Chapter Twelve
I walked up my sidewalk, deliberately ignoring the figure standing on Seth’s front porch. Although I didn’t actually see him, I knew he had made his way from his window to the outside in an effort to talk to me, but I made it through my front door before he had a chance to say a word.
I spent the next hour or so reliving the whole day. I had not only met my destiny, I had spent an entire day getting to know him. The shooting range, brunch, shopping, the carriage ride, and finally playing games in an arcade, only one of these had been on my list for first date activities, but I couldn’t remember ever having a better day. I drifted off to sleep early for the first time in ages.
Rachael and I had decided to meet at the mall Sunday morning. I rode the city bus there. I was probably one of the few people who loved mass transit. The quiet allowed me to dissect every aspect of Saturday, and not be burdened with paying attention to traffic or other drivers. Rachael had pumped me for details, but I couldn’t possibly tell her everything on the phone.
As my head swirled with images of yesterday, I told myself everything was perfect. I reveled in the idea that yesterday was just the first of many such days to come. I didn’t know how it could get any better than yesterday. I had learned so much about him.
Max was twenty-three. When I asked him about his ex-girlfriends, I nearly fell off my chair when he shared he had never had a serious girlfriend before. When he met me, he knew Seth had been my only boyfriend. I didn’t wear my virginity on my sleeve like it was some big badge of honor or anything, I just had never been in a situation where I wanted to do anything about it. For all I knew, having no experience could be a bad thing: I could be awful in bed and a real disappointment.
“He won’t be disappointed with you,” a voice came from out of nowhere. My eyes went wide and every muscle in my body tensed - Oh my gosh, I am such an idiot. I didn’t know I was thinking out loud. Who all heard me? I looked from person to person all around me, but no one close was looking at me. Did I just imagine a voice? Who’d just said that?
“There are many ways to talk to people, only one of which requires speaking aloud. I thought it better that I talk to you with my mind rather than my voice.” This reply was as clear as any words I had ever heard - but I didn’t hear them. It was as if they were reverberating in my head.
I scanned the bus in all directions. There was an overweight man in a suit and tie sitting in the seat across from me. A woman reading the newspaper accompanied by her child was a few seats in front of me. Another woman was three seats back, watching me.
“Yes, hello, Lauren, you can hear me just fine, am I right?”
I turned around to the lady sitting several seats behind me who was watching me, and nodded that yes I could hear her. I overemphasized the nod more to see a reaction than for effect.
I could hear humor in her response, “You really aren’t any good at this, are you? I can hear your thoughts, Lauren, you do not need to look at me.” Her gaze left me, as if something outside her window had caught her attention.
I wasn’t frightened, but definitely taken aback that this woman was communicating telepathically with me. I thought as hard as I could, “Who - are - you?”
A booming response echoed in my head, “Not so loud! You’re going to drown out everything else around here, and I’ll miss my stop.”
Surprised by the notion that a loud thought was possible, I replied but not nearly as focused as my last question, “Would it be okay to sit next to you? I feel funny carrying on a conversation without talking.”
“If it suits you, come on back.” She glanced my way with a slight nod, then continued to focus her attention out the window. To anyone else on the bus, she appeared not to be paying any attention to me at all.
I quickly grabbed my bag and moved to the seat next to the woman, half expecting her to scream or scowl at me when I sat down. She didn’t. She just smiled and patted my hand. Still in my head and not aloud, “We are so proud of you, Lauren. The others thought it could not be done. I told them you could. I told them you didn’t need our help. Look at you. Courage really becomes you, and you found Max so quickly! Good for you.”
Scared stiff at this point because she obviously knew me, questions began flying through my head. Who are you? Who are the others? What did you tell them I could do? How do you know about Max? All these questions were swirling in my head when I finally regained my focus and thought clearly, “Who are...”
She interrupted my thought, “If you ask every question twice we aren’t going to get much of anything done. I already told you, you don’t need to speak out loud, I can hear your thoughts. Who am I? I am Rewsna (she pronounced it Roos-na). I have been watching you for some time, as have the others. I was in Tasty Burger when you achieved courage. I have seen some monumental things this millennia, but a twenty-one year old girl, without any training at all, attaining courage has never been done before. How did you know about the anarchist? How did you know what to do?”
“The anarchist? Do you mean the robber?” I wasn’t sure I had comprehended what Rewsna had asked.
