Bearer of Light

Jojo was not about to let anyone steal the few moments she had left of her time on earth. Her first and last visit, she thought to herself knowingly. It was true that aliens of her status could pass through the universe without notice, tiny and unassuming, shape-shifting with the wind as easily as a chameleon did when brushed lightly on its spine.

If only Jojo did not have to bring the gift home to her beloved Guba, her mentor, and teacher in the other realm, she might be able to stay here on Earth, which had been her final destination before knowing she was being called back to serve.

It was not easy for Jojo as the last of the Grand Imperial Light Bearer of her world - for hers was one of time and vastness - spotted by galaxies and milky-ways stretching high and above the planets that dotted the blackness of outer-space like giant gumballs floating outside of their dispensing machine.

Guba had told Jojo that she would be ready to return from her adventure in learning about the rest of the world when she knew in her heart what to bring him as a gift from her journey.

Having discovered that she enjoyed fossils, she had imprinted on her light source a copy of a worm that had embedded itself in a piece of stone in the shape of a perfect circle. Jojo thought this to be the most unique preservation of a flesh body she had ever encountered. Knowing that Guba would also enjoy it she had preserved its image on a layer of her brainpan so that when she returned to Guba she could share it as a hologram.

Guba had been with Jojo since she had been a minute speck of light in her mother's arms - those that held her in their holographic embrace before Rehadna passed into another paradigm.

Redhadna had been Queen of the Light Bearers for many centuries and felt it time to bring a new leader into their realm. Her intentions were to create a new light - one with so much shine and purity that it would bring only the best out in other’s – wiping away the stains of perpetual dissatisfaction in flesh beings – while bringing about a transformation in the universe that would eliminate war, poverty, violence, and disease. This light was Jojo.

When Guba had been Jojo's age he too had shape-shifted through the world to explore the ways of other cultures in flesh and substance, learning that the one thing each culture had in common: they were all meant to be light beings from birth. Yet flesh and substance weighed them down causing lack and ill will amongst many – while others found themselves comfortable and thriving with no lack, yet ill will toward those with less.

This had confounded Guba and made him sad as he entered other souls to leave light only to be enmeshed in their heaviness. Still, as an Ambassador to the next generation of Grand Imperial Light Being's he had to be able to convey his experience before Jojo had gone on her shape-shift, so she too could learn the ways of the flesh and substance cultures.

Now Guba anticipated the day when Jojo would return to their realm to pass on her own light to the next generation. If anyone was ready to birth into their realm the inherited traits of Redhadna while maintaining her own sense of self, it was certainly Jojo.

Jojo had proven herself to be a lifter-up type of light being to the point of bringing others to exultation when they met her on the flesh and substance plain. There was something elegant and carefree in her presence, a trait that had not been in Redhadna who had been more orderly and stern, yet gentle and kind in her light essence – a balance for the age into which she had ruled. Then Jojo’s spirit had been created and in it, Guba found a unique persona that exchanged light for heaviness and could remain in this consciousness.

Jojo had moved into hundreds of flesh beings on her adventure and had been able to shift back to herself without any transference of heaviness – surely she was meant to become Queen after Rehadna.

Yet Jojo had confided in Guba that she was not ready to fully assume the reward of managing their universe. She felt that the magnitude of the experience was not her true purpose. Something had always bothered her about this exchange of light for light - as if one light must be snuffed out for another to keep their realm from becoming overcrowded. She often wondered who had created this concept and why it seemed to only apply to the realm of wholly light beings.

Jojo knew she had limited time in flesh-form, given that as a non-binary bodiless being she could flow into flesh bodies as she chose to. Not to change the body she inhabited – more to enhance the body and learn what it was like to live as a body-being.

In this instance, she had inhabited the body of a young man who was going blind. His time as a body being appeared to be neglected, given that he had lost much light in his life when he started to lose his eyesight. Jojo wondered if she might share some of her light and help him feel some comfort.

Entering him as he slept on an old divan near a broken down heater placed next to it for extra warmth in his squalid apartment, the young man shifted and groaned slightly as Jojo’s warmth penetrated his emaciated frame. Suddenly gaining a deep sense of peace, he fell into a slumber as he had not had in many months. He began to envision a long hallway that bore pictures of his life before and after his becoming blind. He found himself moving through the hallway, walking as if his body were no longer tired and careless in holding him up in it. He wanted to remain in this sense of freedom in his body, review his life in pictures, and move toward the light at the end of the hallway that warmed him all the way to his cerebral cortex.

