by R.E. Rowe
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The following weeks were filled with the visions. If someone spoke with me, it was as if I were in a dream. Their words of modern day concerns came from the lips of those who had died decades, even centuries, before. The knowledge of their previous lives came through the voice that spoke to me in silence.
These visions were much like what I experienced with my mother. The gush of air that brushed by my nose the Hippie who stood in front of me in line at the grocery store suddenly shifted into a soldier from a war I couldn’t name. His modern form turned around to look at me; but the past came through to reenact its anger. The homeless woman, drenched in blood and jewels, reaching for me with a cry that could only come from the wounded. Even children were affected. Boys became women; girls became men and their stories were so heart wrenching that I would walk away from them to keep my tears in check.
Each time; every instance, I jotted the words down into the notebook and set it aside. I asked for knowledge to learn. What am I missing here? The words were etched across the front in a thick black marker that smelled strongly of ink and plastic, but they comforted me. It became a purpose; a determination that I would learn something despite the mistakes I had made during my spell.
The month passed slowly, but it ended just as the voice said it would. The realization that it was over came the first night I slept peacefully and awoke hours later in a daze. No...no nightmares? Oh Goddess….The dusk of dawn brushed through the curtains over my bed and I blinked back in amazement. It’s over.
The notebook was easy enough to find and as I read through the entries that were recorded, I realized that what I had been seeking was right beneath my nose. Each vision was opposite of what the person was today. The old man who loved books had once been a man who shunned them. The Hippie, once a soldier, was now an advocate for peace; just as the homeless woman had once been rich.
Even my parents; the two people I thought I had known better than anyone else in the world had been strangers to what they are now. Rich, ambitious, unhappy-still love each other despite their circumstances. The ink slipped across the page as my hand began to tremble and I breathed in an attempt to calm myself.
July 24-
I understand now. It took a month to open my eyes, but I see now what I was missing before. The lives that we have today cause us to experience a different life than the one we had before. Just as a child must be shown right from wrong, we must be shown all sides in order to grow; to understand what we love and what we hate.
I didn’t see my own past lives; not once due to my error. But I see now that I must learn to face the fears of my surroundings instead of fixing them quickly with potions and herbs. For in the next life, these lessons will serve me well. Perhaps that is the true power of magic. It is a tool to teach us that we can control our own destinies if we use it wisely. Whispered prayers are dangerous; but only to those of us who don’t know how to use them.
** END **
If you liked Whispered Prayers, be sure to check out Cynthia's newest book, The Sibyl!
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THE SIBYL:
Some tragedies are best left forgotten.
Eva McRayne wanted a steady paycheck, not a television show. But when Elliot Lancaster hands her the opportunity to discredit his paranormal findings on camera, she finds it impossible to turn him down. Her life changes in more ways than one after she goes to New York to learn more about the theories she will be shooting down on television. Eva McRayne encounters a Sibyl desperate to be free of the shackles which bind her to Apollo.
Shackles she binds onto Eva - a disbeliever who learns the hard way just how real the paranormal can be.
