Stars Dancing [Dreams-To-Lovers Romance]

Entertain them now.

Affect them deeply.

So they keep looking.

Collected Unpublished Lyrics

- Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn (2771)

Journal

It's time for me to be thinking about the future. I'm going to have to make some decisions soon, and I can't think straight. My thoughts just keep whirling around repetitively, and I can't get anywhere. I'm just pacing around my room, thoughts going round and round. So, maybe writing will help me sort some things out.

I'm over half way through my six-month Work Acceptance. In a couple of months I'll have to leave Shurwinn. Or apply for citizenship. If that's even possible. I have no information. There is nothing in the stream about citizenship. I don't even know if off spheres can apply for citizenship. Do you have to be born here to live here long term? Do I want to live here long term?

Am I leaving my career as an obgyneca forever? And to do what? Be a gardner at a monastery in a desert oasis when I don't even know what the purpose of the monastery is? Should I go to another holiday sphere and just spend time traveling the galaxy? But as unconventional as my life is here in Media, I really like it.

I'm doing well in Tindin. I'm at Level 3— they call it Yellow Bead in Shurwinn. Every morning, Denten and I greet the sun. Then we bow, and he starts the dance. I'm sparring in only Tindin. He is sparring one level above me, at least I think that's what is going on. He's not using the skill level he used in our first session.

When I make a mistake, he backs up a few steps and repeats himself, giving me a chance to make a correction on my own. If I can't adjust for myself, he will show me what to do, and I follow his demonstration. Sometimes he corrects my forms, but usually we don't talk. I don't know if this is how he teaches all the time. It's hard to imagine a classroom of kids doing something like this, but it is working really well for me.

I don't understand what I'm doing to progress up the levels either. Somedays Denten presents me with a little beaded bag at the end of our training, and that's how I know I've progressed. Red for Level 1, Orange for Level 2, Yellow for Level 3. Inside the bead bag is a single strand of beads in the corresponding color. The beads are very tiny, and the strand is just over a millimeter wide and around 18 inches long.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with the beads. I see some people wearing theirs. Around their necks, or as belts, or twined in their braids or other ways in their hair.

So, I don't see a reason to leave Shurwinn and travel the galaxy when I'm working my way through the Tindin levels.

I don't know what I really want. It seems like I'm just kind of drifting. Unmoored. I'm doing well physically. Well enough that I could do probably anything I want with my career. And I'm still on the hygienic diet, even though I still think of it as just an experiment, and not something I'm going to force myself to do forever.

I just can't stand the thought of those headaches, so I'm sticking with it for now. And that's how everything in my life feels at the moment: I'm eating this way for now. I'm living here for now. I'm working here for now. But none of this is a long-term solution.

Am I really going to stay in a monastery more than 6 months?

I've been writing more. I keep writing my dreams, and my new ideas, and my erotica experiences. I don't know if I'm writing it to work out how I feel, to keep track of the progress I'm making, or because I need to do something with it in the future. I just feel like I have to keep writing it all down.

And I usually feel like as I'm writing, my thoughts get clearer, and I start to see that there's something I need to choose. And I sort of see things more clearly when I'm writing, instead of just thinking. Like I don't know what I'm going to write until I start writing. Then all of this comes out, and I can see it in high definition, and then I just know that I'm working my way to a decision.

I think I want to stay in Shurwinn.

I think I need to ask if I can.

She didn't know that we were family. I thought I should change that.

- Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn, (2778)

Everything hurt. I felt bruised head to toe. I was covered in sweat, and my feet felt frozen. I was nauseous and aching and so tired. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn't relax. It hurt too much to relax. My feet felt like every bone was broken, and it hurt to rest them on the mattress. Why? What was wrong with me?

I was supposed to be better. I did everything right. I worked so hard. I hadn't done anything different, so how could I feel so bad? What could I do? Was it more detox? Was that what was happening? What had changed? What triggered it? How could I fix it if I didn't know what had caused it? I couldn't rest. I couldn't relax. How long had it been? Days?

