Tahuya gently touches her arm. “Wait.”
Caela’s face is peaceful. Almost luminous.
She is somewhere else.
•
Caela is conscious but in another world.
The air shimmers around her. A grove of ancient trees stretches toward the sky. Rivers of liquid light seem to move from the trees through gardens of unspeakable beauty.
As Caela looks closer at the grove of Ancient trees … the trees shape shift into a grove of ancient Dreamers. Some carry the love and wisdom of the Grandmothers. Some the love and understanding of the Grandfathers. Others radiate the fierce wonder of a child. All of the dreamers radiate something that has no name … and seem to glow from within.
They welcome her as though they had been expecting her all along.
One of the Ancient Dreamers approaches.
“What would you like me to dream for you?”
Caela feels her unexpected tears gliding down her face. She thinks about: Moire’s wonder and his willingness to question things, Amara’s courage, and her willingness to speak what others are afraid to. Tahuya’s quiet wisdom and deep respect for his ancestry, and how the earth seems to rhythmically move through Solina, one of its significant guardians.
She senses the many people arriving from their previous protesting … to join this revolution of freedom … and how the world is struggling to remember itself.
Then she whispers, “I want a dream that helps us become who we are meant to be. A dream that helps people remember they are not alone.”
The Dreamer opens her arms. “Then dream with us .” The Dreamers become luminous and radiant. They seem to unfold like the petals of a great lotus stretching toward eternity.
Caela feels herself wrapped in a love so vast she no longer knows where she ends and where she begins … or even if she has a beginning or end.
She has spent so much of her life trying to get things right.
Trying to be enough.
Trying not to disappoint.
The Dreamers ask nothing of her.
They simply love and dream together with and for her.
Back among the ruins, Caela’s floating body slowly descends onto the circular stone. Her eyes open, as the others are gathered around her.
Waiting.
Tears glisten on her cheeks. “The Dreamers dreamed for us,” she whispers.
“We will find our way. I don’t know how. But I know we are not alone.”
She looks at each of them in turn.
“We don’t have to try so hard.”
“We’ve been trying to do everything right because we’re afraid of falling short.”
“But what if…”
Her voice softened.
“What if love was never waiting for us at the finish line?”
“What if it has been with us all along?”
Music: All This Time, Lyrics by Lyn Marsh and Music with Mureka
