Divine SUN

Chika and Fisayo went to their apartment immediately after the fight was over. He tried his best to cheer her up, but she was not interested one bit. They went inside the apartment, and apart from the sound of the keys hitting the cabinet and the sound of her room door locking, Fisayo did not hear anything from Chika for the next two days.

During that time, Chika lay on her bed, but she was not there. She had traveled to the astral realm to see her parents as she always did whenever she shut her eyes to take a nap.

Locations weren’t fixed in the astral realm, but you could build houses whenever, whatever, or however you wanted.

Her parents welcomed her with open arms, and they smoked and drank together, telling Chika stories that triggered her childhood memories. In the spirit realm, a single piece of information could act as a thread that helped unlock memories from even lifetimes that were not at the surface, and Chika appreciated having those back.

Part of the perks of having no parents in the real world meant that no one was available to scold her, so she had an innate sense of freedom and did not need to ask permission from anyone before doing anything. She was about to use her freedom to explore other realms to vanish from their presence when her mom said,

“Chika, there is no need to run. No one is going to flog you, we just want to talk,” she explained. Chika chuckled.

“I was not going anywhere. I am right here,” she answered as she was stopped dead in her tracks, metaphorically speaking.

“It is time for you to meet some people. You might feel their energy, but you have no idea who they actually are,” her father declared.

As soon as the words came from his mouth, the clouds opened, and at least a thousand balls of light began to fall from the sky.

Chika could recognize what the balls of light were the moment she saw them, and from the way information was shared in the astral realm she could already tell that the balls of light that were on the way to her were related to her.

The remaining balls continued to hover around while one of them descended in front of her, and as it landed, it turned into an old man that she somehow recognized as her great-grandfather.

He had long white beards and a bald head, and even if he had a walking stick, he walked around like he did not need it.

“Hello, my child,” he said with a sheepish smile as he scratched his head. “This is a bit awkward for me as I am used to talking to the version of you that has all your memories.”

The confused look on Chika’s face reinforced exactly what he had just said. He conjured up three chairs and a table for everyone to sit down while he sat like a monk in the air, which Chika found a little bit dramatic.

“I don’t remember you,” Chika stated plainly.

“I know, and that is by design,” he responded.

“Whose design?”

“Yours.”

“So I chose not to remember everyone else but my parents?” Chika asked back.

“You remembered our parents because you knew them in the physical realm. When you got here, they were also the only ones that you felt comfortable enough to call on help from,” he said.

Naturally, Chika had a very arrogant personality and anytime someone was being coy with her, she had no issues bringing it out, but something about the man standing in front of her let her know that she was a child and any tantrum that she threw would be addressed with the same level of importance that you would give a two-year-old that broke their toy, and it made any urge that she had to be sparky towards him a waste of time. So she settled for asking him questions instead.

“What is going on?” she asked. “Why do I get the pleasure of meeting the rest of you today?”

“An old enemy returns,” the old man with grey hair she had identified as her grandfather explained.

Chika did not understand what he meant but she could tell by the ominous atmosphere in the air that it was something that bothered everyone, because usually when there is a negative feeling in the air it is immediately transmuted into something beautiful but the feeling lasted more than a minute in the air before it dissipated.

“What enemy?” she asked, clearing the silence.

“It might be hard for you to understand, but as above so below. The way we have enemies on earth, it is the same way in the spirit realm and sometimes those battles slip down into the human realm,” he explained.

Chika’s interest immediately peaked to the highest that it ever has in all her existence. “You were fighting spirits in the human realm?”

“Yes, but not the way that you think. Even the most powerful spirits can’t interfere with the earth directly. There are rules that stop us from doing just that. The only way that we can interfere with human activities is to incarnate on earth directly,”

“I see,” responded Chika.

“And knowing who you are in the spirit realm, they have decided to come mess with you in the physical.” The old man explained sincerely, causing a spike of anxiety from Chika. She had no idea what was going on in the physical realm that had been orchestrated in the spiritual to mess with her.

“Is that why my father died?” Chika found herself asking.

