Deva Anon

Chapter One – Nera

Relationship dynamics are nuanced.

They can trap and destroy us, or nurture our best selves.

If we are to believe in reincarnation or parallel universes, we’ve lived and loved countless people through space and time.

Some say our soulmate is never out of reach. That we find each other anywhere – in any gender, race, planet, epoch, or circumstance. 

Then, there’s the concept that there isn’t just one soulmate but possibly multiple within a lifetime.

The most peculiar thing I’ve learned about love is that it summons ideas genetically planted in us before conception – challenging our beliefs about ourselves and the world at large.

With a reputation likened to a demon, the mirror of love speaks so honestly and plainly that it uncovers truths beyond the illusions we create.

Truths more ancient than thought.

It’s Friday night.

I stare at my reflection, dressed in nothing but ceremonial robes.

Tonight, I am initiated as a member of The Circle.

Our duty is to protect life and innocence through the patient education of humanity.

We do so with sorcery – defined as the developed ability to expand the limits of normal perception, by redefining and directing reality.

I believe in our mission.

It is through a fellow member that I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted – this title included.

Standing at the stage of another achievement, however, hasn’t filled me with the sense of pride and purpose I expected.

Instead, a ghost sensation rises from my pelvis and up to my brain.

It says I don’t belong here.

From the moment Andre found and trained me through the levels of sorcery, it was known I was missing part of my memory.

The feeling of not being from this planet was not imposter syndrome, but a fact.

After being examined, my energy sphere revealed a portion of my soul was from somewhere unknown to the sorcerers from this and neighboring universes.

For ages I’d used that as an excuse against joining The Circle.

To me, I was a liability.

Especially considering that a fundamental rule of sorcery is to know thyself.

Andre and our fellow sorcerers convinced me I could not allow that to limit my potential. That I had to choose life over mental imprisonment.

They swore to assist me through any challenge, and went as far as thoughtfully reminding me they were more advanced in the craft – meaning if I got out of control, they would handle it. 

“Higher power can only be accessed with a certain mindset and disposition. No one can transcend their perimeters of influence over mind and matter without first becoming a being that controls itself, and cares about other life forms,” they’d tell me, “if you’re truly unworthy, you won’t graduate beyond your proven capabilities.”

I finally decided to move forward.

On occasion, a reminder of my lost memories surfaced.

Like tonight.

I want to run.

“Don’t go there,” says a familiar voice.

“Andre,” I reply.

“You look great,” he adds.

We smile at each other – he with a confident smirk and I, annoyingly bashful.

Being a powerful woman in both the world of sorcery and the philanthro-capitalistic realm, he was the only one who could shove all my accolades aside and make me feel like a girl gushing over a crush.

The notion was humorous.

We’ve been long-time lovers.

I should be used to him by now but his allure is endless.

“They’re starting. Come out here with your thick self and that cute smile,” he teases.

Grateful for the love and levity, I step out of my dressing room and head for the cathedral.

It was common to obscure our practices under the skirts of religions with violent reputations.

To announce your identity as pro-human under an independent group or label was a public act of war against all institutions that upheld exploitation and terror – an evil that wasn’t born on Tiamat but spread here, like it did in other universes.

Unless you planned to match or surpass the crimes of that vein of death-consciousness, it was best to make progress as invisibly as possible.

Two large, wooden doors part in the middle as Andre and I walk up from the side chateau.

”Brother. Sister. Welcome,” says the head priest.

He’s inorganic: an energy entity given a human-presenting form, summoned to serve The Circle.

We make our way down the aisle and stand before the empty pulpit.

Andre steps to the left and I to the right.

A voice booms from the speakers hanging around the vacant building.

“We are candles within the whole – spreading our flame to ignite the human soul. 

She who was without light has come to consciousness through the efforts of two: Master and Student.

Andre and Nera. 

Bound by fate and then by choice.

To master means to graduate to a new level after perfecting the previous. It demands remembrance that we are forever students of what’s next, and to commit to the eternal evolution of mind, body and soul.

We stand witnesses in telepathic presence to our sister Nera’s vow as she adjoins her flame into The Circle.”

Andre walks towards me and kisses my lips.

”Love seals the deal,” he says, “never forget that.”

We step forward towards the altar.

He draws a lit candle from under his robe and points it like a sword in my direction. 

I bow before the flame until its warmth touches my forehead – magical fire that does not burn flesh but instead stimulates the pineal gland.

A jolt shocks my nervous system.

I automatically drop my robes to the ground, exposing my naked skin – honey in glow.

Andre comes to me, enveloping me within his own – also nude beneath.

The heat from his body is muted by the intensity of mine.

Initiation doubles as a purification ritual.

Gently guiding me to the floor, we sit on my fallen robes while he embraces me through the process of heaving and deep breaths.

His flame has entered me and I must let it take its course.

It’s just us again.

Even the priest has vanished.

My thoughts race through time like a rewinding film.

It stops at darkness.

The missing memories.

Then, as if taking a life of their own, I hear them speak.

Beware and prepare.

We will remember.

We have to decide who we are.

Sunlight filters through the North Star depicted in the stained glass.

It’s daybreak by the time I return to myself.

Andre looks at me, helping me sit upright.

“How many days?,” I ask.

“Seven, though it felt like a blink,” he says.

“Did you see?,” I ask with an undertone of sadness and desperation.

“I did. Was with you the whole time,” he responds.

I sigh and lay back against the floor.

It doesn’t matter that I’m exposed.

Sorcery is inherently other-worldly and decorum can feel excessive when faced with infinity.

A weighted silence surrounds us.

“Please take me home,” I finally ask.

Andre had trained me out of disassociating, but in that moment I needed the distance.

He felt me and allowed it; diving into his own meditative mood.

The answers I’d been waiting for were at the door of my awareness.

Except they arrived in a merciless riddle.

We both knew what that meant.

I’d be rigorously tested by energy to understand what my subconscious had veiled.

“Whatever it is, we will deal with it together,” he says, reading my mind.

With that, he wraps me in his robes again and teleports me home.

Once there I don’t have to ask – he takes off on his own.

I felt nuanced fear.

Nearly imperceptible and hard to define.

The trouble with energy is that it’s a trickster by nature when it transforms into the physical realm.

It takes a trained mind to see beyond what the eye and therefore brain has pre-defined.

Something told me that whatever was in that darkness was evil I hadn’t encountered before.

My challenge was to locate it in its physical disguise, then determine what direction to give it.

We typically made evil extinct.

This case hinted at complexities only patience and wisdom could surmount.