Choros

“What? What was that sound? Who’s there?”

“I’m here. I’m here.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re where you need to be.”

“And where is that?”

“Home.”

A faint and tired warmth flitted around me. A hazy illumination in the distance clamored beyond my closed eyelids.

“Open your eyes now.”

“I can’t. I’m asleep.”

“In a way. Yes.”

“So this must be a dream then.”

A static laugh echoed from the voice, and a smile could be detected in their words.

“Open your eyes.”

Dull light skid across the crack in my eyelids. As I opened them more, a room was revealed to me, vaguely familiar. It was quite cold in comparison to my subconscious mind, or wherever I just was.

I could now see that the hazy illumination stood in front of a concave glass wall. I approached slowly with an eagerness beneath the soles of my bare feet. 

The room I crossed was shrouded in dark hues of grey and blue, but I could make out a simple couch and desk tucked away on the opposite wall as the window. Pictures and paintings of ancient things were hung neatly in a delicate pattern The only sources of light came from a gentle blaze outside and from the conglomerate luster I made my way to now.

I stopped behind the illumination and turned my eyes to the window it occupied itself with. Beyond it was a yawning darkness dotted by balls of spinning, sputtering gas and radiance, some being far too large and too close for comfort. 

“Where are we?” I asked again, hoping the quiver in my voice would invoke a slightly more specific answer.

“Do you not recognize your own night sky?”

The illumination was suddenly no longer a mess of incomprehensible light, but a lanky figure with a face. I looked to his eyes and saw the galaxy brewing in his pupils; bright blues and dimming purples in constant motion, growing and shrinking, birth and death. His nose was strong, mouth long, cheekbones high. The features of his face were not connected by skin, rather, bright electricity or something similar enough to it. Behind him curling tendrils of bright, brilliant white extended from his back like wings. It took many moments for my eyes to register all that I was seeing.

“I know you. From somewhere. How do I know you?”

He turned from me, a quiet smile fading on his lips. With his eyes fixed on the moving scene before us, he said to me, “My name is Choros.”

“Choros? Like the god of the stars?”

Thoughtful fingers folded behind his back as his eyebrows rose and fell and his head tilted to the side, all indicating that this is something he had heard before. A flash and a feeling of this happening many times before settled over me before he started to explain something I’m pretty sure I already knew.

“Not of the stars, no. I am the god of all space in between. The ocean of darkness that connects space and time and your concept of reality. That all the planets and beings and everything drifts in always. These stars- they live. Breathe. Create. Die. They are bred in this darkness and I simply tend to them. You once told me they are my flowers,” he snapped his fingers and at the same moment two stars on a crash course veered away from each other, avoiding collision, “and I am their gardener.”

A low vibration echoed through the room. An excited buzz ricocheted off the walls and up my arms and legs. I realized it was coming from outside.

“They’re talking. About you.”

I could only stare in disbelief and awe. They were…talking?

In an attempt to not have to think about talking stars and the logistics of that, I said, “So. A god? What are gods made out of anyways?”

He looked at me strangely. 

“I’m made of flesh and bone. Organs and stuff. What’s a god made out of?”

He nodded shortly. “Inside I have no such organs. I am but a cascading waterfall of thoughts and energy.”

“That’s it?”

“Of course not, but there are no words in the human language to describe the going ons of my being.”

In one fluid motion a dream I’ve had many times before filtered through my mind that bore a face strikingly similar to the one I look at now. My tired eyes fell to my feet. He’s been here. My whole life I’ve dreamt of him. And now here I am finally meeting him face to face.

“Not finally,” he smiled at his stars, “we’ve met. Many times. Those dreams you’ve had were not me visiting you, rather, they were you remembering our time together.”

His voice was heavy and thick like molten lava, yet it sifted through the air between us lightly like a feather stuck on the wind.

I sunk down, fingertips grazing the icy floor. I could hear him shifting, but I couldn’t look at him. Then, a pain too real to be a figment of my mind in a dream struck my cheek.

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up,” I pleaded with myself, bringing my hand to my face over and over again, each time more forceful than the last. 

“This is no dream.”

A hand with fingers hot and palms shockingly cold stopped me from harming myself anymore. Once he was sure I would give in, he let go and walked over to his simple couch. 

Behind a curtain of hair I muttered (though I'm sure I could have just thought it and it would have worked all the same), “Why am I here?”

“I suppose you decided you were ready.”

“That’s impossible. If this isn’t a dream then there’s no way on Earth I could have brought myself here.” I lifted my head to see him staring at me tragically.

“I said earlier that in a way you were asleep. What I meant by that is your physical body is safe and sound in your bed just like you left it when you went to sleep tonight. Your energy, your soul, your being, -whatever you would like to call it- is here with me.” 

“Are you saying I’m… astral projecting?”

“Not exactly, but if that is the term that will help you understand better, then yes. You are astral projecting.”

