The Justiceers - Part One: Chapter Eight
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
By Daphne Garrido
Part One - Darkest Nights
1.8
Miriam found herself walking in a lavender field, hands reaching outward, the stalks and flowers running past her fingertips.
She was going to an ocean, and she knew it more clearly than she’d known anything before. Her heart was singing in tones unheard, so proud and beautiful was their song.
What is this place?
Miriam pushed forward for some time in observance of her breath, more complete somehow, a wholeness within it expanding beyond the rhythms of oxygen she’d known. The sun was so bright, and she was heading straight for it.
Here she realized she’d been alone in her mind. Source wasn’t with her.
The absence would’ve been a terrifying notion under physical circumstances, but here she’d access to a purer place of knowing. It spoke of something profound.
At this wisdom rediscovered, she’d laughed so hard of belly it hurt.
How could I not have known?
Miriam’s source was herself.
Not unaccustomed to navigating planes beyond, Miriam was immediately at home in this astral space. In fact, more than she’d ever been under less mortal circumstances.
Reconnected with her truest self, layers of distortion were melting away, and she’d found a bliss of spirit bestowed upon her. She was bouncing along the banks of spirit’s great river.
Still giggling at her discovery of source’s nature, finding great hilarity in the many questions she’d begged of herself over the years, not understanding she hadn’t had the answers either. At least, most of them.
Here she was connected to a family beyond, some great conglomeration of souls that she’d seen and experienced so often in dreams throughout her mortal life. Of them her source had always known, along with the agreements written by this family, those she was born to know and which would lead her path forward.
Miriam’s entire family had come to join her here, for this journey. Arthur was with them.
My god, his smile.
He was walking too. The sight of him alone would have been enough, but to see him glowing in all his stature was not a thing she could’ve prepared her heart to take standing up.
He’d joined her so often in dreams throughout her life, Arthur’s spirit. Even before she’d known him — before he was born. Miriam was quite a bit older.
She felt so incredible healed being here, surrounded by this family in such tactile ways, with all of herself coming back in waves. It was like being engulfed in the heat of love’s hearth.
Arthur had been walking beside her along the riverbank.
For it to be her truest family with her, dreams in life so often invaded by those souls she’d been entangled with through birth, was an unmeasurable blessing. Though, Miriam had always found when her parents appeared in dreams — that most dreaded tie to souls unfit — Arthur would always be there too. His spirit standing beside to offer her strength.
She’d never felt anything like this before. A sensation of family so sought throughout her life, felt only before in Arthur’s arms. Along with one precious dream as a child.
This was home.
In what seemed so far away now; her life, Miriam had met Arthur before either of them knew who they were. She’d heard of Justiceers and known herself one at heart. He couldn’t see it though, especially with her.
Miriam would find her life’s greatest work helping him discover who he was.
After it had been done — unknowing if her writings so sent his way had yet been received and understood by is gut, or if the seeds were only been planted for that to happen in the future, completely unaware if he’d make it back in time before source consumed her mind in full, or her body perished — she’d known, having been told so by that truest voice, her great work had been completed.
Even though she’d been alone and often quite worried for herself throughout that time, she’d found his spirit ever-present in her dreams, ensuring always that things would be okay. Arthur had been the most consistent face in her astral experiences since the moment she’d met him; that was the one thing which made her most believe she’d found her other.
Source never told Miriam if he was actually her Judge, and her his Scribe, as she so thought to be true. It would only tell her to ‘believe in herself’ and ‘trust her heart’, teaching that it would show the way, informing that even if it didn’t lead to what she’d hoped for, it was taking her exactly where she was meant to go.
Arthur did come back though, and he’d known who he was. Her writings had reached him. They’d changed him.
He’d seen and felt himself in them so deeply in her words. It helped him remember who he was. It taught him how to love again, but mostly, how to forgive himself.
When he had come back, he’d never stopped being sorry about the way he’d treated her in that time of separation. It took him some time after reading her works to find her, in part since their implications were so utterly overwhelming, but mostly because he found it so hard to accept what he’d done to her.
She’d ended up helping with that too. Miriam had forgiven him from the start.
Time was experienced much differently here. Its passage somehow stretched and condensed at once.
They’d followed the river as it split into tributaries, having shrunken to the size of a stream, then broadened back as it became clear in Miriam’s heart the ocean was near.
A lifetime was lived on this journey, the very best Miriam could’ve imagined. Yet, she also felt that no time passed at all, so like her life spent amongst The Periphery from this vantage.
It was first heard first, then felt, and finally seen; the ocean.
Oh, its waves.
Miriam’s sense of peace had expanded beyond even that of her travels beforehand. They’d followed the sun here, to see it now setting across the sea was a beauty to her heart beyond that her mind’s imagination would have ever considered possible.
The beach.
Its sand was perfect, no stone or stick in sight, taking no grasp upon her feet, unlike the few beaches Miriam had been able to visit in her physical lifetime.
Taking in this shoreline of heaven, surrounded by family, with Arthur’s arm around her hip, Miriam had felt her coming. It seemed everyone had, as she found his grip loosening at the strangest happenings in her chest, her surrounding family clearing space for sight.
There was woman in the distance. She’d been walking towards them.
Miriam knew immediately who it was.
She’d traipsed forward as best she could, Arthur giving one last squeeze of her shoulder, family holding back so she could face this alone.
In her walk towards this most beautiful woman, Miriam would begin to cry harder than she ever had before. And she’d cried really hard.
That woman had lifted her from the sand, her palms having been buried so deep, shaking at the clearest knowing of what was happening. She was so incredibly pretty. Miriam couldn’t believe her eyes.
To see her was the greatest feeling her soul would ever have. With all the time spent away, in such dreadful pain, separated for so terribly long.
It was her — what she really looked like.
This was Miriam’s soul.
They’d spent what felt like eons in conversation, Miriam and her soul.
It took the longest time for Miriam to look at that goddess without crying. Yet, she’d found by doing this, a sadness carried so long was leaving her spirit. She was becoming this woman before her.
They’d told her then — there was a choice to be made. Arthur still needed her, and there was a way she might go back. It wasn’t that simple though. She’d be able to help more if she stayed.
The Miriam she’d been before this journey began would have said ‘fuck y’all’ and gone straight back into the arms of her Arthur. Yet with having come to know her soul, changing so much in such little time. She’d known there wasn’t really a choice, and she would do as her purpose demanded.
Miriam was going to help Arthur in the very best way she could.
