Midnight Rise

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. That was all I knew. That was all they told me. Now I know why. Such beauty is not to be described, but beheld. If not beheld, then felt. And oh, what a feeling it is.

Inhale. Exhale. Now look up. The clouds dance with an electric vigour, swaying with flamboyant flare; flickers of light too bright for the human eye to witness. They harness the spirits of the wind as they swirl in patterns of unfathomable complexity, leaving faint imprints of symbols and algorithms painted across the horizon that we study for the unlocking of divine knowledge. The clouds rumble with the rhythm of the rains and pour out with an expressive surge of raw emotion. What to us feels and sounds like chaos is in fact the highest expression of love. For the clouds and the sky are lovers. The clouds display the full capacity of their shapeless form, flaunting their skill and opening their heart to reveal the might of their design. The blushing sky turns a soft peach as she reciprocates, dancing along with subtle strokes of sensuality. She gleams with an orange hue as green astral lights ripple from the rapid movement of her feet. She is effortless in her grace; intricate in her magnetism. Her breath becomes dewy and humid as she glides on the atmosphere, dropping white petals in the breeze from the hem of her dress. She sweeps through the air as sweet doves sing her praises. Rejoice, oh blessed soul! The whole Earth vibrates at the sound of their dance!

I cling onto the imagery as I read the text over and over again, trying to envision what is impossible to truly encapsulate. An entire book filled with first-hand accounts, and I am yet to see this spectacle with my own naked eye? To us, the dance is a raging, unforgiving storm so powerful that we would perish in its presence and be ripped apart before we caught a mere glance. And yet there is a path. One through which we might reap the sweet fruit of such a phenomenon. Not many have the will to embark upon the treacherous journey of awakening, and yet I am convinced that my hunger can endure all. Two years ago, on my 17th birth moon, I came to the resolute decision that I must become Chosen - that I must see this dance for my self; behold the glory of the Higher Realms and receive the blessing of Ayè ~ the Creator of all things.

In spite of my determination, I am painfully aware that the Chosen are predominantly elders, and are extremely rare. To be Chosen is to be deemed worthy enough for the anointed gift of sight. They can stand beneath the dance without being crushed or blown in the winds and watch without being blinded by the light. They can even join in the ritual, their ears able to hear and understand the harmonic frequency of heaven’s choirs. The flow of their dance is said to be akin to water itself, and I have felt the ground shake with the earthy beat of their djembe drums, which are said to be made with bark from the Tree of Life itself. Many are brought to their knees in tearful praise from the sound of the ceremony alone, for it is common to hear echoes and whispers floating through the air during the dance, even in our places of hiding. It is a healing ceremony, which has allowed the Chosen to live for hundreds of years. They do not stand in the midst of mere rain and wind - they enter an environment of Living Water and the Breath of Life. I believe the dance is our gateway to eternity.

Some of the Chosen barely look human. Their lean build looks refined by fire, as strong as the finest gold. Their height gives them the stature of wise, sturdy trees. Indigo and ruby auras glow from beneath their mahogany skin, deepening the richness of their melanin which glistens as if imbued with precious, ancient jewels. You know when a Chosen walks by. They have the scent of Egyptian Jasmine and Butterfly bush blossom; of honey and cinnamon spice; of sandalwood incense and the citrus aroma of frankincense. They are clothed in white robes not made of anything on this Earth and their eyes glow with an ultra-violet hue. If you looked very closely, you would realise that they do not walk on ground, but merely create the illusion that they do. They float on an invisible surface, just above the ground, as if stepping on air itself, their feet too clean to step upon the dust of man. Only a small number of them still speak our language, for they communicate with a tongue we call Truth. I’ve read that each Chosen who speaks Truth is said to have unique sounds assigned to their voice, like an instrument handmade for their use. I have heard it spoken once only, filled with sounds I did not know a human mouth could make. I could not get the image and sound of rushing water out of my head for months afterwards.

When I was a child, I had my first encounter with a Chosen. It is not something you forget. Ever since, I have always aspired to be a translator for the Chosen of Cloud clan one day. I have been studying their written language in detail for 5 years now, and have only managed to learn the extent of their alphabet in that time. Each emblem alone contains an array of symbolic meanings and variations which hold contextual knowledge of past, present, and future all in one. The language is transcendent, being able to capture living memories as well as visions that have not yet come to pass. It is impossible to comprehend the entirety of their tongue, or express the full depth of their wisdom. Studying books and transcripts could never be enough. I must learn from the source.