“But- okay. Even if that were true, why here? Why with a god that I didn’t even fully believe in until a few minutes ago?”

“You’ve never forgotten your way home.”

“Why do you keep saying that? ‘I’m home. I used to call you a gardener. That we’ve met before’? I feel like I would remember something like that.”

He gazed at a painting to his left- at the fading acrylic reflecting starlight, the shades of a blue sky folded over each other, each stroke distinct though not necessarily purposeful, a familiar ancient greek house placed neatly atop a short hill of greens and browns.

He did not take his eyes away from it when he breathed, “You remember. You remember your home.”

”What?“ A coil and a knot forged in my stomach at the sound of his desperate electric whisper, so I offered one of my own, “Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

Our eyes met. His shoulders, his chest held still while mine rose and fell in rhythm with my stuttering heart.

When he opened his mouth a wave of warmth followed. He spoke and I felt the weight of all the spaces in between as his words carried across them. “I met you in the mortal realm when I was only just a few centuries old; freshly forged by consciousness and energy and the gas of a dying star. I was not even a god yet, though the humans worshipped me as one. You yourself were only two lifetimes old-“

My body jolted straight even before I fully understood what he had just said. His eyes flickered back to me at the sudden movement. 

“Yes you have lived many lives. You are a very, very old soul. I have seen you take on many shapes, cultures, and personalities, and endeavors, but at your core you are the same. I can see it. Your energy. I can see you, and you are the same as always.”

“Are you telling me reincarnation is real?”

He nodded. His foot tapped and left ripples on the floor. I realized that he himself was not fully solid, rather an extension of all the spaces in between. I pushed myself up tentatively, far more cautious now that I was sure this was all real. I walked over to his simple couch and sat at the end of it.

Thousands of shared experiences settled on the cushions between us, yet I could not see them. I could not remember or feel them. So I remained so gently set on his simple couch, back straight, fingers fidgeting, wondering ‘why me?’ Why me?

“Our relationship changes over each lifetime you’ve lived. Most of the time, I will say, it has been what humans consider romantic. Sometimes we have only been friends, other times you have chosen to not see or interact with me at all. It all depends on what lesson you need to learn in your life. However,” he tried to hide a smile, “your overarching goal has remained the same, and you have been and done amazing things.”

A memory returns to me gently. I am asleep, half asleep, and a face is before me. I am dreaming and I am aware I am dreaming. Now for the first time since having this dream I am aware that the face I see is Choros’. He wears upturned lips, and they are moving, but I cannot hear what they say. It’s like I’m underwater. The only thing I can decipher is an echo and him whispering, “I’m so proud of you.”

“My overarching goal? What is it?”

“Naturally I could not tell you. I’m not even sure I understand it fully myself.”

His attention returned to the painting on his left, eyes swaying, foot dancing. 

“What is that?” 

“You painted this for me three lifetimes ago to show me your home. At this time, of course, photographs had not yet been invented,” a resigned pain fell over his face, “I have not seen you since then… until now.”

I turned away from him, the warm feeling returning. A love for me radiated off of him. It burrowed into my skin. Yet I felt guilt for these things I do not remember doing (or not doing) and for having his affection when I’ve done nothing to earn it.

I stood to walk over and survey his collection of paintings, some of women in fields of flowers, some of massacres, some of his fellow gods, and I asked him with a crack in my voice, “Why me?”

He made his way swiftly over to me and made me look into his galaxy eyes. A sound like the fading ticking of the hands of a clock settled over us, and he sighed briefly before continuing.

“You will never understand why my love for you has spanned thousands of years even if I explained it to you. What I do need you to understand, though, is that I do not want you to feel like you have to come back here. Humans' lives are like the phases of the moon. You constantly grow and change and so it would be cruel of me to expect your love simply because I’ve chosen to give mine unconditionally.”

The ticking intensified, climbing into my ears and shaking my core, all while the buzzing from the stars quieted. I suddenly felt an urgency with which I should pose my next question.

“Well how do I come back here? I- I don’t remember how. I don’t think I can- I-“

Before answering I could see his shoulders fall back and something that looked like a tear buzz and crackle down his cheek, a sigh of relief breaking his lips.

“Don’t worry. Anytime you want to come here I will bring you. And time is no object to me. If you want to see me in the middle of a conversation or before a test I can let you spend hours here and put you back as though no time has passed at all.”

I smiled knowingly, the ticking almost becoming unbearable, “But it’s different now because I brought myself here isn’t it?”

He nodded. 

“Your sun is rising now. Better get back before they notice you're missing.”

I stole one longing glance around the room that I’ve seen in my dreams, the stars waving goodbye, his face fizzing with light; so familiar, so tragic. He lifted a burning finger to my forehead, whispered something, and pushed. A swirling darkness from all the spaces in between helped me descend onto my home. When I awoke I had a startling realization- the culmination of all my dreams and all the experiences I can’t remember- my overarching purpose: Choros.