It is time for another piece from our Invite to Write Challenge! We asked our writers to craft a story, telling us about their fantasy world. Stay tuned throughout the fall to continue reading the amazing work. The one below is by Jessica Rijken!
What Happened to the Heart?
She woke up, drenched in cold sweat, her chest heaving heavily, tears streaming down her face like little rivers trying desperately to reunite with the open ocean. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Everything is fine. I’m fine. It was just a nightmare. That place, it’s not real. It couldn’t possibly be real, right? Right?” She thought that if she said it out loud, it would help calm her down, instead, thoughts about a possible multiverse and musings on simulation theory started to intrude her already perturbed mind. “Great, more unrest. Just what the Doctor ordered” Shaking off the sarcasm, she wrapped her arms around her body, to try and soothe herself, and suddenly she remembered that she had always excelled at overthinking and overanalyzing, unfortunately so. Her favorite teacher had said that her analytical thinking was her greatest strength, but conversely, it was also her greatest weakness. But, could it be? Could the world she had encountered in her nightmare be part of some alternate universe or divergent timeline? Was it another dimension, some supernal realm? Or could it possibly have been another layer of reality, some other part of the greater simulation? Perhaps it was another stream of consciousness inside the mind of God? Could it be, in some way, real? Had she entered
some smaller part of a much bigger reality than the one she experienced in her daily waking life? Some tiny fraction of the Infinite? “Oh! What a dreadful thought!” she exclaimed, a tad too loudly, her voice echoing through her bedroom. It was a thought that she would rather not entertain for too long, but her overactive mind and rather vivid imagination had always gotten the better of her, and this occasion proved to be no exception to the rule.
The nightmarish world she had encountered was on the brink of destroying its organic lifeforms, and in its stead, the artificial, the synthetic, the digital, the robotic, the mechanical was on the verge of taking over all, assimilating everyone and everything in sight. Ecosystems were collapsing, tipping over like dominoes, and she wasn’t sure if they were close to, or had already reached the point of no return. The light on this planet was rapidly dimming, fading into black, and people’s hearts were hardening, more and more, each and every day. Such a loveless and spiritually desolate place this had been. It hurt her soft heart just to think about it all. Such unimaginable heartlessness and terrible cruelty, and an all-pervasive atmosphere of abhorrent disdain for life and anything resembling truth, beauty, goodness, it all seemed to have been normalized there. The thought of it being any manner of real, well, it sent shivers down her spine, and not the good, exciting kind. Sure, the world she lives in, it is by no means perfect, but at least here, in her reality, people are in touch with their soul and with the soul of the world. People here live from the center of their being, from their essence, from their heart. At least here, they know that the essence of the divine permeates every fiber of existence and that everyone and everything is, in some way, connected. There is a deep reverence for the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things, and this inherent relationality is considered sacred by most.
On this planet, it is well known, what affects one, affects all, that none are exempt from the ripples of cause and effect that echo through time and space, and here, every effort is made to live in accordance with that hallowed knowledge. Heart centered wisdom traditions had been held in high regard in her family, and thankfully, in the broader society, for as long as she could remember. Her parents had given her the name Sophia Perennis, and they had hoped that it would instill a love of many different kinds of wisdom in her. Whether or not the, somewhat pompous and pretentious, name had had anything to do with it, she didn’t know, but she had most certainly been the sort of girl who had been innately interested in knowledge, and had been drawn, like a moth to a flame, to its transcendent, Wisdom. Despite her profound love of Wisdom, she would never consider herself to be any type or variety of wise, because that, she self amusedly mused, would probably be very unwise of her. There was an almost strange tension and paradoxical quality to her love of all things knowing and knowledge, that somehow or other combined with her ravenous interest in metaphysics, which by its very nature, or so she thought, was ultimately unknowable. And perhaps, there was a unique kind of wisdom in foolishness, and maybe the fool was just another kind of sage, she bemusedly mused.
