2024-01-06: Hearth

• Log: 2024-01-06: Hearth
• Cast: Rita Bernal
• Where: ???
• Date: U.C. 0098 01 06
• Summary: Like flowers swaying helplessly, like winds that sweep across the green. What else shall we pursue to live our lives the way we wanted to? Unlike the birds that soar the sky, we have no wings. And though we won’t learn to fly, we stand above the earth now and keep walking on, trusting it all.

---

Hey, I want to know.

Do you believe in Heaven?

I don't know about Heaven, but I do know this.

I'm absolutely sure that souls are real.

This life isn't all there is.

Again and again, we're reborn.

When I'm reborn again, I want to be...

---

Wings spread, aflame, incandescent as the dawn. Resonant, prismatic brilliance blooms around her blazed trail. Speed, such as the Earthsphere has never known, such as no living being could endure.

For it shall be the last, for it shall be the last.

Fae noise marks her coming. Perhaps she will be seen. Perhaps she will be remembered. Hers is a path wild enough to confound even the sharpest observer.

For it shall be the last, for it shall be the last.

Once she dreamed of the cosmos, deep, and safe, and far. But dreams are for those who may sleep, and she left such luxury behind long ago. This endless waking. This selfish sacrifice. To stay free would have taken much more than she had to give.

For it shall be the last, for it shall be the last.

Despite everything, other souls reached for her own. Though she knew better, she reached back in turn. Effervescent threads of light and connection. Burnished truth found in suffering.

For it shall be the last, for it shall be the last.

And why should we part? Why, when our souls have intertwined? Why, when I can offer my all? There is more, yet. To see, to feel, to know.

You, who I awaited.

You, who I was made for.

Every journey has an ending. Especially those we do not expect. Give yourself to me, now, in the end. Take myself to you, now, in the end. Deeper and truer yet, until there is no difference. Until 'I' am you. Until 'you' are I.

We'll always be together. Nothing can ever change that.

---

Skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular.

A body rests in a coffin-like chamber. Its skin is fair, its hair is golden, long, and cloud-like in its waves. It is alive, in all the ways that can be measured, merely sleeping. So much has been given to it. It needs but one thing more.

Spirit.

Gravity weighs her down. Air fills her lungs. Machinery hums. Tactile sensation touches her skin. Everything is foreign, now, her years of intangible glory incompatible with the experience of truly living.

Rita Bernal opens her eyes, and they flash gold.

It will take time to re-learn how to move, how to exist in a physical form. To live will be an awfully big adventure.

Faces of those she loves come into view, and Rita manages a smile, feeling her heart beat faster with joy. Her fingers twitch toward them -- the most she is capable of, for now.

She whispers, barely heard above the celebration:

"...a human being."