"I will book a ride share. We need to get to the herbal shop." Twilight says. I shrug.
"What will we get from there?" I look up at him in confusion.
"Ms. Dean has a book in her office that helps you find the master code cheat sheet of the stars. Do you know how to read the stars?" I shake my head.
"Nope."
"It's fine I'll find our original world's star code and maybe I can put things back in the order we are used to." I bite my lower lip. I really don't want to go back to the way things were. I just want to change the trajectory of where we are heading. Should I run away from Twilight? That could give me more time to steer our future to a world I'm more happy with that feels like home. I cup my chin with my finger and look down.
"What are you thinking?" He asks. I shake my head and shrug.
"Nothing much." I nervously chuckle.
Our ride appears. I fully expected a highly intoxicated person to pick us up since that is how the people around us are acting. Shockingly, it is a very alert brown skin old man and what appears to be his adult son in the back seat. Twilight hops in the front seat and I sit in the back. I go to buckle my seat belt and the man shoots out of the strange zombie infested suburban neighborhood before I can fasten the belt.
Him and his son have soft wavy curls. His is just grey and thinner than his son's hair. "How did you all get over there? I thought everyone has been listening to the news channels. Didn't you hear? This is one of the areas to avoid because of the drug crisis has spread to most areas all over the country." The old man says.
Twilight looks out his window stoically. "Wow! I didn't know that." I say. The driver's son nods his head. "Yeah, most normal people live in safe zones in the city. Actually, your destination is in one of the safe zones." The driver's son says. My jaw drops momentarily. I don't want to go in a safe zone. I don't need guards and surveillance drones watching my every move. As I said in another dimension, I don't do leashes and or cages. That's like an open air prison with no way to get privacy. I need to get away.
"Stop the car!" I yell. The old man looks at me through the rear view mirror. "I can't. We're stuck in traffic on a highway." He says to me. I can't do this. I can't go there. I want to stay free!
"Where are you from? You don't look native to these lands. Me and my father are from Ethiopia. I'm Trevor by the way." Trevor says to me. I nod.
"I was born in the states. My parents are of Caribbean descent. My dad was from South America and my mother is from Bahamas." He nods.
"That's interesting. Very interesting. What do you think about the people on Earth?" Twilight cocks a brow and looks at me in the side mirror of the car. He shakes his head and I roll my eyes. It's not that big of a deal if I tell this stranger some of my story. It's not like I'll see any of them again. Twilight is trying to act like my dad. That's so annoying. I only had one father in this life and it was hard losing him so early in life. Plus, Twilight interrupted me mourning my dad's death. He's definitely in no position to tell me what to do.
"I don't know about the people on Earth as a whole but... Most of the people I've met are not like me. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing. I feel like there's hope for people to align with the nature of the planet they live on, but I'm too exhausted from their internal battles to want to see them eventually evolve for the better. I do think with less governance things will get better for all living beings on Earth. I just think it's time I go back to my first husband and pay off the debts I owe him." My throat tightens and I take a deep breath.
Twilight sighs and clears his throat. "I think that's enough talking for thi-" Twilight gets interrupted by the driver. "What debts do you owe him?" The driver asks. "He gave me some of his blood. He let me have a piece of his heart. It's always been hard for me to find a group or place I felt that I belonged. After my father died, I was shunned by all my family members but my mother. My classmates made fun of me at the time because I no longer had a father who picked me up from school or spent time with me at the park. It was a lot." I say.
Then I silently cry into the upper part of my green dress. Trevor rubs my back. "It's ok to be misunderstood. One day you'll find a group where you belong. Maybe you'll find someone who will erase that odd loneliness you feel inside."
"My first husband husband told me we should aim for all that we want but- I-I didn't want to tell him that when I was a child and I achieved trophies or upgrades... I was told by everyone around me at that time: that I shouldn't be proud or aim to be great. A lot of my adult family members, excluding my mom, wished death on me or wished I'd runaway and end up a homeless orphan." I say between sobs. Twilight rolls his eyes.
"Oh my- You're lying to get them to feel sorry for you and give you attention. Ash, what adult in their right mind would say that to a child?" Twilight says and taps his finger on the door.
