Catpaws Cafe

Abridged excerpt from Andino Andina

Abridged excerpt from Andino Andina, a fantasy/speculative fiction novel. Copyright Liz Rosales 2014 & 2021

The sun was low in the sky on this mild winter’s day and made the landscape glow invitingly in watercolours Turner would have begged for.

On the spur of the moment I wondered if I had enough time to walk up to the cave before dusk fell. I decided to risk it and increased my pace.

I hadn’t got far outside of town when instinct slowed me down.
Walking towards me was an extraordinarily graceful woman, her curly silvery hair in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. There was no mistaking her.

“You!” I breathed, causing a plume of steam rather than a real sound. “You!”
‘So you remember. That is good. Hello again!’
The words arrived in my head without passing through my ears, I noticed.
“How could I forget? You held out a tomb of a book to me and I couldn’t reach it, and you got the most amazing eyes I’ve ever seen,” I blurted out. So I got my voice back, my inner critic remarked, but for once I ignored it completely.
“Who are you?”

The woman smiled. She is glowing, luminous like a Goddess… my inner observer registered. I’m seeing and talking to a Goddess… Really? I want to see if she is actually walking – rather than floating – towards me, but I can’t tear my eyes away from her face and those mesmerising eyes.
“Then that wasn’t just a dream then, was it?” I asked feebly.
The proposed Goddess smiled.
“Walk with me.” Her voice was rich and melodious, and pure as crystal, and that description was so inadequate I blushed at my habitual attempt to describe her in my mind for later reference.

“We are very pleased,” the woman continued. “You have done well. Outstanding.”
I said nothing. Part of me is searching for traces of sarcasm in her statement – Goddess or not – and perhaps for the other shoe to drop.
‘Benefit of the doubt,’ I hear the faintest ghost of a whisper. With a stern mental hand I sweep doubts and thoughts out of the way like crumbs off a picnic table, and bring myself to this moment. Just listen.

“We seeded this place half a millennia ago. It has done well developing on this planet where there has been so much darkness. Now the time has come for this knowledge and understanding to spread to the rest of the planet. See what ideas grow forth from it…

“Imagine a flower; first a seed, then roots. Then the leaves, buds and blooms. A seed-ball forms. When the wind blows it helps all those seeds – all with their own ‘parachutes’ – to take flight.”
She halted and swept her hand gracefully through the air where just such a seed-ball in electric blue sparkles appeared. She blew on it gently. All the individual seeds tumbled around like air sprites, delighting in their freedom and weightlessness on a journey to who knows where, carried on invisible thermals.

“The spreading of energetic intent is much the same. Your words will be the seeds of what was once our thoughts, cultivated by these people, on this timeline, over half a millennia as they made it their own.
“Delight in letting seeds take flight and let us all observe where they land. Rejoice in the ones that take root and marvel at how each one will come to be, depending on how or where it has been received, and decided to grow.
“This has been an incubated development, nourished but a little with gentle thoughts of support but with very little interference.
“The initial decision to forego the lust for war and cease to fight amongst themselves was all theirs. That observation peaked our interest for it was highly unusual. It was an interesting twist of events – especially in this part of the galaxy – and we decided to pay closer attention to how this unexpected peace affected the region. If it would allow this area to flourish. How.

“Maybe we assisted a little by distracting one or two who had the makings of a potential warlord by sending a loving maid, a supportive teacher, a validating mentor, a listening ear or a loving grandparent. By encouraging people to look for what else is possible, instead of opting for the old game of subjugation and reacting with violence. Something humanity has been prone to do throughout history.

“Either way, it is an alternative grown out of the people in this region, on this timeline, and as such native to all humans incarnate on this earth. Their understandings are in the collective consciousness and it is possible for anyone who wants to tap into, utilize, and make their own, in whatever way they wish. Humans have forgotten the process of doing that, and their inner technology has – for the most part – become dormant.”

I thought about this. “Let me recap to make sure I’m following. You are saying it is time to bring attention to this home-planet developed option, as a suggestion how to move forward? In the hope that this peaceful ideology catches on with the rest of the world on my timeline, and then sit back and watch what it makes of it?
“Is that what you do? You observe what happens, what worlds make of your seeds; if, where, and when, they develop into something more when fertilized by local minds, watered by natural progression?”
The Goddess nodded once and for a brief moment I felt like a star pupil in primary school.
“Don’t forget we also learn from you,” she smiled. A few remaining seeds drifting around above us brightened like minute supernovas as they continued to tumble through the air, buoyed perhaps in part by my warm breath. The Goddess did not cause any plumes of condensation I noticed.