Yet the escapism of my internal interests does not outweigh the extent of my outward responsibilities. For all of us who must continue with the mundane nature of everyday tasks, the Chosen have become like a story or myth ~ detached and distant from the realm of our lives. All the men of my lineage in the River clan were fishermen. My father has grown to hate the dance due to its effect on the waters, often transforming many of the fish into translucent crystal creatures that cannot be killed, let alone consumed. As a boy I would sit by the Elan river for hours, my eyes lighting up with curiosity and wonder at the miracle, burning with a passion for that which I was desperate to understand. Baba would smack me firmly enough to make me see the reality that this magical spell only made our job a lot harder. At times I pondered on whether this was Ayè’s way of maintaining the balance of nature, forcing us to retain gratitude for the morsels of fish we were rewarded with each day knowing we could not indulge ourselves in excessive gluttony. Baba never saw it that way. He saw it as a curse which festered both financially and physically. But he would rather let us starve than give up his work. Mama even suggested that we buy a farm instead, noticing that after months of ardent work in tough conditions, the fruit and vegetable farmers still benefited greatly from the ceremony when Harvest Season came, reaping magnificent fruit they never even sowed. Baba saw this suggestion as an insult. To him, this is our genetic purpose - our way of life. To abandon it would be to insult our ancestors. Much of my reading and studies of the ceremonies are done in secret. I can’t imagine how Baba would react if I told him of my desire to become Chosen. I can feel the bruises just thinking about it.

I reach forward and take a sip of my green rooibos tea. Satisfied, my eyes revert back to the translated description of the dance, stuck on the sentence: What to us feels and sounds like chaos is in fact the highest expression of love. I drop the book onto my desk, scratching the gaps between my fresh cornrows as I lean back with a wishful sigh. The life of the Chosen has always astounded me. It is so starkly different to mine. Many of them dwell in caves beneath the mountains, praying and chanting throughout the day, so sighting them is an uncommon occurrence. When midnight comes, they come out, and we must all remain inside, often in homemade bunkers or communal shelters. For we are not ordained to behold the beauty of the dance. Our daily lives are influenced by that which we cannot see for ourselves; that which is infinite, and immeasurably higher than us. And yet so many of us reject the knowledge of such truth. They say the dance is the ceremony of this New Age and will continue until the start of the next. Then the Holy Lights will decide a new form of communication with the world below; choreograph a new ceremony, a new performance for those who are chosen to behold it.

They say in the Age that came before us, many millenia ago, the only ordained witness was the One. A Messiah of sorts, who paved the way for our enlightenment. In His time, it was not a dance as it is now. It was a wedding. It happened only once in His Age. The ceremony was held at the peak of the highest mountain, Mount Elyon, where the Moon and Sun blew kisses at one another. They say this was the greatest of all ceremonies; that the laws of the universe were altered for the cause. Ancient books speak of how the gravity of the Earth itself shifted, that tides roared and the ground scorched as the celestial beings moved out of place to draw closer to one another. The people moved into deep underground tunnels and prayed in fear during the ceremony, many doubting that the One was the true light he appeared to be. He is said to have climbed the mountain to see, absorbing what they called ‘Shimmer’ on behalf of all the peoples of the Earth ~ an iridescent shower of stars described as “comet kisses” that rained down on the Earth for weeks on end. At the time, they had thought the world was ending. When they came out after 3 weeks of remaining underground, the One was nowhere to be found. The mountain was empty. Many scholars wrote of how new alien flowers of unimaginable colours had bloomed from the Earth’s charred red surface after the ceremony, their fragrance gifting hundreds with a sudden wave of revelation: that the One had ascended into the first form of Stardust ~ the purest essence of our life force, and that this signified the beginning of a New Age.

There are many stories, and many who believe them to be merely myths or half-truths, for they cannot believe in what they cannot see. In the oldest of books I’ve managed to find, they speak of an Age many millenia before the One, in which the ceremony took on the form of a sacred cleanse - a flood which would purify the spirits of those gifted with the ability to breathe underwater. It is hard to perceive the infinite wonders of the Higher Realms. There have been many clans before us, many Ages and many ceremonies. And yet we are here; by coincidence or by fate, we know not. What we do know is that we are walking where prophets once foretold, in an air that has travelled millenia to get here. My people live beneath the Dance of the Purple Clouds and the Blushing Sky. And though I still have not seen it in the flesh, the dance grows within me, like an ethereal flower that flourishes in my mind’s eye; a lens through which the world around me is made clear. I cannot unsee the glimpses in my dreams, nor unhear the echoes from the cave of my subconscious, repeating the words midnight rise. For although we live out our lives in the world of what we already know, each night we are reminded of the truth that arises beyond it - that we exist in a spell-binding, expansive eco-system of the highest universal frequency: that of Almighty Ayè.

“Akin!” Baba’s voice cuts through my thoughts and anchors me in the present as he calls my name. Without warning, the sound of his feet can be heard stomping up the stairs. I swiftly pack away my books and switch off my desk lamp, getting up before he reaches my door. As anticipated, he knocks only once before swinging open the door, “Oya! Wake up!”

I glance through my window and see dawn breaking. Having started my morning with my studies, with adequate time to be lost in the depths of my mind, I am not as reluctant to begin the labours of the day. I look back at Baba, wondering how he can look so unimpressed before the day has even begun. I chuckle to myself, throwing on a vest, “I was up already, Baba. Let’s go, sha.”