"They did say it to me and anyone else around that would listen to their mean words. Look at your insensitive reaction to what I'm saying. It's that sort of behavior that makes me think if people hate me and want me dead so bad then I don't need to be on this planet anymore. As I said before, people can help themselves get better and they sure don't need my help to do it." I say and wipe my wet face with my dress.
"You're a mage. Your job is t-" The driver interrupts Twilight again. "Doesn't your husband and children love you? If the people on this planet hate you, wouldn't they hate them too?" I nod.
"Yes, that's why I refuse to have or give birth to any children on this planet. That's why I tell my first husband we'll exist in his galaxy on his Sun as a family." I shrug again. Twilight reaches for the wheel and a strong force presses him to the door. I look at Trevor and his eyes glow red. Then I look at his father in the rear view mirror. His eyes are red too. The traffic around us disappears and I grab the door handle. Darn it! It's locked.
The surroundings around me blur until I find myself sitting beside my pale blue husband on a grey couch. I look around us in confusion. The huge rectangular windows around us has warm sunlight flooding through them. The light is so bright you cannot see the details of what is outside the windows. I look back at my husband. His eyes are still glowing red while he looks at his lap with narrowing eyes. I touch his hand and he pulls it away from me and looks at Twilight in reaper garb. Twilight clicks his pen nervously on his writing pad. "You said my wife will reveal how much she wants Earth to return to how it was when the reptilians, androids, and greys oversaw it. That's not what she said. You were trying force that decision on her. You were-" My husband says and grips his white pants.
"I was trying get back home. She may not have been comfortable there but I was." Twilight says and sighs.
"There is no home for you to get back to. I split up the dimensions." Twilight shrugs and speeds up clicking the button on the pen.
"Then send me where you sent Ms. Dean and the other magicians." My husband laughs.
"You want to go into a dimension I locked away. Where you will become your Mother's possession like everyone else there? Since you have the power to travel between worlds, you are dangerous to my progress on maintaining the separation of dimensions. Maybe you need a little help forgetting what you won't ever see again?"
My husband claps his hands and shoot his hands up above his head. He lunges at Twilight and press two of his fingers to each side of Twilight's head. Twilight eyes roll in their sockets with only the whites of them showing. Twilight transforms into a silvery white dog. He barks and my husband pets his head. "The only thing that will make you happy is seeing your master with his wife. I will have you keep an eye on Ash and you are to report all of her moves to me." Aldebaran says. I gasp. "Really? I don't need surveillance." I say.
"You do need surveillance and protection. The reptilianoids don't want to see you in our war against each other. From your actions in another dimension, they think you are unstable and you being on the battlefield would give our side an unfair advantage."
"What did I do that was so bad?" I throw my hands up and shrug.
"You can read about it in the study in your book later. I've seen them try to sneak attack you in other dimensions so Twilight and two other guards will keep them away from you. You need guards not only to protect you from malicious forces outside of you but from your self destruction as well."
"I don't know what you're talking about." I say and laugh nervously.
"This is just until this war is over. Through my observations, I see that you attack yourself in an effort to escape when you feel your freedom is gone." I stand up and step back.
"What?" I ask looking at him but feeling so far away from him. If you jump from a cliff because you have no where else to run and an enemy is chasing you, is that viewed as attacking yourself? He pulls me close to him and cups my cheek.
"In my eyes, yes that is attacking yourself. You don't understand what I see diving off the cliff. You don't understand how much you mean to me. I love you immensely. I can't stand by and watch you give up your life or existences like it means nothing because it means everything to me." His eyes turn magenta and for a second my breath gets caught in my throat.
The light around us grows so bright and the glass breaks. I shut my eyes. When I open them again I find my finger and my husband's finger bleeding in a white room. The fingers are dripping into a opening of a arrow shaped quartz crystal. The cracks in the crystal widen as our blood dances around each other in the crystal. It spins so fast heat steams out of the crystal until it fully breaks. It drips down into the air before us becoming a sun. Then it divides into multiple orange suns of varying brightness. "Wow! I didn't know the mixing of our blood would make multiple suns." I say and look at him. He shrugs and touches our bleeding fingers together. Our fingers heal.
