Chapter 13

Time is joy

«NELLIO! NELLIO!»

Nellio jumped with surprise.

And for the winged Eolis, this is not just a saying.

It was the darkest hour of the Aeolian night, the most conducive of the mysteries.

«NELLIO! Nellio!»

Nellio sat up in his bed and listened with all his inner ear, trembling. He never expected to hear her so soon. It was her, beyond any doubt, her voice sounded broken, but it was Aurora.

Nellio was still inhabiting his pyramid; given his exceptional situation, he had been installed an electric lighting, powered by the sun. He seldom used it, preferring the living iridescence of the light-flowers, but at this hour they were exhausted, and he rushed on the dimmer. He started worshipping the image of his beloved, so beautifully painted.

«Nellio! Nellio...»

Already her voice was fading away, resonating as in a gloomy, icy and lonely suburb. Poor Aurora! She had to provide a considerable effort to raise her vibrations at the level of Nellio, and already she was going down inexorably. He tried to catch her, but in vain. The voice disappeared. Then a big cloud passed into Nellio's inner world. We, in his place, would have cried our all our tears, but the Eoli was simply prostrate.

Milareva entered.

If we could call this to enter. Nellio, despites his kind of anaesthesia, did not lost his eoli wit. Anthelm also guessed something. So, one evening where Milareva was likely to come, the two fellows had unwound the silk of an abandoned cocoon, and had set the gossamer wires around the door of the pyramid, being careful not to emit any thinking about this. Difficult task for two eolis, so deeply dedicated to what they were doing, but they managed to do it. Milareva went, not this evening, but the next night. Only the wire through the door was broken. Even while landing very near, she normally had to break some others. Probably Milareva noticed the thing, as from the next visit she did not attempted to pass by the door to do like the other eolis. So she very naturally took the habit to materialise herself right into Nellio's house.

So, when I say she entered, this means that first her ineffable vibration became perceptible, from thoughtfulness, then that her diaphanous body became progressively visible into the room, just in front of Nellio, first a mere shining white haze, then getting more and more concrete, while her powerful and infinitely good willed vibration took all its moving intensity...

She never gave any hint of reprobation of being discovered. This would totally mismatch her eternal bliss. Simply she had no longer any reason to hide this to Nellio, as he knew. She avoided any spectacular demonstrations of her strange powers, from a kind of modesty, from consideration toward the other Eolis, from respect toward the Plan of Aeoliah which did not used this. Milareva was really a soul of the highest levels, inconceivable for us. Her mere presence was transfiguring everything. Her body seemed made of impalpable light, yet it was much intensely warmer and present than the trite matter of which our body are so-so made of. By the only purity of her creative energy, she was mastering matter and space...

Milareva went at times, where Nellio needed it, to give him tenderness and life, that even the strange machines concealed into the heart of his pyramid could not perfectly imitate. The Eolis are very cautious to avoid certain gestures out of the couples. The couple link has a vital importance for them, much more than with us. But Nellio was in an exceptional situation, and only Milareva could help him while controlling all the consequences.

Nellio went up only the next day at midday. This already attracted all the attention in the village, as he did not used to get up so late. At worse he missed the sunrise.

He spoke only a while before the evening meal, to Anthelm, who, hearing him, had much trouble keeping a natural countenance, so violent was his emotion.

The new of his contact with Aurora arouse a thunder of joy all along the village. But a very discreet thunder which immediately gathered all its sparkles: they should not trouble Nellio.

Aurora, their dear Aurora, that they all loved so much, so she was living, she was existing, she was thinking, somewhere, she was thinking at them. She tried to see them again. Certainly she was still very far, but the atrocious nothingness, the infinite void which so brutally separated them, was not invincible. So in the village they cried from happiness, they huddled all together, overcome with joy. And above all a mad hope was beginning to take shape.

Do you know, dear reader, that many time passed by in the Eoli village since the last chapter? Two centuries. Yes, two centuries. It is long, isn't it? But yet it is only a little part of an Eoli's life.

Earth had laboriously passed the Year Thousand. The Franc Empire had given way to different small and still unstable kingdoms, including France. Europe had entered the Middle Age, light and darkness inextricably intertwined. The East had given birth to Islam. The Himalayas had brought to life the fascinating Tibetan Wisdom. The eternal civilizations of China and India had continued as to themselves. Their astronomers observed the supernova which was to give the Crab Nebula. In America, the builders were feverishly building their temples on the mountains, while bison and caribou were still running free as the wind, for some more centuries. Earth was still rotating around its glittering galaxy of stars, the oceans were still foaming, the flowers to thrive, and people to willy nilly follow the path which leads them to their awakening.

