by Lucia Ashta
Chapter 4
Lena slept soundly the whole night, only waking when the new day’s sun snaked through the tent’s folds and shone on her face. She lay on the east side of the tent; Paolo was on his side facing the west. The sun’s wakeful reach gave him reprieve for a while longer.
Lena unzipped her sleeping bag as quietly as she could, and then put on the sneakers that Paolo had thoughtfully placed right next to the tent entrance for her. She unzipped the tent, hoping Paolo would not stir, and stepped out.
The morning was glorious, though a chill hung in the air. Lena crossed her arms across her shirted chest for warmth. Her breath hung in the air before her, suspended in a cloud of condensation. The sun would warm the air, but it hadn’t yet.
She was lost in the array of colors that tinged the still-dark sky above the jagged horizon of mountains, when she heard the faraway call of a coyote. It was a lonely call; she sensed that. Another call rang out, and Lena turned toward the direction of the sound. She saw the silhouette of the coyote against the mountain backdrop, much nearer than she thought.
When her eyes found the coyote, the coyote found her. Even though the distance between them was still too great to make out many details, their gazes held. The coyote stared into Lena’s amber eyes for a long time, so long that Lena recognized this wasn’t an ordinary meeting of two beings. Something else was at play. A wild animal stood still, staring into her eyes, for no reason that was apparent to her. This was an extraordinary moment.
Lena didn’t dare move. She didn’t want to disrupt the moment she couldn’t understand, but appreciated at a deep level just the same. She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly because she kept catching herself holding her breath in attempted stillness. She wanted to get closer to the coyote, even though the rational part of her realized approaching a wild animal wasn’t a safe thing to do.
But she felt drawn to him. She resisted her impulses, focusing instead on her steady breathing and the intensity of the animal stare. Just as she bypassed her rational mind and felt her foot lift in calculated, cautious movement, the coyote began walking toward her. Startled, although she’d been about to do the same thing, she put her foot back down and stayed where she was. She watched the careful gait of the coyote as he made his even approach.
The coyote didn’t look down; he didn’t watch where he stepped. His eyes were trained on Lena and, as he drew closer, she began to get nervous. But her heart overturned her mind in unconscious deliberation, and she held her ground.
Her gaze was steadfast. The air was crisp and unmoving. The coyote’s eyes reflected orange in the still-sparse light of the sun as he walked into it. Then he stopped suddenly, without a sound. He stooped his neck and stared even more intently into her eyes.
Coyote was close enough now that Lena could make out the details of his face. He looked young and fierce. He stood in a crouch, and she couldn’t tell if his stance was threatening.
She hadn’t experienced anything like this before. It was intense. It was powerful in a way that pushed all thoughts from her mind. She didn’t do anything. She didn’t think anything. She stood and stared and was amazed.
Later, she’d consider all the things she could have done. She’d remember Marian and Victor’s teachings and think that perhaps she should have tried to talk to the coyote telepathically. She’d wonder if Coyote had some message for her that she failed to receive because she didn’t do the right thing. She’d wonder what this peculiar visit meant.
But this would happen later. Nothing happened now, other than an extraordinary, quiet moment shared by two beings equally unsure about each other. Lena heard a slight rustling sound from within the tent. Paolo was stirring, likely looking for her to make sure she was all right. Coyote heard the rustling too, and he turned and walked away.
Lena was standing in the same spot when Paolo called out for her, long after Coyote had faded into the distant mountains.
The water lapped at their feet. Asara leaned back into Anak as they sat atop the roots of one of the ancient trees at the edge of the River Haakal. The tree roots sprawled into the water. They’d come to the river with no particular intent other than to listen. They weren’t there to pray or to ask for direction, but rather to receive whatever guidance already awaited them.
Asara closed her eyes. She listened to the flowing water that always brought her peace. She felt how Anak’s rhythmic breathing moved her subtly as his chest inflated and deflated against her back. She moved her feet around in the water, enjoying the way the water felt against her skin. She wondered about life and its mysteries with child-like enthusiasm.
She didn’t know what the next moment held. All of life was an adventure into the unknown. Was it really that different to ponder how to save their spirit brothers and sisters in another dimension than to contemplate the immensity of the next moment’s possibilities? Almost anything could happen.
A smile that reflected the warmth of the sun spread across Asara’s face. Anak wrapped his arms around his twin in mutual contentedness. They shared a beautiful series of moments at the water’s edge and, although they received no specific messages as to where they should go, they knew themselves supported by the universe. It wasn’t yet time for that guidance.
They walked back to the Temple of Laresu’u Kal as radiant sun beings; their yellow hair and yellow eyes appeared wild as they caught the glint of the sun overhead. Despite the tragedy that had befallen the temple that day, the world was a beautiful place, ripe with potential, and they wouldn’t see it any other way.
For the second time that morning, they headed toward Sina’s bedroom in search of Tahn. When the twins knocked on the door this time, Tahn himself opened it. A worn wooden chair faced the outside. Tahn had been staring out the only window in the room. Sina was unchanged. She still appeared to sleep beneath the gauze-like bandage that protected the open wound on her head.