“The robber, yes. How did you know what he was going to do?” It was a bit difficult to focus on her questions. My entire life I had learned to read faces, body language, gestures, but Rewsna was giving me no visual cues. Since I came back to sit next to her on the bus, she had not made eye contact with me. She just kept looking out the window as if it were the most normal thing in the world for two strangers to share a seat when there were at least thirty vacant seats on the bus.
“I don’t know exactly. When he walked into the restaurant, I saw him.” That wasn’t right, I corrected myself, “I mean, I guess I felt him enter the restaurant. I’m not sure why, but I felt like he was dangerous.”
“He was, Lauren. Absolutely amazing. No doubt about it, you are amazing.”
“What’s so amazing about recognizing a robber?” I didn’t understand why she was so excited. I thought my acrobatics over the counter were far more interesting than me noticing a dirt bag walk through the door. I still didn’t know who she was. My imagination had been out of control lately, and for all I knew, I may very well have imagined this conversation, too.
“Lauren, you recognized an anarchist from fifteen feet away, without speaking to him. You got everyone out of the way: the customers, the other employees, everyone. You gave him a dose of his own medicine: pure fear you shot into him! I never saw an anarchist leave so fast in all my years. I couldn’t have been more thrilled if you would have yelled, ‘Boo,’ at him.”
“Rewsna, what’re you talking about? What’s an anarchist?”
“Child, you mean to tell me that you found one, singled him out from a room full of people the second he walked in the door, got everyone away from him, and you didn’t have any idea what he was?” Rewsna still didn’t speak out loud, but for the first time since I moved to this seat, she looked at me. She had deep brown eyes, set narrow on her face. Looking at her, I could only guess that she was in her fifties. She wore dreadlocks and looked a little like Whoopi Goldberg. Her face was beautiful despite the bewildered expression she was wearing.
“I’ve read the newspapers and watched the news reports. I’ve heard him referred to as a robber, an assailant, a shooter, a homeless man, but never an anarchist. I’ll have to write that one down.”
“Did Max not prepare you at all? Don’t tell me that you had no idea what was going on?”
“Rewsa, can you not talk in circles, because you’re really making me dizzy. I just spent all day with Max yesterday getting to know him. What was he supposed to prepare me for?”
Her eyes narrowed as if she were ready to begin an interrogation. “Lauren, what do you know about Max?”
Not wanting to confide in this stranger about my incredible obsession, all I was comfortable saying was, “Max is the paramedic who kept my hea
rt pumping after I was shot.”
“Lauren, you ought to know a good deal more than that.” For the first time she spoke aloud, and I could hear the contempt in her voice. Her voice sounded Romanian a little, not so much of an accent that she was difficult to understand, but enough of a European sound that it was obvious she wasn’t local. “Okay, from the top, did Max come to you in a dream?”
Rewsa convinced me that I was definitely not imagining this conversation. The idea that we could communicate without a sound was amazing. I wondered who else was able to communicate this way? And if more than just this woman, why hadn’t this been all over the news? I wondered if I could communicate with others this same way?
Annoyance was inserted in her voice, “Focus, Lauren. Did he come to you in a dream or not?”
Snapped back to reality, at least my reality this minute, I responded quietly, “Yes.”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“Exactly, he said that we were going to meet soon, but I had to be courageous. He said a lot of other things about challenges we would have to meet; I have to tell you that I really wasn’t paying that much attention at the time.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve been keeping an eye on you then. He didn’t explain to you who you were, or who would be working against you?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“All right, listen, my stop is coming up soon, and I can’t stay to chat. I’ll tell you what I can, but Max should have told you all this already. Every soul has a specific purpose predetermined before they take human form. Almost no one can remember their purpose after they turn two years old, but it is burned into them and resides in their unconscious until an event or a person is able to unlock it. The purposes are Protectors, Instigators, Anarchists, Tempters and Mates – there are more, but these are the basics. Some souls get more than one purpose relative to the other souls they are destined for.”
“So the robber was my anarchist, but he could be someone else’s protector?”
“Yes, exactly! Only the soul knows when it is time to assume a new role. You already know that Max is your mate.”
My wheels began to turn and I made a logical leap asking, “Does that mean that Seth is my protector?”
“That damn Seth, I need to grab him by his ears and shake him! Yes, he is supposed to be one of your protectors, and somehow he has convinced himself that it is his job to be a tempter. He isn’t imprinted for a temptation for you, so no matter how hard he tries or what he does, you will never feel the need to be anything more than his friend. His only role for you for this entire life is to be your protector.”