Experience had taught her, that many things in life seem counterintuitive, at a first cursory glance anyway. However, tiringly so, she had never been the kind to be satisfied by staying at the surface of things, though diving deep, often head first, eyes closed, had also gotten her into a lot of trouble. Her primary school teacher had once described her as “voraciously avaricious for knowledge, foolishly stumbling over her overabundance of thoughts, yet somehow, miraculously, failing upward into a sort of quaint insanity that sporadically bordered on genius. Strong emphasis on sporadically.” She wasn’t quite sure if it had been a compliment or an insult, either way, the memory always made her chuckle.
She had always been considered a little more than somewhat strange and unusual, more than a bit different, an acquired quirky taste, so to speak. Luckily, the people in her reality embraced the wisdom of diversity in unity. They knew and appreciated that there were many different parts to an ecosystem and they each had their own function within the system, and each and every part had their own inherent worth, even if, at first, it may not seem that way at all. The world she had seen in her nightmare had preferred, even elevated, conformity and homogeneity, to such a degree that it seemed like they considered it the ultimate goal. Cookie-cutter people and one size fits all solutions, were the norm, protocols and productivity were their gods. Anything and everything that was in any
way, shape or form, different, was seen as bad, evil even, and something to be squashed, something to be excised or snuffed out of existence. She shuddered at the thought of growing up and living in a world like that, wondering how deeply traumatizing that very likely would have been for her. Would she have been diagnosed with some sort of disorder or disease? Would people have thought that she was a different kind of human? Or some odd, otherworldly creature, an entity from another planet perhaps? She could only imagine how different life would have been for her.
Domination and submission were the way of life there. People would trample on each other to get ahead. It was a world of either/or. You were either dominant or submissive, you were either a winner, or a loser. And you always had to do as you were told, even if your heart told you that it was the wrong thing for you to do. They had somehow, erroneously, come to the belief that the heart was deceitful, a deceptive liar, not to be listened to, and under no circumstances to be trusted. They believed the heart could only ever lead you astray. No wonder that world had become so heartless and lifeless, she thought. They saw the heart as merely a muscle, merely an organ that pumped blood through their veins, not as the seat of the soul, nor as the access point to the underlying structure of
the Universe, or that which in her world, is often referred to as the ocean of Loving Awareness. As she found herself completely lost in her thoughts of that other world, slowly but surely, drifting away from her center, she couldn’t help but wonder, what happened to the heart?
In that very moment, a radiant warmth started emanating from her chest. With the eye of her mind, she could see a green orb of bright light, right where her heart was beating in her chest. While mesmerized by the rhythm of her strong and steady heartbeat, a still, small voice spoke to her; “Sophia, come home. Come home to me, my beloved”. In response to her heart’s calling, she started singing; “Let Love conquer your mind, warrior, warrior. Just reach out for the Light, warrior, warrior. Warrior of Love” The green orb started to expand exponentially, filling the entire room and far beyond. With each and every breath she took, the orb expanded, and expanded, and expanded, until she could no longer feel its edges, its boundaries. “Oh, my heart, you are so full. You overflow with
loving kindness” she said, before breathing out. Overwhelmed by love, she felt the overflowing, outpouring, loving energy slowly release from her being. With the piercing howl of a wolf and the rumbling roar of a lion, she intentionally released the green orb of energy into the aether, all the
while hoping and praying, praying and hoping, it would find its way to the world that she had just visited in her sleep. Just in case. Just in case it was actually real or something of the sort. Maybe, just maybe, she thought, if enough lovingkindness reached the hearts of the people of that world in time, they could still turn things around somehow. While breathing a deep sigh of release and relief, she put both of her hands on her warm chest and softly, gently, compassionately uttered “Welcome home, Sophia. I love you. You are loved. You are love itself.”
Footnotes
- What Happened to the Heart? is the fifth studio album by Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Aurora.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Happened_to_the_Heart%3F - A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) is the third studio album by Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Aurora
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Kind_of_Human_(Step_2) - “Let Love conquer your mind, warrior, warrior. Just reach out for the Light, warrior, warrior. Warrior of Love”; lyrics used with permission, from “Warrior” the ninth single released by AURORA and the sixth single from All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend.
https://genius.com/Aurora-warrior-lyrics