I heard soft footsteps. I couldn't sit up. I was too weak. There was a cool hand on my brow.

"Ryst, you're burning up. Should I call a medica?" A woman. Rich voice. Familiar. Sorchen?

Could I talk? I had to talk. "No. Juice."

"Are you sure, Ryst?"

"Trust me."

There was movement again, and something against my lips. A gentle voice, "Ryst, drink this." It was a straw. I sipped. It was cold and sweet and good. I drank as much as a could and closed my eyes.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I was so tired. I just wanted to rest. I needed to slow down my brain and relax my mind. It was so hard. I focused on my breathing. I remembered Denten's coaching when we first started to greet the sun in dojo 6. "Flow with the breath. You are the breath. The breath is within you. The breath is without. The breath moves you. You move the breath. You are the breath."

I repeated the words with slow inhales and practiced the flow in my mind. It kept my mind occupied so my thoughts didn't spin out of control. "I am the breath. The breath is within me. The breath is without. The breath moves me. I move the breath. I am the breath. Feel the breath move me."

I remembered floating in the hot tub. I remembered how relaxed I had felt lying in that tub. I imagined the hot water soaking my sore body. I was the breath. I was relaxing in a hot pool of water. I was floating and breathing.

I had felt him. We had laughed together. We had been together. Could he feel me now? I was too tired to laugh. I couldn't reach. I couldn't expand. I was not vast. I was small, and I was weak, and I needed him.

"Beloved, my Ahtah, my only one," I thought. "Can you hear me? I can't feel you. I'm so sick. And I'm scared. And everything hurts. It always hurts, and it never gets better. And I try so hard, but I can't get well. I'm broken, Ahtah. I'm broken, and I can't get well, and no one can fix me. I screwed up. I screwed up so bad. I married someone who didn't love me, and he hurt me, and my life is ruined. Why? Why did I do it? What was wrong with me? Why didn't I see that he was a bad person? Was I just so desperate for affection that I found a man who is so much like my twisted family and married him because I don't know what real love is? That I just think it's normal to be treated badly because no one has ever really been tender to me? I know what you feel like. I know what it feels like now to love myself. To think that I matter. No one ever did that for me. It was just a constant need to perform. To keep them from being upset. To never think about what I really wanted."

"I don't want this. I don't want this constant suffering. I don't know how to do it. I don't want to do it alone anymore. Can you help me, Ahtah? I don't want to be alone."

Dream Journal

There was a long corridor. I was walking down a long, beige hallway. There was nothing. Only the hallway. I was walking. I kept walking. There were stairs. I was going down the stairs. Down, down. Then the stairs disappeared. I was just falling straight down. My arms went out from my sides, and I reached. And I slowed. I was slowing myself. I was lowering. Down. Lowering down. Slowly down. I could feel myself slowing myself and lowering myself slowly down. I was not falling. I was lowering myself down. Down. There were arms around my waist. There was someone behind me. He wrapped around me, and we were lowered down, down, down. We landed. Our feet touched solid ground.

I opened my eyes. I felt better. I could move. I reached for my notebook and wrote it all. I wrote everything I could about the days during the relapse and the dreams. About talking to my Ahtah, and then dreaming of him.

Feeling hungry, I noticed a cooler in my room. It was about chest high, and there were bowls of fruit on top. The inside was loaded with juices and bowls of chopped fruit. I dug in. Sorchen must have brought it? I wasn't sure. Could I keep the refrigerator in my room? That would be nice.

Once I'd showered, and there were clean sheets on the bed, I decided it was a good time for a graphic novel. "Chaludra: Warrior Priestess of Lone Rock Mountain, I am coming!" I thought to myself.

It hurt to read your journals. Of those times that came before. Reading what happened.

From your point of view.

- Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn (2786)

Chaludra turned out to be perfect post-relapse reading material. I felt better, but I was too weak for the dojo. Chaludra helped pass the time. I had finished volume one, and was ready to plow into the second book. The artwork was entertaining. It was no Sistine Chapel, but the artist had gotten Chaludra's facial expressions perfect! Her scowl, her thirst for vengeance, her rage, her helplessness.

