Beyond Amber_A Visionary Fantasy

by Lucia Ashta

  Their unexpected laughter released tension. After all, the situation was comical in some ways. Here were Lena and Paolo, who’d come all the way from Sedona to find the pyramid—and even farther if they counted that Lena and Paolo were originally from Argentina and Italy—and Sitting Bear, who’d grown up in the shadow of the pyramid, and not one of them was sure of what to do, despite strong connections to the pyramid and guidance to do something with it.

  They began laughing at the absurdity of it and continued when laughing felt good, releasing some of the weight of the mission.

  When the laughter finally subsided, their searching gazes met again. They still had no idea where to begin, but their hearts were unburdened. That made them more receptive to guidance. They’d already taken a great step toward working with the pyramid without even realizing.

  In the absence of a better idea, Lena, Paolo, and Sitting Bear set off to circle the pyramid. Sitting Bear was in the lead, Lena walked in between the two men, and Paolo brought up the rear. They walked in silence in a clockwise direction.

  After years of disuse, nature claimed what man had built, and all that surrounded the pyramid was overgrown with mature trees and spiny bushes that had made their home nestled in the pyramid’s energy. The explorers kept as close as they could to the pyramid base, but it wasn’t an easy task.

  It was Lena who caused the effect that would leave them reeling and wondering for days, although they didn’t realize it had been her. The pyramid was still too mysterious for them to understand how it did what it would do next.

  As they walked, Lena felt herself drifting off into the dream world. She’d often wondered if her ability to float into other worlds so readily was a blessing or a curse, and today she received her long-awaited answer. Her ability revealed itself as a great blessing, because it was this very thing that established her connection to the pyramid.

  Lena found herself imagining a time when magic existed openly. Before her eyes, a way of life that resonated strongly with her spirit came to be once more. She was now in a place where people lived and roamed freely, honoring the Mother for her sacredness and perfect provision. It was an era when the inhabitants of the earth only took what they needed—always in gratitude—and never more. It was a time of appreciation for the Mother’s abundant gifts and her indiscriminate giving, of deep connectedness and a rejection of the artificial.

  She looked ahead of her at Sitting Bear and noticed he was also transformed. He wore an animal skin loincloth, which exposed his buttocks, and hide moccasins on his feet. His body was lean and muscular, the result of a life on the land. His step and gait were strong, well balanced, and efficient. He moved like an instinctive animal, with sharpened proficiency.

  What Lena observed was suspended in the slow motion of heightened detail. She herself was in a daze, immersed in the gentle fog of the dream world. Things swirled around her, beckoning her, engaging her, and then passing on, giving mystical importance to the little and to the subtle. It was only while Lena was admiring Sitting Bear’s tall, straight posture and his strong shoulders that the thought drifted mistily through her mind: she might also have transformed.

  In this haze, Lena shifted her attention to her own lithe body. She was by no means clumsy, but athletic and fit. However, the grace and fluidity she experienced now confirmed her suspicion: she too was changed.

  Her feet came down gently, as if they barely skimmed the earth. Her footsteps were mute, yet they carried her forward strongly and surely. This wasn’t Lena’s usual gait. This form of walking was the result of precise training from an early age, when moving silently through the woods was a matter of great importance. After her metamorphosis, Lena’s body possessed the ability to move stealthily at great speeds.

  Lena glanced down at her feet. Gone were her fluorescent green and purple hiking sneakers. Instead, she discovered moccasins on her feet. They were well worn but well crafted, and the soles of her feet molded around the loose rock covering of the ground as she stepped forward.

  Her skin was darker than the usual olive-rose color. Gone too was the scar on one of her knees leftover from joyful play with her childhood best friend. Lena didn’t readily understand it, although it was obvious that she was in a different body. She chose not to question the situation in the moment. She didn’t want to risk losing the connection to whatever had transformed them.