I wanted to believe that even in our material world, something like this – at this point in time – could tantalize and enchant those with proverbial ‘eyes to see’ to join in and follow the blue sparkles. To dance with infinite possibilities as described by quantum physics. Infinite possibilities…

I noticed I was observing the thoughts of another collective. I could somehow see it all at the same time: the familiar gravel path crunching under my boots as we walked; with a visual overlay – mercurial gauze on a misty morning – as if screened by an invisible projector.
I had no idea my operating system was capable of handling and processing so much simultaneous input all at once, without chaos within the senses ensuing.

Had the time finally arrived to walk away from our old way of living and make way for a new way of being? A hint of excitement stirred somewhere – Would I actually get to see it – in my lifetime?
In reply to my unvoiced questions, in my mind’s eye I was already viewing something. Hundreds – then thousands – of men and a few women, on every side of conflicts, laying down their weapons and walking away instead of fighting for another man’s cause. No more state sanctioned mass murders.

I winced as confused and irate sleepers gunned down others for refusing to kill in the name of peace. Volunteers giving their lives so that others could wake up. Spirits welcoming and embracing each other as they passed over, watching and waiting for the tipping point to be reached.
The spell of lack of patriotism and threats of court-marshalling had lost their hold.
I witnessed a world wake up to the insanity of executing another for refusing to kill on command; an event known later as the Freedom Wave. Watched those previously in charge suddenly run to catch up with their former underlings. Now they were all just people returning home.

A peaceful tsunami swept over planet Earth. Like any tidal wave it claimed it’s share of sacrifice. Hundreds, then thousands of twinkling lights drifted upwards, one for each and everyone on all sides who relinquished their lives and bodies.
Though the siren was silent it was still heard. The war games had come to an end.

I felt the world tremble in horror over the barbaric ways humans over the centuries have sought to inflict pain on others and exterminate both each other and other living beings.
Everywhere, startled humans rubbed proverbial sleep out of their eyes. It was like the world was waking up from a bad dream; the emotional fog swirling as your conscious brain fumbles for bearings. The body stumbles to the bathroom or into the kitchen in search of coffee. All the while thinking ‘Gosh, did that really happen? That’s crazy! We must have been sleepwalking! I’m so grateful I’m awake now…’

A slow dawning of the realisation that we, as a species, have not questioned ourselves and our actions enough for a very long time. Especially when the eyes of the world looked the other way. Allowed ourselves to be hypnotized and herded mentally like pawns in someone else’s game.
To think of ourselves as disposable, when nothing could be further from the truth.
And in that moment of fundamental knowing of who we really are – divine eternal beings having an earthly adventure – we allowed the horrors of the past to be gently swept away by angelic helpers.
Love had prevailed, conquered all. Light had dispelled darkness with it’s presence and it was here to stay. There is no dark-switch…

The imagery faded and I was just me again, on a habitual lookout to not twist an ankle.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “The part I never understood was why anyone would just blindly follow? They must have so many lives where their spirit was broken.”

“It has been easier to let others decide for you than to take responsibility for yourself, for your thoughts and actions. Knowing why you do the things you do will be imperative very soon.
“When large numbers of people fail to pay attention, the power dynamics become unbalanced. Allow that to remind you of your own power and to be present. And when you don’t, when individuals forget to hold themselves and others accountable, it gets out of hand in various ways. And beings in this universe really took it much further and to horrifying new depths” the Goddess said in a clear low voice that brought me back to the here and now.

“It never fails to amaze me how so many seem happy to give away their power. Would you say it’s likely to stem from subconscious memories where sticking your proverbial neck out resulted in a particularly traumatic death?”

“Perhaps. At this point in time humanity is waking up, and the truth you are approaching is that you do not wish to be ruled or controlled.
“In the new game of conscious living there will be no need to control in the old way. When humanity chooses to live with integrity and awareness of the consequences your words and actions have upon everything else, the game is over. The players go home for dinner…” She smiled at her own human style joke.

The air shimmered with pinpricks of light and my body surged as if filled with tiny bubbles where every cell in my body seemed to have it’s own pleasure experience independently. A tremble rippled through my legs making them feel momentarily weak.

Dazed I turned to look around me, 360 degrees, in what I can only describe as slow motion out of time. My body didn’t feel solid at all, more like a temporary cluster of molecules or particles held together by an invisible magnetic force I couldn’t name.
‘Or frogspawn among the reeds in a lake,’ came an amused voice I did not recognize. Did I hear that – or what?
There is one thing feeling expansive, quite another is feeling internally displaced…
Out of habit I shook my head hoping to clear whatever was slowing everything down. My physical eyes came back into focus and I looked around me.
She was gone.

“I… I didn’t catch your name…” I said, when I had pulled myself together.

Maybe Reesha would know. I started walking back. Then running.

Let us all intend peace☮️ in Ukraine, and everywhere else,
immediately, completely and permanently.