In The Dreaming: Chapter Forty Three "Closure and Renewal" (Fantasy Y/A Novel)

-I wrote the following novel nearly two decades ago. In the years between then and now I've honed my craft, and my perception of this world; my thoughts and ideas; have changed dramatically. However, I still enjoy the premise and have decided to do an overhaul of revisions and rewrites, though likely not until sometime next year. (Though I'm sure I'll do a little as I post chapters)

For now I hope you will enjoy a glimpse into my book writing beginnings...

They are the closest of friends though they have never met in waking life.

Prologue-PT1 Prologue-PT2 Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16

Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19

Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22

Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25

Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28

Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31

Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34

Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37

Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40

Chapter 41 Chapter 42

Chapter Forty Three

“Why are we here?” She was looking somewhere over Aliyah's shoulder, as if waiting for the trees to answer, or the wind.

“To be a light in the darkness.”

The woman shook her head and said quietly, “I haven’t spoken to God in a long time. I used to believe, but that was a different life.”

Aliyah chewed on her lip, then said “You said that you think Martin wrote this line for you?”

“I once told him that life was not worth living without faith.”

Aliyah thought a moment, praying silently for the right words for the sad woman who had lost her hope. “He took his life?”

“They called it an accident. But I knew better.” She scrunched her face up in scorn.

“What happened?”

“They found him at the bottom of a cliff, floating in a river. They said that he was hiking and fell. Can you imagine? That’s just ridiculous, it doesn’t happen that way.”

“Accidents don’t?”

“No,” she said sharply, “Not when he had been spiraling downward, not when he wrote that just before it happened.”

“Tell me again what it said.”

“Tell you?” She indicated the stone with irritation, “Read it for yourself.”

Aliyah obliged. “With faith we are larger than life itself. Without it we are not worthy of it’s gift.” The woman nodded as if that explained. Aliyah shook her head. “I think you’re wrong.”

“Oh you do, do you?”

“I think he wrote that because he had just figured it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think he wrote it to yell at you and then cast himself over a cliff. If he was that sort of man he would not even deserve your love. No, I think that it was a revelation to him, that he meant that he finally saw it. I think that he went to the woods to be alone with his faith and then he had an accident. I believe that all people have an appointed time of death and what he wrote was not meant for you from him, but for you from the Creator. He had found the meaning of his life and though his body died his spirit went on to the real life, one not measured in time because there is no end to it.”

“I….,” the woman began. She looked at Aliyah more closely again. “Who are you? Are you an angel?”

“No ma’am. Just a girl.”

The woman’s legs seemed to lose muscle, she began to shake and then collapsed to the ground her face in her hands. “My God, my God, I’m so sorry. So sorry,” she sobbed.

Aliyah knelt beside her with a feeling of wonder. Twice in just a couple of weeks she was at just the right place to help a stranger. When she was opening her mouth to speak she had no idea what was going to come flowing out.

The woman grasped her hand and squeezed it while she sobbed. Aliyah prayed silently for her and continued to kneel beside her. After awhile the woman let go of her hand and sat up.

“I’ve wasted so many years. So many. How could I have been such a fool, so blind? All those joyless years! All that anger and resentment. It became so that it was all I had, all I was, and now, now I’m just an empty, lonely old woman who has let her life pass her by. What now?” She did not direct that question to Aliyah but looked up into the sky as she spoke.

She focused on Aliyah and smiled gently. “You have a gift child. You said that we all have a purpose, well if helping lost people like me is your purpose you are truly blessed. Thank you. Never stop being a light, shine all over people child!” She stood then and wiped herself off. Aliyah stood with her.

“You should be going home now I suspect?”

Aliyah nodded understanding that the woman needed to be alone.

She grasped Aliyah’s hand and smiled. “Goodbye now.”

“Goodbye.”

She turned and looked once more at the grave stone. Martin Bernard Littleton, she didn’t even know the name of the woman, but it didn’t seem right to ask now.

As she walked back the way she came, she was filled with a sense of awe from a power that was way beyond her understanding, and a sense of peace that made it all perfectly right. She stretched a little by the road and headed for the park.

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