"We need to visit some of my people that survived. I want them to see who my wife is." Aldebaran says. I nod feeling a bit groggy from all that has happened so far. Spiritually, we shoot up beyond the Earthly atmosphere. A water geyser surrounds our twirling beams and lifts us higher. Beyond Earth we pass through the center of the waterfall that the four realms I have seen before sit around. We go all the way to a upper realm filled with white haired giants and big winged humanoid bird people. Everything and everyone are so big up here.
Huge clouds float around the roots of mountainous trees that climb to heights that are beyond sight. We reach a waterfall that has giant rivers beyond comprehension. We grow taller and walk to the edge of the water. A few winged silver haired giants come to greet my husband. My green arms shift into a green set of feathered wings.
"Has her soul been tempered enough to have mighty children?" The dude reaching his hand out to Aldebaran says telepathically. My husband must have shared his thought with me.
"Yes, I did." Aldebaran says to me. "Yes, she has a strong soul." Aldebaran says to them. I look up at the giant males around. All their eyes look like the twinkling stars in the night sky. They have no pupils or irises just shining lights of different hues.
My husband takes his hand and finishes lifting us out of the water. I look back and see a dome that is mostly blue. Green and brown specks float among the mostly blue plane. Some sea monsters swim in and out of the bottom of the mostly watery plane. Some of the big fish swim away from it as it begins to sink back down deep into the base of the waterfall. I silently cry even though I do not remember the reason why.
My husband holds me around my waist and lead us to a roofless stone arena. "We have a new addition to the group. Now, we have enough fertility within our ranks to replenish our numbers. This lady gave one of our most powerful warriors a wife! She and another lady we have found from a different dimension will give us new life!" The giant that helped us out of the water says.
"Can I-" I start to say. The giant talking flicks a finger in my direction. An ice block surrounds me. After he finishes his speech and walks off my husband melts the ice. I feel even more tired. My knees buckle and my husband picks me up into his arms. "It's alright we are going home soon." My husband says to me and I nod my head on his chest.
We walk past the giants to the top of a cliff. Aldebaran places me on my feet. My husband's wings shift from black to a tawny brown. Our wings stretch out. We jump off the edge holding hands. We automatically whirl around each until we become an orange plasma ball. Another Sun forms but this one is a portal to my husband's orange flame hallway. Huge closed stone doors sit between two massive cloak wearing statues. They are black and tall. The flames around them reflect off their shiny surface.
My husband continues to hold my hand as we approach the stone double doors. "You're the masterkey. Only you can unlock this door." He says to me. "A master key of what?" I ask with bewilderment sitting on my face. My husband sighs and scratches his head.
"You are the master key to all the domains in my existence. All those suns we made are in every dimension. Even though we didn't purposely seek to make suns... We did! Now, you are the master key to all those dimensions."
"Oh." My eyes widen.
"Yes."
"When are we going to the island where your top generals vacation with their wives?"
"Let's go right now."
I touch the door and it unlocks. It automatically swings open. We walk through onto a grassy lakeside. An estuary connects to the lake. We walk beside the lake all the way to the bottom of another waterfall. The water is green instead of blue this time. Inside the shallow lake, we wade through the water past the front of the waterfall to get to the stone cave behind it. I sit at the edge of the cave with my feet playing in the falling water. "This waterfall is medicinal and it washes away all the impurities your soul gathers from exploring different worlds." Jan'xu says.
My eyes widen as I look at the serene scenery around me. This place is so beautiful and amazing. He kisses my cheek and leads me back through the waterfall. A portal is waiting for us on the other side. We go to it and end up on a golden coast with fine sand and pale blue waves crashing against the shore. People with bathing suits and swim trunks wave their hands at us. I grab my husband's arm and peak at them.
"Oh Asher, don't cower away from us. We've heard a lot about you. I'm sure we'll get along well. Come over here with us ladies while the guys discuss business." A lady lounging on a beach chair with round sunglasses and wavy blonde curls yells. I shrug and let go of my husband's arm. He pulls me back and hugs me. Jan'xu kisses my forehead then we walk to our separate groups. I wonder what this new start will bring.