“Yes and no.” The old man explained. “Yes, because that is why he died. And no, because we let it happen because the pain you felt from being alone is part of the reason that you were able to activate your ability to experience the spiritual world.” He paused to let his words sink in more properly. “The longing you felt for family literally broke a barrier in the cosmos that gave you a door to the spirit realm. A door that only you have the keys to, a key that they want now.”

The first impression that Chika got in the spirit realm was that every answer was paradoxical, in the sense that they made multiple meanings, and they were meant to inspire thinking and self-realization. But everything that the old man was saying was beginning to confuse her.

When she first got to the spirit realm, the person who she had spent time with apart from her biological parents on earth was her uncle Oc, he was her mother’s younger brother and very much like her in character, they even had the same big bulging eyes that seemed like they could see into anyone’s soul.

“Don’t worry, I promise to always explain everything to you with simple English. None of that riddle nonsense,” he had promised and kept his word to her. They had trained together, learning ancient Muay Thai stances and working on ways to make her the great fighter that she was.

Chika felt like she needed clarity in this time, so she did what he taught her, she sent out a thought bubble that vanished into thin air, soon another bubble appeared and her uncle stepped through it.

He had the same quizzical look that he always did plastered on his face. “Hey, sweetie,” he said to Chika as she pulled him into a hug.

“Everyone came to tell me about some great destiny that I am supposed to achieve, but you did not come with them,” Chika queried him with daggering looks of rage.

“Yeah, sweetie. I was trying to avoid facing that look.” He responded, pointing at her face.

She responded by folding her hands and looking away in disgust.

“They are saying that I chose to live a life of pain and misery,”

“Your life hasn’t been that way. All you have experienced is loss, which helps us grow,” her uncle explained calmly.

Something about her uncle made her less defensive, so she kept quiet.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked. But no one said anything. They kept looking at her like she was supposed to know the plan already. “If you guys have forgotten, I am not the same person who made those plans with you all, I would need a reminder of what I am supposed to do.”

“You will not like it,” her father responded.

Chika responded with a quizzical look and then he said,

“A time will come when you will be forced to choose between your heart and your purpose. If you choose wrong, you will lose the key forever,” her grandfather said.

“My heart?” she wondered aloud, interrupting her grandfather’s words, but she was ignored.

“We trust that you will make the right decision.” With that, her grandfather and the rest of the ancestors with him vanished, leaving Chika with her parents. Evelyn was the first person to close the distance between them and hold Chika’s hands.

Evelyn and Chika did not have the typical mother-daughter relationship because they did not spend a lot of time as mother and daughter in the physical realm.

They met in the astral realm after Chika lost her father. The first time that they met was kind of weird. They instantly recognized each other, and Chika was greeted with memories of their past lives together.

In the life before this they were also mother and daughter, but in those lifetimes they fought a lot because Chika felt that Evelyn was being overbearing and did not give her any chance to grow on her own, so in this life they decided to remedy that and see if Evelyn being absent would allow Chika to be a more independent soul.

The moment that Chika had set eyes on Evelyn, she was greeted with a wave of emotions and she started crying profusely. This is not uncommon as emotions are information and the moment Evelyn recognized Chika she was greeted with all the information from different past lives they had lived together in a jolt and the tears were a byproduct of processing a large amount of information in an instant.

This situation was a lot like the time that Evelyn and Chika had reunited, Chika needed emotional regulation so she would accept everything that was going on. So she did the best a mother could do in those circumstances.

While alive, Evelyn loved sunflowers, and because of that, anytime she wanted to create a scenery that calmed her, she would create a sunflower garden with petals as soft as pillows, and that she did.

Before anyone could blink they were all lying on a sunflower field in a space that had a pink sun.

“That will never not be amazing,” her father said with a sheepish smile on his face making Evelyn blush.

“Thank you,” she responded.

“While it is nice that I get to see you guys all flirty, even if it’s not in the physical realm it’s still kind of irking me out, so can you stop?” Chika asked.

“Physical pleasures happen only in the physical realm,” her father explained.

“So this enemy you’re trying to warn me about, how would they come and what do I not do?” Chika asked.