  As she continued to walk, Lena raised her arms, exploring differences. Her shoulders were limber, and her wrists wore thickly woven reed bracelets, accented with turquoise highlights. She held up her hands. They too were changed. Lena had inherited her mother’s hands, but the hands she looked at now were neither hers nor her mother’s. Still, they were strong, young hands.

  She raised them to explore her face. Predictably, her face was also transformed. In place of her straight, unobtrusive nose, she found a more prominent one. Her lips were similar—full, soft, and curved. Her eyes were still big and open, and Lena longed to know what color they were. Her hair, now black, hung like Sitting Bear’s, long and braided to her waist, ending just above her exposed buttocks. She too was dressed for the scorching temperatures of the desert in a loincloth; her breasts were tied up loosely with a woven cloth reminiscent of a modern day scarf.

  Witnessing such pronounced change in herself and in Sitting Bear, Lena now struggled against her desire to examine Paolo. She was certain he must have also changed, but preserving this amazing connection was more important than her curiosity. She resisted the urge to turn around, continuing to look forward instead.

  Sitting Bear increased the pace, and Lena and Paolo followed. In these more skilled bodies, they could move faster and more ably, skirting the obstructive brush. They walked faster and faster still around the pyramid. And when they were about to complete one full counter-clockwise circuit around it, Lena reached out her hand to skim its wall, just as she’d seen Asara do many times in her visions.

  Using the tips of the three longest fingers of her left hand, she trailed the surface tenderly, gingerly. She let the love she felt in her heart pass through her fingers into the ancient stone.

  What happened next occurred in the flash of an instant. Everything in Lena’s vision started to move so quickly that all she could make out were colors that bled together in a blur of streaming motion.

  The green of plant life, the red and orange of the rocks, and the blue of the sky streaked by her until they sped up so much that they transformed into the colors of other worlds. They became the black of the midnight sky, the purple of galaxies, and the glowing white of stars that rushed by Lena as if they carried the strength of a hurricane.

  Before long, Lena feared the force of the blurring colors might actually lift her away. She stopped walking all together and turned to face the pyramid. She let her hand that had before only skimmed the wall now grip it to the left of one of the pyramid’s corners. She clutched the wall to the right of the edge with her other hand. She reclined her body flat against the right side wall.

  With her face pressed against the stone surface, Lena saw Sitting Bear discontinue his progress to also flatten himself against the pyramid. Lena attempted to connect to Paolo, but there was too much going on around her that impeded her ability to focus. It was as if she were standing on a precipice with a dizzying and intense wind whipping around her, toying with her, threatening to take her with it at any moment. Even though Paolo was only a body’s length behind her, he felt miles away, and Lena couldn’t reach him.

  She pried her head away from the stone to look over her right shoulder. The dizzying colors continued to whip by. Lena could see only stripes of black, purple, and white encircling them, all with the sensation of infinite expansion and space. Somehow she was connecting to the greater universe, to the larger consciousness of everything and all. She intuitively knew this. She could feel this expansion coursing through every bit of her being. She became aware of it only after her instinct for survival forcibly pulled her away from any distraction.
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  In the precise moment she came to this realization, when she felt how closely tied she was to everything that pulsed and contributed its energy to the universal whole, the world that had been rushing by her suddenly stilled, as if it had never been in motion at all. The abrupt silence and stillness in the air was so thick that it was palpable, dense and light at once.

  The entire universe spread out before her in the infinite void of sound and movement that could only be associated with outer space. Everything was boundless, eternal, and unaffected by the trivial happenings of humanity. Here everything was grander, more important, simpler, and truer. There was a simultaneous sense of nothingness and fullness.

  Lena became cognizant of her immortal vastness—she was a part of every single thing that had ever lived and that ever would—and of her comparative smallness—she was a mere speck in an eternal universe. Lena kept her senses alert to ensure she could take in all the richness Great Spirit was gifting her.

