The Mediator (Part 4)
Metanoia - Chapter 1 - Life Path 2
Character Chart: A Map to the Nine Lives
In honor of my success and the affluence I was able to bring to the community, the village worked together with a few outside sources to build me a beautiful home on the most scenic location on the island. I turned down the offer, but was met with resistance. It had extra rooms, which I frequently housed Aunt Trenia and Mentor Esme in, not wanting them to be alone or neglected in their old age. It was the time of my journey when I had everything in one place, complete.
I frequently received letters from artists, aspiring creators, and even just regular people who saw the painting in the capitol. I valued every single one. It seemed others were much better at interpreting my work than I was. With each passing month, the letters were enough to add another dimension to my perception of the piece. To be an artist is to live your truth. To have others reach out to you in response to your creation unveils a corridor to an infinite number of entryways that lead to this truth.
One of my favorite things to do post-fame was raising the village children with Caelum. Our home quickly became a revolving door. I would take some of them on my expeditions, or teach them how to bead occasionally. Not every child found it appealing, but I could feel my environment quickly becoming a safe haven of love and expression for those who sought after what I was all about. This caused something peculiar to happen. The exchange seemed to amplify. What I gave to them was reverberated and returned in my direction, feeding what I was able to provide even further. The experience was both mysterious and fulfilling, going deeper than I thought gratitude could go.
I was the sensitive influence, Caelum was of strength. Not physical strength, but the kind of strength that comes from wisdom. They trusted him, wanted to go where he went and do what he did. At first I thought they were simply awe struck and attached, but as time went on, I was able to see striking developments within the children as a result of his influence. There was a sense that everything was going to be okay in their eyes. Fear diminished and trust in life was fortified, all forgiven.
A few years went by like this, in a state of bliss. It did not feel like years. It was measured from moment to moment rather than day to day, and some moments dragged on while others came and went before being able to acknowledge them. Life simply happened.
It’s strange how my own mortality was never truly felt until the day came that I had to confront it head on. You would think with all the work I did, I would have put some thought into how it was going to be to lose it all, how it would all dissolve, returning to a state that existed before we came to be.
During the moment-to-moment existence my life evolved into, I felt as though we were going to live forever somehow. These moments of when I found Caelum and Luna, when I had meals with Rahn, when Aunt Trenia and I grew closer, when I was creating, when I sat beside Caelum, intertwined with him on a lazy afternoon, they were moments of eternity invisibly tucked into a finite lattice. It was the simple nature of love and faith that allowed me to be too naive to comprehend how hard it could be to see it all end. The feeling that I was adrift, moving in and out with the tide without a care or worry was an illusion. It distracted me from the truth that I lived inside a meat cage with a ticking clock, from the waves that would eventually come crashing down on me to take me away.
The plague took the elderly first. Aunt Trenia and Mentor Esme left my abode and entered critical care, eventually passing away within a week of one another. It was only a matter of time, and not only did I have to handle my own mortality, but those of everyone who mattered to me. For the first time in my life, I was completely, and utterly blind. The horizon in front of me ceased to appear like it once did, all while the posterior view continued to dissipate. The darkness finally caught up to me, enveloped me, and Caelum became my lantern as the world we built around us began to crumble.
We were all afraid, stricken with the grim nature of our circumstance, trying to come to terms with the inevitability of it all. You could see it in our eyes, heavy from the internal weight we carried.
We had all been exposed to the disease, so there wasn’t a need to isolate ourselves from one another. After learning about the illness and how it is contracted, it was clear that we were all going to succumb to the same fate as Aunt Trenia and Mentor Esme unless some miraculous immunity was bestowed upon us.
Even though it was soul crushing to have to cope with the magnitude of our conclusion, we were also grateful to be going into the unknown together. It seemed as though our lives were on completely different trajectories, completely different paths and purposes until now. Our destiny had all met and come to the same exact time and place. We carried one another.
Luna was the first to show signs of the illness. They took us all into isolation where we were carefully observed, poked and prodded with instruments. Thankfully, they had the space to keep us in the same vicinity. I didn’t like seeing her dainty warmth being tried and tested. But I also saw her true self shining through, very determined to face fate with grace.
When Luna became terminal, we were only beginning to get sick. I sat with her for most of her last days, but had to look away whenever they gave her injections.
She liked having her hair stroked, and would open up to me when I did. She told me even more about where she was from, how she wasn’t lucky enough to be born in a nonviolent place like Elpis, and the abuse she went through before getting herself out of the situation. I could see the catharsis in her confession. Something that caused her pain was coming to a close during her last days, and she used me to tie up the loose ends, to feel better about leaving the life she made for herself.
When she did pass, I was not with her. Caelum came to me with the news. It took the breath out of me. It truly was the end.
I sensed my body deteriorating rapidly, falling into the abyss, calmly giving into my biology. Caelum had been ill much longer than I had, still talking and being his usual self despite being bedridden. I rolled the strange apparatus that seemed to be keeping me alive for the moment to where he was and laid down next to him. The tips of his fingers were black, and sweat poured down his face.
“Hey” he said when he felt my body.
He placed his arm around me, this time not letting me go anywhere or letting me move.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel anything. I only breathed.
“Do you believe your painting is real, that your work is real?” He asked.
I didn’t know how to respond to this.
“I think it comes from a place that is real.” I said earnestly.
“But is that how you believe things are? Beyond this?”
“I think I do. . . But I also don’t know if I can be sure of anything anymore.” I confessed.
Healthy Áurea would have said yes, absolutely. Healthy Áurea wasn’t polluted with the pain of immortality. She was her true self, which believed that there are miraculous things in this world that can be felt with the heart, and they can be just as real as what the mind perceives. What she felt was that life was eternal somehow in ways she did not know, that life was simply a change of state.
“You should believe in it.” was the last thing he said.
So I tried. I tried to believe in it when blood began to descend from his mouth and eyes. I tried to believe in it as his body convulsed, and when Rahn came out of nowhere to rip me away from him.
I saw the galaxies, the atmosphere, our souls drifting in essence, all while horror beamed out of my face and I screamed, letting out a sound I didn’t know I could make. The lantern had gone out.
Love is not extraordinary for simply having it in ones direct grasp. It goes beyond possession, and thank God it does. Being in a world that is born to die, there would be moments completely devoid of love if it were only meant to be possessed. The significance of love is often what emerges from it, what it stirs inside that comes into view and manifests. This sentiment carried me in the last moments.
And yet, even knowing that eternity exists in some form that is unclear, I cannot deny that a component of my fragile essence broke when I saw the lifeless body. It turned out that this piece happened to be the part that made me who I was in that life. Its loss gave me permission to cease.
Transition from life to death is chaos to solace. Once in the stillness, I drifted into a memory. I felt his lips brush up against the back of my neck as I drifted off to sleep.
“Goodnight” he says.
Travel well.
"To be an artist is to live your truth. To have others reach out to you in response to your creation unveils a corridor to an infinite number of entryways that lead to this truth." - I love that.