Tahn looked at the twins expectantly, but with concern in his eyes. He’d been debating what to do about the parchment he hid on his person when the knock interrupted his thoughts. Was he right not to read it? Was this the way to keep everyone at the temple safest? Or was the final prophecy so important that it was a mistake not to read it? He could do nothing to aid in or impede the final prophecy’s fulfillment unless he knew its content.
He stepped aside to allow Asara and Anak to enter the room. Tahn was familiar with Dann’s well-known prophecy of the golden children, and he knew that Master Kaanra fervently believed the woman and man standing before him now were the twins of this prophecy. But Tahn didn’t understand what this meant in relation to the final prophecy he now concealed as its protector.
Tahn was distracted by his thoughts. Asara and Anak glanced at each other. They sensed something was going on, but what?
“Master,” Asara began, “are you feeling well?” He looked unusually inattentive.
“What?” Tahn asked. He’d been further away than he thought and didn’t hear her question. It was a disturbance in the vibrations of sound that made him realize he’d missed something.
“Master Tahn,” she said again, “are you well? Can we do something for you?”
Tahn shook his head. “No, no. It is I who wonder if there’s something I should do for you.”
As if he suddenly realized it was they who had come to him, he asked, “But why is it that you have come seeking me?”
“We came to speak with you,” Anak said. “We believe it’s already time for us to leave again. There is too much unsettled for us to remain here any longer. There are those that need our help.”
“I see,” Tahn said. “And where will you go?”
“We don’t know yet. All we know is that we must leave,” Anak said.
“Do you know where Master Kaanra has gone?” Asara asked.
Again, Tahn shook his head. He didn’t know. No one at the temple knew.
And it was then that Tahn found the answer to his quandary. The twins shouldn’t discover the content
of the final prophecy, and neither should he. There would be a time when they’d all need to know, but that time hadn’t yet come. As to the doman, however, well, that was different.
“I don’t know where Master Kaanra has gone, but I do know what he’s left in search of. I can tell you of the doman.”
As those words left Tahn’s lips, Sina stirred and groaned. Her movement and sound were faint, but they all heard them, and Tahn rushed to her side. She hadn’t woken, but she was beginning to rouse from her deep sleep.
Consumed with his patient, Tahn looked up at Asara and Anak while he fussed over Sina on the bed.
“Come to me tomorrow morning. We’ll talk then.”
She felt a sudden knowingness come over her. They should talk now, not tomorrow. But she didn’t question the master. Instead, the twins slipped quietly out of the room.
Lena slipped back into the tent before Paolo could have a chance to worry about her. She wanted him to rest and not abandon the warmth of his sleeping bag in search of her. Lena enjoyed those moments when Paolo was waking, but not fully alert; there was an additional openness to him, a tenderness that was more apparent than in wakeful hours.
She sidled up to him, she on top of her sleeping bag, he still zipped into his. She nestled her head on his shoulder and let herself be. A conflicting range of emotions had been simmering within her since the battle at Marian’s compound. She pushed to be even more honest with herself, and she realized that a similar range of emotions had been coursing through her since first arriving in Sedona. She felt both scared and strong at the same time. That shouldn’t be possible, but it was.
She was more herself now than she’d ever been before. She was stronger, wiser, and closer to becoming the person she was meant to be. But that strength and wisdom also showed her how much she still had to grow and learn.
The scope of it all and its unlimited potential was too much for her to fathom right now. The exhaustion she felt the day before had lessened with a night’s sleep, but it was still there. This was a deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep; it was the weight of what hung in the balance that wore her down.
Paolo’s long hair tumbled and tangled across his sleeping bag. Lena buried her face in it. Here, she could find relief. She smelled her beloved and thought of nothing else. She nestled close and, without meaning to, she fell asleep again. The same coyote she’d encountered in the waking world walked her dreams.
Chapter 5
Asara and Anak left Master Sina’s room to prepare for their upcoming journey into the unknown. They readied everything for an early morning departure before they went to sleep for the night. But when the twins woke, they were reluctant to leave the relative safety of their temple home and the comfort of the marital bed Kaanra had set for them before they’d been forced to postpone their wedding.
The temptation of delaying the inevitable gripped the twins as they made their way to the river, the haven to which they returned over and again no matter what transpired in their lives. They took refuge in a small inlet, dropped their robes to the ground, and rested among soft grasses that were an escape from the harsh landscape inland.
Naked in the crisp air of the early morning sun, their skin pricked with awareness and goose bumps. The water flowed around the small inlet enticingly. It was only moments before Asara responded to the water’s pull.
She dove in the way she loved to—without hesitation or pause. She thought of nothing other than what it felt like for the water to surround her on all sides, and she immersed herself in its power. She closed her eyes in response to the hypnotic pull the water held over her. She tilted her face up toward the burgeoning sun and felt an intense power coursing through her body. It was the connection to all of life that filled her then.
She sensed someone else dive into the water, and she didn’t need to open her eyes to know Anak would soon be joining her. Within moments, his skin touched hers. Even though the cool water coated his skin, it wasn’t enough to disguise the rampant warmth that swelled in his body. He moved behind her and shifted her to where their feet could touch the bottom of the riverbed. Then, he pressed his body to hers. This contact of cool, wet skin against cool, wet skin was tantalizing, and Asara couldn’t resist it. She smiled, enchanted by the intensity of life.