  It was an astonishingly beautiful place, one that Lena had never seen while in her body. But she’d witnessed it once before through Asara’s consciousness. In one of the first visions Lena had of Asara’s time, Lena shared in Asara’s experience. Lena had seen this same infinite universal vastness open up behind Asara’s closed eyes. Asara had reacted with a similar feeling of connectedness to the limitless whole.

  Lena chanced a look at Paolo, her eternal beloved, the man who incarnated over and again to share in sacred, destined love with her. They were the twins of prophecy then, and also now. Deep within them, the knowledge necessary to work with the pyramids slept. It was time for it to awaken. It had just been stirred from a deep slumber, beginning to remember its long-forgotten power.

  As he so often did, Paolo took Lena’s breath away. He had transformed just as she and Sitting Bear had. He was again her twin. He was the divine masculine to her divine feminine counterpart, just as he always was.

  Lena recognized the longer, more conspicuous nose she’d touched on her own face, the still curvaceous, full lips, and the big, round eyes. Paolo’s body was strong and limber, agile with long muscles, adapted to a life in harmony with the earth’s cycles. A loincloth similar to hers clothed him in front and moccasins protected his feet. His hair and skin color were the same as hers. His jet black, braided hair hung limply to his waist in the aftermath of the rushing activity that ceased so suddenly.

  He turned his head to meet her gaze, and Lena’s face grew slack in astonishment. Coarse turquoise earrings framed his face, just as they did Sitting Bear’s, but the effect with Paolo was startling. The contrasting turquoise, dark skin, and bright yellow eyes all played off each other, making Paolo the most stunning creature Lena had ever seen.

  Just then, Paolo smiled at her with all the love he held for her within his heart. This love traversed centuries, incarnations, and time lines. This love was constant, strong, and long lasting. It was a thing of magic and divinity, intricately tied to their destinies. Paolo was the only one for her—no matter what shell housed his soul in the moment.

  Lena smiled into eyes that were mirrors to her own. She held the gaze of an amber-eyed lion. She held it steady. Within those eyes, she saw a power capable of transforming the world.

  And with this, Lena saw the last of all she was meant to see then. The illusion vanished around them just as suddenly as it had appeared. The sights of a different time dissolved as if they’d been illusions projected on mist, disappearing slowly but steadily, until a single breath dissolved what remained of the clouds, and they simply floated away.

  As their view to another world retreated, Lena, Paolo, and Sitting Bear crumpled to the ground. Their backs leaned against the pyramid wall. It wasn’t exhaustion that brought them to their seats, but stunned amazement. They were speechless for a very long time. The only thing that seemed to move around them was the sun. It continued its travels across the sky while they sat limply, entrusting the pyramid and the earth with the entire weight of their bodies and their destinies.

  Chapter 20

  When they were finally able to speak again, the sun had already passed through its highest point in the sky and was creeping in gradual descent back toward the horizon. They sat in silence for a very long time. Even so, they managed to process very little of what had happened.

  Of the three of them, Lena was the one with a history of frequent life-like visions, but even she’d never experienced anything like this before. After hours of silent reflection, she was still unsure what to make of it all.

  Similarly, Paolo had no framework with which to analyze the transformation the pyramid led them through. He’d seen a few visions before, but they were more abstract than what Lena saw and did nothing to prepare him for this morning’s events.

  Sitting Bear felt even more bewildered. He’d received abundant guidance from Great Spirit throughout his life, but vision was not a gift he’d developed. He now reeled at the potential he’d denied himself. An exhaustive exposure to the traditions and teachings of his elders would have afforded him a better understanding of the power he could access while in his body. But all that Sitting Bear accomplished he either taught himself or learned from his father.

  For all Sitting Bear admired his father, he’d been just one man. It took the full range of talents and the wisdom of a tribe to raise a well-rounded child, fully aware of himself in all aspects. For the umpteenth time, Sitting Bear regretted what had become of his people. But on this occasion, he followed this sorrow with something new.