I could tell she was sensing my question, “So what am I to Seth?”
“You aren’t a temptation either! You are his instigator. It is your job to kick him in the tail end and make him find his mate, not succumb to his outrageous fantasies, which will never work. You need to stop worrying about his precious little feelings and get him moving, or he’ll be stuck where he is for another decade. His mate is about to get engaged to one of her protectors. If that happens it will be a whole decade down the drain and Seth will probably be living with his mom until he’s thirty.”
I hated feeling like the slow kid, but I asked anyway. “A whole decade down the drain? You are talking in circles again.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Seth has a soul mate, too. He hasn’t met her yet because he is convinced that he is in love with you. Until you kick him to the curb, he doesn’t have a chance to meet his soul mate. If Seth and Amanda don’t meet, then she will never feel the magnetic pull toward a true soul mate. If she doesn’t know the difference, her protector will propose marriage to her and she will say yes, since as far as she is concerned there is no one else out there. She will get married, and they’ll give it a go for a while, then in about eight years they’ll look at each other and realize they really aren’t in love with one another, they never were in love with one another. These always get messy.”
“So you’re saying this happens a lot?”
“Lauren, try to keep up, Dear. Every soul has a role relative to every other soul that is profound to them. If roles are misinterpreted, a delay to the natural order occurs. Why, I knew this one woman who was married five times, five times! At what point do you think it occurred to her that she was settling for the first man who showed her any attention? Each time she walked down the aisle, then a few years later, realized her mistake, only to repeat the same mistake four more times! If she would have just listened to her dreams, they would have told her how to meet her destiny.”
“So I’m not special? Everyone has a mate. Everyone’s mate comes to them in a dream?”
“No and yes. Not everyone chooses to have a mate in life; but for those who do, one will reach out to the other in a dream shortly before their paths may cross. A mate may have to cross paths five or six times before they are close enough to feel the magnetic pull, but once they feel it, they just know this is their soul mate. The travel through dreams is the only way two souls are able to speak. The conscious mind is too rational and discounts any contact as impossible. To answer your other question - Lauren, you are more special than you realize.”
“You mean because I can read people, right?”
“What do you mean, read people?”
“I’ve always been really ‘in-tune’ to others. Most of the time, I can tell what someone is feeling by just looking at them.”
“In-ter-est-ing. You can do this with everyone?”
“I think so. I’ve read a lot of books on body language, but I was really good at it before I did any real research. Some people are harder than others.”
“Does it feel like an extrasensory perception?”
“I don’t know what that would feel like, but I guess so. I mean I don’t get a vibe based on sight, sound, smell, touch or taste – I just know what people are feeling. Sometimes I even know what they’re thinking. Not the specifics, but if they’re mad about something that just happened, I can tell that it’s a short-term mood swing – or if they’re chronically crotchety, I can feel that, too.”
“Even me?”
“Well - you initiated the conversation, so I wasn’t exactly feeling you out. I can tell that you’re being truthful with me, or at least you think you are.”
“What about Max?”
“My emotions get in the way a little. I mean – I don’t normally, you know…get nervous around people. Max is just different. I have a tough time…”
“Your own nervousness doesn’t allow you to be objective and observe him the way you do others.”
“Right!”
“How does this feeling you get work?”
I had never given much thought to how it worked. “I guess most of the time, I look at a person…sometimes if I’m not that close I can’t sense anything. Sometimes if I shake their hand or bump into them, the feeling gets stronger. I don’t really know how it works.”
Rewsna nodded. “You chose a tough life, but so far you haven’t needed anyone’s help. You are just barely an adult and you have attained a tough pillar and you have found your soul mate. Some spend whole lifetimes trying to attain courage, but you got it at twenty-one. We will be watching you with interest.” She glanced at the window quickly and announced, “This is my stop.”
Rewsna stood up, stepped in front of me and waited by the door for the bus to come to a complete stop. When I stood up to follow her, she shook her head and her voice sounded stern in my mind, “Child, this is not your stop. Keep to your path.”
“But how do I find you if I need you?”
She looked at me perplexed, “If you really need me, I’ll be there, but from what I’ve seen, you won’t see me again.”
“Wait, Rewsna, I have so many questions!”
She smiled at me wryly and responded, “Unlock Max. He has all the answers.”