Chaludra's village had been ransacked by a virus, and she had scaled Lone Rock Mountain to get revenge on the Sibylline Sisters. It was their job to predict tragedies, but they had sent no warning, and Chaludra's little sister sick, nearly dead, and the Sibylline Sisters were going to pay!

You did not want to be a Sibyl when Chaludra was coming for you. But when she got to the top of Lone Rock, the monastery was empty. The sisters had disappeared. And what was she to do? She realized that she was young and naive and had gone on a fool's quest and was stranded on a mountain all alone. Should she go back to her village or should she try to find out what had happened to the Sibylline sisters? Find out in the next volume!

"Sibylline" must have been why Sorchen thought of the Chaludra series when I'd asked her what "Siblin Lone Warrior Nun" meant. Siblin sounded like "Sibylline," didn't it? I could've mistaken the two words. Sorchen must have known about the Sistine Chapel paintings of the Sibyls. How much of the library had Sorchen read?

I still didn't have the full explanation of the "Lone Warrior Nun," but Chaludra was at Lone Rock Mountain Monastery, so maybe I was gonna find out. I picked up volume two.

Journal

Reading, and writing, and resting have been my life for three days. I am feeling better today. I've read twelve—twelve—Chaludra graphics! They are so good! And they are eerily appropriate for what I'm going through right now. Chaludra decided to stay at Lone Rock Mountain Monastery and try to find out what had happened to the Sibylline Sisters. She found clues etched into the sandstone. Little riddles carved into the rock. She had to decipher what it all meant. She thought the sisters had abandoned their posts to go seeking something.

She had a direction, so she went looking for the first sister. On the way, she fought and destroyed the Frost Giant of Echo Valley. The people hailed her a great warrior. Then she cast a demon out of a wild girl child at the Oasis of New Spring. The villagers called her priestess. Then she found the first Sibyl in the cave of Lethe. The Sibyl was dead. Next to her, on the cave floor was carved two words, "Know Thyself."

My life has gotten so crazy that I can hardly be surprised anymore. It's like the author (Rue Linkin) was writing these graphics for me. She obviously studied Ancient Earth things like the Sybils and "Know Thyself." I wonder if she's from Earth, or a close descendent? It was only a few generations ago that the Shurwinn left Earth to found their colony on Shurwinn, so it's possible that she has a connection to Earth. I wonder if other Shurwinn know about Earth stuff like Temples and the Sistine Chapel?

Rue Linkin wrote a great story. Chaludra keeps thinking she is doing one thing, and then she winds up doing something so much bigger than she thought. She didn't even know she was on a quest, but she became a warrior and a priestess without intending to. She was just looking for the Sibylline Sisters, and she found herself doing so much more. After being called priestess, she'd returned home, and had found her little sister fully recovered.

Then she left her home village a second time. That was after she had become the Lone Warrior, so her family was in awe of her, and a little scared. Her little sister had wanted to go with her, but Chaludra had insisted that she stay home where there was safety. Book Twelve hinted that her sister, Kitty, was about to rebel and start her own search for the Sibylline Sisters, so it looked like Chaludra wasn't going to be "Lone" for much longer.

And what about me, isn't that what happened to me—sort of? I thought that I was coming to Shurwinn to get away and go on holiday. To rest after all the trauma. But a whole different story has happened. All I did was make a choice to come here, and a massive quest has befallen me, and I'm still deciphering the clues. The dreams.

So I keep journaling, knowing that I am writing the story of my new life. And finding all the clues to help point me in the right direction. I'm researching. It's different than medica research, so it's more like I'm just recording all the data I can. So I can find out what happened to me in the vision of the Temple and the ankh.

And why I'm different now. The relapse— why did I get so sick again? Why am I not well? And all the dreams, and the new senses, and all the strange things that I can sense now, and the man, the man, the man.

My man. I'm going to figure it out, and I'm going to find him. I will use all this strangeness to find him.

I'm coming for you, Ahtah.