Eyes still closed, she turned to her lover, to the twin of her soul, and parted her lips. She pressed his body against hers fiercely; her lips searched for his. She enjoyed the way her body responded to him, and she prepared to give herself over to him entirely. In this beginning of ecstatic haze, she opened her eyes halfway. Then, she screamed.
The last few days had been ones of unaccustomed trauma for those that lived at the normally peaceful Temple of Laresu’u Kal. Arnaka was usually a land of tranquility. Seeing the body of Master Tahn floating in the sacred river waters was too much for Asara.
She knew it was Tahn’s body the moment she glimpsed the lifeless form in a white robe reserved for temple masters. He was the only master at the Temple of Laresu’u Kal with yellow hair like theirs, and it was these yellow strands tangled in the river grasses that signaled that Master Tahn no longer walked the earth plane.
Anak jerked his head around at the sound of her cry and, within moments, they both made it to Tahn’s side. Unconcerned with their nakedness, the twins worked to get the master’s body ashore. They dragged it onto the grasses they’d blissfully enjoyed just a short while before, and cried quietly, unable to restrain themselves. To have such a heinous act violate the sanctity the masters and pupils worked to create in their way of life disturbed the twins on a deep level.
They witnessed death when they responded to Archangel Michael’s call to duty. But even though the brutality they’d witnessed then was shocking, this felt different; it felt more shocking, more brutal. It was one thing to see violence and cruelty away from home; it was another for it to invade a familiar history of peaceful life.
The sense of safety Asara and Anak had always enjoyed while in Arnaka now felt tenuous. Everyone should have a place to be safe no matter what was going on in the outside world.
Dreading what they both knew one of them had to do, Anak moved to Tahn’s side. Gently, more softly than was needed for the dead man, Anak rolled the body over. They’d pulled him out of the water as he was in it, with his face down. For the first time, the twins saw the master’s face. Asara gasped and looked away. When she finally did turn again, it was with tears steadily streaming down her face.
The normally bright face of the master, with warm brown eyes and a ready smile, had lost its luster. Tahn’s face was pale and lifeless. His straw-colored hair was plastered across his forehead, a remnant of the motion of turning him, and it would stay there until someone else cleared it. Master Tahn could no longer choose to do anything with his body. His autonomy had been unjustly revoked.
Hand trembling, she reached over and pulled Tahn’s eyelids closed. The warm brown of his eyes was no longer the same, and she didn’t want to see the change. His life force was absent, gone back to where it came from.
At least that thought brought the twins some peace. Tahn’s soul had returned to its origins, where there was no suffering. Tahn’s soul was at perfect peace. It could now understand the why of everything and know that it all happened for a worthwhile reason, even if it didn’t seem that way during life on earth.
There was only one indication of how Tahn died: bruises marked his neck. Dark red and purple welts adorned his throat, traces of his attacker’s hands as they squeezed out life. Tahn was a trained warrior, and it seemed peculiar to them that he should seemingly die without a fight. Tahn had been a wise master. Why was he killed so easily?
It was time to tell the others about Tahn’s death. Those at the Temple of Laresu’u Kal should know it was no longer safe there. But whom should the twins tell? The natural selections for leadership at the temple were dwindling. Had Master Kaanra been there, they’d have automatically gone to him. But he’d disappeared into the
unknown. Sina was the next obvious choice, but she remained limp and unresponsive in her room. Tahn, the warm-hearted master, lay cold at their feet. Four masters remained at the temple. The twins ruefully decided to tell the first one they could find.
They agreed that Asara should go share the news while Anak stayed behind with the body. They didn’t dare leave it unattended. Too many unusual circumstances had befallen the temple community. They wanted to honor Master Tahn at least in his death. Anak guarded his body while Asara shot off hurriedly. She didn’t want Anak to be alone for long.
Chapter 6
This time, Lena and Paolo woke together. Although it wasn’t quite yet summer, the days were beginning to heat up in the desert, and this particular day was already hot even though it was only mid-morning. The tent was becoming unbearably warm. If not for the discomfort of the heat, Lena and Paolo might have slept for several more hours still. The intensity of the attack at Marian’s complex the day before had left them drained.
Out of the quiet of deep sleep, Paolo seemed incongruous in a sudden flurry of movement. He kicked off his sleeping bag and pulled off his shirt, throwing it across the tent. He’d been sweating in the sweltering heat within the sleeping bag. He lay on top of the bag now in his boxer shorts, waiting to cool.
Seeing Paolo almost naked was normally enough to turn Lena’s thoughts to making love, but not then. She felt overly fragile, delicate like the petals of a flower that were deeply beautiful, but yet could be easily crushed. She wanted to feel close to Paolo, though; with him she felt safe.
But she didn’t want to make love. She was too raw. She had to be the one to fill the hollow that resounded at her core in this moment. She couldn’t rely on someone else to complete her, even if he was her beloved.