“We can’t tell you.” Her mom replied. “We can only give you guidance, and your grandfather couldn’t have summed it up better. You will have to make a choice between your heart and the keys and that’s basically the sum of your journey.”

Seeing that they were not going to be any spoilers, Chika decided that it was the perfect time for her to do her yoga stretches. She first transitioned into a warrior pose, stretching her hands outwards and then arching her hips to help with the stretch.

“There is something that you should know that might help you understand why you have to face these evil spirits that you are going to face.” Evelyn said stopping Chika mid-stretch.

“And what’s that?” Chika responded with her eyes shining with curiosity.

“This isn’t the first lifetime that you have had to fight this evil. In fact it was the reason that you weren’t able to be happy in your previous lifetimes, in others it has even made you end your life a lot early,” Evelyn explained calmly.

Maybe it was because of the other things that her grandfather had said, but hearing this did not surprise her. She had already felt it her whole life, a dark presence that hunted her, that made sure she was never happy for too long, that planted a seed of doubt in her heart whenever it was set on something. A voice that made her hate herself.

“Why always me?” Chika found herself asking.

“To answer that question I would have to go to the beginning, when we first came to the first version of earth to lay the energetic seeds that would become the plants and animals that we see now all around us.” Evelyn paused to see if Chika was still paying attention.

“I’m listening,” Chika said.

“You were amongst the first 9 souls that seeded the earth and you brought in the vibration of Hope. The moment the vibration of hope was born on earth, its opposite was also created, the vibration of despair, and you guys have been at loggerheads since then. You have taken up different vessels and so has it,”

“So this our last dance?” Chika asked.

“Yes,” her mom responded. “This is the lifetime in which you will finally destroy it.” She added with a proud smile on her face.

“But you won’t tell me how this entity would attack this time?”

“No,” they responded in unison making her laugh. Somehow hearing this part of the story made her smile. In her experience there is always a higher story within a story and she was grateful that her parents shared it with her. Now it was obvious to her the amount of sacrifice that the souls who acted as her parents on earth had made in order for her to awaken to this truth.

If they hadn’t been okay being taken off the board by the entity that she was fighting then, Chika would not be awakened.

“There is another reason that you were okay going through all that pain.” Evelyn said, reading Chika’s mind. One of the first lessons that Chika was taught in the astral realm was to always form a barrier to protect her thoughts and anytime she forgot to do it, everyone assumed that her mind was free to access. Luckily for Chika, the only thought that the person reading your mind could access was the exact one that you were thinking, to access all other memories would require consent from the individual who wanted their memories viewed.

“What’s the reason?” Chika asked.

“You have superpowers.” Evelyn responded. “Superpowers that you could not use if you do not integrate your light body. Usually trauma is the best tool to awaken any dormant spiritual gifts or as Gen Z would refer to it, superpowers.”

Chika felt like her mother was joking, so she turned her neck to see what her father’s face would tell her but her father was busy smelling a giant rose, he was floating in the air and paid no mind to the conversation his daughter and wife were having.

“Dad. Mom said I have superpowers,” Chika screamed from startling her father, he squinted his eyes annoyingly.

“Yes, you do.” Then, he returned back to his flowers, making Chika chuckle. Sometimes, she forgot that she was not the only stubborn person in her lineage, she even forgot where she had inherited it from.

“You had to confirm?” her mother said chuckling. “How do you think you were able to win all those fights? Get a sense of what your enemy is going to do before they do it?”

“Is that my superpower? Knowing what’s going to happen before it does?” Chika asked with her eyes bulging out of her eye sockets.

Her mother shook her head in response. “Premonition is a gift everyone has, yours is just heightened because you are in tune with your spirit.”

“You have a unique superpower that no one on the planet has been able to manifest yet, and when you find out what it is, you’ll know why you had to discover it yourself,” Evelyn explained.

Chika chuckled, her mother forgot to put up a mental block and the reason everyone wanted her to discover her powers herself was that they thought it would take away the fun from it. Before Chika could gloat that she had read her mother’s thoughts, she had woken up back on her bed.