Sunflower December 4th, 2019
I was walking through the foggy, windy haze that marked the beginning of winter in Norcal when I passed my favorite tree. It felt like it had been there my whole life. I'd lived on the same street for 10 years and the huge, oak branches that stretched to the sky had been there the whole time. It was proud, and bold like I always wanted to be. Its branches grew long towards the evening sun but all I could think about were how big its roots must stretch under the earth to support such a grand exterior. it stood tall and proud on its empty lot filled with grass, through all the changes and tough times I had been through. I felt at that moment connected to the entire world through this one tree and suddenly, nothing seemed to matter so much, if only for a few seconds. I felt like I had roots made of something invisible that connected me to the earth and everyone else on it.
That evening I was listening to the song "More Than Words" by Carin Leon and I had just looked up the lyrics and started singing when I heard a whispered "beautiful" in my mind. A thought that was not my own. "Oh my god, I am going crazy again," I thought. Memories of my past psychosis flooded me and I immediately stopped singing and decided it was time for bed.
Xion December 4th, 2019
I was meditating when I heard the music, the voice of an angel singing in a foreign tongue but I knew what the words meant. That was a benefit of mind reading. She was singing a song about love.
I heard her raw voice echoing through my head, now empty of all thoughts besides pure wonder at the strange situation I was in. She sang "how easy it would be to show me how you feel. More than words, is all you have to do to make it real". Who was this alien creature with the mental capacity to project her inner voice across a universe to me, and the strength to break through the many barriers around my mind ...
She must be very powerful if I could hear her all the way out here on the planet Xion, hidden from less advanced civilizations. I rose from my meditation and called my right-hand man Xilion. "did you hear that voice just now?" I asked.
"No," he reassured. He looked concerned and I felt bad for having asked. Xilion was a goofball, sweet-tempered (most of the time), and one of the smartest technological scientists in the galaxy but he worried easily. If someone had broken through my mental barriers he would immediately assume it was an attack and freak out. It was his job to protect me after all. I wasn't sure what in the universe had caused the connection with this girl but somehow I knew it wasn't an attack and I secretly hoped it wasn't a one-time thing.
I should have been concerned about this intrusion in my brain, but a part of me wanted to listen closely to more of her songs. The raw emotion in her voice called to something deep inside me, feelings I'd learned to ignore. "Xilion, we are going somewhere," I shouted, more aggressively than I meant to.
"Should I bring the guns, sir?'' my long-time friend joked.
``Always the joker."
"You sounded upset."
"No, we are going to see the monks." He looked shocked, rightfully so. I wasn't a spiritual person and I avoided them at all costs.
The monk's sanctuary was quiet, just like I thought it would be. It was peaceful but I was not, in my head a million thoughts were swimming. When we got to the receiving room at the end of the huge, pillar-filled hallway, there was an old monk slouching in his chair. He straightened when he saw me "I know why you are here. Follow me please." I followed like I was told and I was led to a room, this one bigger than the last and filled with activity.
This room was a huge projection of the universe made out of tiny swirling, moving, blue lights. All around was the strange dichotomous mix of monks meditating and people in the middle doing work on computers. Somehow this mix kept the projection up to date.
"So, who is this girl I keep hearing in my head?" I asked, speaking for the first time out loud since I got there and looking at Xilion. I knew he was frustrated not being able to hear us and know what was going on and I wanted him to understand what was going on.
"Well... She is from a planet here, called Earth." he pointed to a place on the swirling vortex of lights, " The dominant species there is entering the very beginnings of stage 2 so we have been keeping a very close eye on them.The truth is, just like how we don't understand the epidemic of disconnection from the universe here on our planet we also don't understand how she is so connected that she can tap into your mind. Maybe this connection of yours can be of some use to us in solving the epidemic. If we can figure out how she, a human, managed to do it then we can certainly help our people do the same." The thought that this connection in my brain would be exploited for some political gains unsettled me for some reason.
He pulled up a file on a floating screen and for the first time I got to see the face of a girl very similar to our species but decidedly different in a way that felt magnetic. She was radiantly smiling in the picture. She had blue eyes and dirty blonde hair and lips that were puckered just enough to taunt me to kiss them. Her body was filled with juicy curves and her hair curled in a wild untamed heap atop her head. She looked like a wild animal when compared to the neat, polished look of the women on my planet with their straight hair and stick-thin bodies. She was the opposite of everything I had been taught to like and yet there was something so deliciously wild and feminine about her, I just wanted to grab onto those luscious curves and never let go. Though the girl was obviously not Xionite, it didn't stop the longing creeping up in my chest. Somehow I knew she was something greater than just a possible solution to our epidemic and I was ready to, for the first time in my life, pursue something I wanted.
Song by Sunflower, heard by Xion.
That summer when i learned to ride my bike
And i fell and broke the skin on my knee
Was it you who tripped my tires
Did you laugh or just watch and see me bleed
Little tree
How much you mean to me
