Heed the call,
Not a minute later,
Or what was,
Will be no more!
I opened my eyes forcefully, staring around my bedroom in fear. The deep, baritone voice echoed in my head as the words from my daymare repeated over and over again. I shut one eye, groaned and sat up gently.
A headache was looming somewhere in my head, waiting for the right moment to break forth and likely break me down. My white cotton gown was soaked in sweat and fear.
Gail, Mia and I had been having this recurring dream for the past four months on every full moon. We have been best friends since childhood.
We noticed how different we were from the rest of our people but we have been told it's nothing. Nature delights in variety, that's why we look different. They say. My friends and I at the age of forty-six knew better. We felt knitted in body, soul and spirit. Could that be the cause of the dreams?
Another full moon is here. A warning to return "yonder to the beginning" came again. What does that mean? Why the three of us alone? Why this persistent call in the dreamland for us to return to a place we have never been to? Or have we?
We had sought the advice of our elders but they had no answer to our dilemma. They say there is no beginning elsewhere but here with them though we insist they are hiding something.
My family matriarch sternly warned us not to pursue the issue or raise it before the elders anymore. It could lead to our elimination.
I sighed and got up. A knock on the door and I knew who it was. Gail and Mia let themselves in as I joined them in the living room. "Another one eh?" I asked before they could say anything. Fear and fatigue were written on their faces. This sort of trauma takes its toll on a person.
Gail, the strong-willed and short-tempered one of the three of us nodded once and sat down, clearly exhausted. "Mika, I cannot continue like this," she blurted out, pointed at Mia and me. "We cannot keep this up. It's killing me!"
Mia, the gentlest and kind-hearted of us, sniffed. She may have cried before they came to my place. I walked to the kitchen to boil some water for tea.
"What can we do?" Mia asked, her soft voice like the barest whisper. "They won't listen to us."
"Then we make them listen this time!" Gail again.
"Let's take a deep breath, Gail", I suggested.
"No Mika!" She stood up, clearly agitated. "I have taken enough deep breaths to last a life time. This time around a woman came. With wings! And they tell us angels are extinct."
Mia gasped and quickly covered her mouth with her hands. She spoke through her hands. "Me too. She looked a lot like me. She told me we don't have any more time. C--"
"Come be a part of your tribe!" I finished her statement and they both stared at me. I stared back at them both. Seems we had the same dream again. The house was completely silent. I am sure if a pin dropped we would hear it.
"B-but they told us there was no other tribe," Mia said in contemplation, looking through me.
"They lied to us!" Gail replied. "They cut out our little feathers when we turned twenty and cauterized our backs!"
I could not sit still anymore. I started pacing because I was getting warm all over.
"Gail. Mia. It is time to find our people. We have stayed in this place long enough." I pronounced heatedly. "We are tired of being fed lies by the elders that there are no other tribes."
"How do we find the others?" Mia asked, really looking at me.
I paused for effect. "The same way the angel lady came to us."
I could feel the earth shake, my apartment trembled just as the sky turned grey then dark. Gail, Mia and I knit our hands together forming a circle as we rose into the sky from our bodies.
Mia looked down at her body, lying there on the floor one more time. I gazed up into the dark sky instead. A bright light shone through, clearing a path through the dark sky for us. A new world, our world awaits.
Then… We saw them… Angelic beings, just like us, shining brightly, welcoming us home.
I hope you enjoyed reading this story. I chose the first prompt - A conversation between three old friends where an old lie is revealed from the 50 Story Ideas Prompt for my story this week. Thank you.