The pictures represented the phases of his life that would always be remembered by those who knew him– all but one – for that picture had yet to transpire. This picture appeared hazily at the end of the hallway. Intentionally drifting away from this picture, he retreated backward realizing that he was not ready for an ending.

Jojo observed the young man as a part of his consciousness. She was taken with his memories and what seemed to be a life that most flesh beings would not aspire to – he was a loner, worked as an accountant, played the guitar, and when his sight had begun to go he had lost his job. He was 32, unmarried, and still in love with a female flesh bearer who had deserted him in his time of need. After her leaving, he had turned inward – away from his light – alone and going blind in a large city where one had to function sighted or move into that paradigm of companionship that held little promise unless it was paid for.

Jojo felt saddened inside of the young man, the first time she had experienced this emotion. She moved farther into him to become a central source of light in his mind, so she could imbue it with some spark before moving into his heart where she experienced his suffering in a deeper context. She intended to leave behind some sense of her presence so he would not feel so lonely.

Still deep in slumber on the divan, the young man held himself in sleep as if he were astral traveling while Jojo oriented from mind to reorient his heart. Giving herself in light this way made her giddy as if this feeling should have a name. She imagined herself as a flesh-being by wrapping herself around the young man to comfort him as a female flesh-being might if she truly loved him. She felt him breathing gently now as if understanding that he would always have someone to rely on.

Gently moving out of his heart, she flitted to the window sill where she gazed at him as if he had been her lover for a lifetime. She felt connected in a way that made her want to remain in flesh for his sake – to care for him, nurture him, and help him to find his true purpose.

Slowly the young man stirred and opened his eyes. While his vision remained cloudy he sensed that the room was filled with an energy he had only felt on the day of his birth – that feeling of passing out of a safe cocoon into a new adventure. He was not afraid. He was anxious to move into this new place.

Getting up from the divan, he made his way around furniture, piles of clothing, and beer bottles that were strewn around the room until he reached a small kitchenette behind a dirty curtain. He ran the tap water and realized that he was thirstier for water than he had been in some time. He also wanted fresh air, so much so that he flung open each window in his tiny apartment to accommodate the cool breeze that blew in from the park across from his building. He could hear the sound of children playing and sensed that it had just rained since the air smelled clean and uncomplicated with odors.

Leaning out of the window slightly, he heard a voice whisper – Joey, Joey come out and play. Joey had been his childhood name, short for Joseph which he had used more and more as he had become an adult.

Feeling very warm suddenly he leaned into the refreshing breeze that brushed his skin as he relaxed his eyelids against the greyish pink light of the late afternoon. His pale brownish hair moved in the breeze across his sweaty brow as his equally pale green eyes appeared to gleam with a knowing that all of the negative he had gone through recently was going to end soon and that his life would be a unique experience from this point on, one filled with grace and selflessness, for he too understood that in his being morose he had failed to remember others in worse circumstances.

Jojo could not move from where she sat on the windowsill – transfixed by this boyish man who had a similar name as hers – this handsome loner who understood he had transcended something awful for some greater purpose. Never dreaming that she would realize this in her own light lifetime – Jojo knew instantly as she watched the young man that she would never return to her realm. She had found her source of the divine that was true love.

To love and be loved as light and as flesh. She wanted to bind into him again to let him know she was there and how much she desired to make him well and feel comforted. Flitting away from the windowsill she danced lightly before his eyes turning herself into sparkles against the fading daylight as the sun went down behind the park.

The young man stood quietly, reaching his hands out as if knowing Jojo was there. Placing his palms in a cuplike fashion, she allowed herself to sit in them.

Here in this flesh and substance realm where time moved meticulously and light rose and fell in 12-hour cycles, Jojo placed the image of the perfectly round fossil worm into a tiny holograph chip that would wing its way across universes to deliver its message. As swiftly as she had imported the image from her mind to her chip she let it drift out of her tiny fingers until it faded into the hologram that would be forwarded to Guba with her message that she was not returning to their realm.

Jojo’s home would be here with this young man. For in sharing her true spark with another she now found herself filled with even greater light. And here is where she longed to remain.