  The transformation at the pyramid, a vivid reminder of humanity’s true capacity, allowed Sitting Bear to hold hope for a miracle. Then, he released his wish to the air, so that it may go where it belonged. Sitting Bear prayed that humans might once again be in harmony with all creation.

  Lena detected Sitting Bear’s quiet prayer go out into the stillness that enveloped them. While she didn’t know his prayer’s specific request, she could feel its energy, and she knew it to be honorable. To affirm Sitting Bear’s entreaty and to add her support to it, she said aloud, “Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.”

  Sitting Bear still hadn’t said which tribe he descended from, but these were all the native affirmations Victor taught her while training at Marian’s complex. Lena hoped one of them would help Sitting Bear feel supported and respected.

  Sitting Bear’s head snapped up in surprise. He didn’t say a word, but only nodded at Lena. He did feel respected and moved by the beauty of life, and that brought the first tears of his adult life to his eyes.

  Later that night around the fire, the three of them attempted to discuss the other world they had glimpsed, but made little headway. Finally, they decided some things were better left untouched by words.

  However, there was one thing they did need to discuss, one that didn’t have as much to do with what world they entered as with who they became in it.

  “I was Thunder Gods, and you were my younger twin brother and sister,” Sitting Bear said in his usual straight-to-the-point manner.

  Even though Sitting Bear’s statement was succinct, Lena and Paolo knew what it meant. Sitting Bear carried the knowledge he gained during his life as Thunder Gods within his soul. It was no coincidence that Sitting Bear had been drawn to Lena and Paolo at this time. They’d been linked to one another before.

  These circumstances implied that, somewhere within Sitting Bear, information about Lena and Paolo’s lives as his twin sister and brother was stored.

  “Do you know what our names were?” Lena asked.

  Sitting Bear nodded. Even this gesture was concise and to the point.

  “You were Sky Elk,” he said while pointing his head in Lena’s direction, “and you were Swift Horse.” He gestured toward Paolo.

  “Did you already know that you were Thunder Gods?” Paolo asked.

  Sitting Bear shook his head no. “My father didn’t tell me how closely related I was to Thunder Gods. I don’t know whether he knew or not. At least now I know.

  “I am a direct
descendant of Thunder Gods. I carry his blood within the blood of this shell.” He pounded his flat palm against his chest.

  “I also carry his soul within this vessel. His soul is my soul.”

  Then Sitting Bear trailed off to stare into the fire. He’d received this information from a deep knowing, one he’d long ago learned not to question. To him, this was fact. It also implied that he had an important destiny to fulfill this time around as well. It was a life-changing realization, and he allowed its impact to find a place within him.

  Lena was trying very hard to be patient. She wanted to respect Sitting Bear’s process. She could see this knowledge was meaningful to him. But after watching Sitting Bear stare at the flickering flames for several beats, Lena had to ask the question that was forefront on her mind.

  “Were Sky Elk and Swift Horse lovers?”

  Sitting Bear, already focused somewhere else, answered Lena’s question distractedly. “Hmmmmm. Yes.”

  Lena and Paolo exchanged concerned glances. Lena knew that in many cultures, especially ancient ones, the idea of incest was a foreign one. Some cultures embraced and even encouraged the joining of blood brother and sister as husband and wife. But in the contemporary culture Lena and Paolo lived in, this wasn’t the case, and the idea of potential incest, even in another time line, made them both uncomfortable.

  Sitting Bear noticed the twins’ energy shift, and he reeled in his distracted thoughts. When he realized their concerns, he smiled at them gently.

  “You weren’t born of the same blood, although you were raised as brother and sister. Swift Horse was my blood brother, but our parents took in Sky Elk and raised her as their own when illness claimed her parents but took no one else. The tribe questioned whether Sky Elk was cursed or blessed when the gods spared her from the sickness. Sky Elk was born on the same day as Swift Horse, and their yellow eyes were identical. Our parents took both those coincidences as a sign from the gods. They adopted her when she was still very young.