Aeoliah continued to shine from its eternal happiness which failed only for Aurora. At Irizdar, in the pink cathedral, the ineffable and eternal music of the white calcite organ and harps of gold had never stopped. How many souls did it awakened and transported?

In the village, everything had changed, and nothing had changed. It was no longer the same trees, but still the mysterious mountain with a noble shape enchanted the evenings of the Eolis, with its red lantern quietly marking out the path of the infinite. Aeoliah had shuddered several times. Pink and apricot pumpkins, mauve moss, everything was gone, and everything was recreated just a little further. A rock had fallen near Alambo's home, who made a new shelter of it. The creek still gurgled, but completely different fishes were now living in. The young trees where the new Eolis had made their wings were now centenarians. Others no longer existed, and in their place new ones were stretching their juvenile boughs skyward.

Dear reader, stop a bit, and try to figure so long a time, so many happy smiles, so many sleepy good nights, so many pickaxe stokes, so many bursts of joy, so many caresses... Two centuries, even two centuries of Happiness, it is very long.

What to say for Nellio? Was he feeling this immensity of duration? Or was his partial anaesthesia keeping him free of this? When could he expect to see Aurora again? Nobody had the heart to ask him such question, not to re-open the wound in his heart.

Anyway the Cosmic Guards had left no place for illusions. They even not had any for themselves. Nellio's pyramid was in matt diamond, dyed in its volume by plays of optical interferences (as with butterfly wings), giving it its luminous and warm appearance. Doing so was like to foresee for one hundred thousand years. Happily Nellio did not noticed this: he would have had to rummage in the dustiest chemistry rolls in the darkest galleries of Irizdar, and this was not his thing, to Nellio.

If the plants and houses of the village had changed, its inhabitants were still the same as ever. They still were the merry Eolis, eternally passing from the crystalline laughter to the blissful happiness, from the merry activity to the most profound meditation under the starry sky, from the warm friendship to the sweet tenderness. They were still the Eolis who cherish their hairs without knowing each other, and that we hear sighing from happiness, at night, in their poetical and hilarious pumpkin houses, the crafty and resourceful Eolis, the ready to laugh Eolis but who always keep a pure vibration, strolling along the secret paths of their village with their irresistible immense flower hats, and suddenly they look back at you with their hair flying around and they throw you an wink which turns over your heart...

The hopelessly positive and optimistic Eolis, of whom Aurora's accident absolutely not breached their luminous confidence nor their contagious enthusiasm, despite the thorn it had planted in their hearts.

Certainly some Eolis of the village were gone, and new children were born. But all those we met were still here, and many still are today.

The soul first aid had of course continued. There had been a few accidents, similar to the one of Aurora. But none had its impact, thanks to the hard-won experience and powerful security organization. Supervisors were added near the group of the rescue workers, in case inopportune entities or incompetent souls would follow them. (This happened sometimes). Two or three rescuers, who had overestimated their forces, had to leave... To their regret, because, despite its dangers and inconveniences, the souls first aid was a great happiness, an always renewed joy. Certainly they often had to helplessly witness horrors and injustices, to wade in cesspools, certainly they were not always successful, but every help, every given hope, each liberated consciousness was for them a luminous and unforgettable grace. It was nothing but the law of Love which was fulfilled, this ineffable law which makes our happiness always come from the one we freely give to others. And Eolis, them, know to give without any calculation or interest. This would be fundamentally alien to their mentality. They know that Love given full-heartedly is the founding stone of happiness.

The souls first aid had become an integral part of the life of this village. Four independent and autonomous teams went out each every ten days, thus making a sortie every two or three nights. They could hardly do more, though, because then they took the risk of accumulating small amounts of the Earth aura that they brought back each time. So those who refused to join the souls first aid were still fulfilling the role of tanks of pure light, where the residual miasma dried up and disappeared. All the work and its participants were closely supervised by the Eolis of Irizdar and other still higher souls. Nothing was left to chance. Certainly rescuers were still free to do as they wished, according to their intuition or heart, but the slightest slip was immediately stopped and corrected. So the probability of an error or a new accident was very small.

In two centuries, the amount of work and good accomplished by the rescuers was huge: over ten thousand sorties. Certainly it was still very little, compared to all the accumulated evil, and in more little visible, so that there was not too many of the thousands of rescuers of the souls from all the planets.

It is rightly surprising to see the Eolis currently speaking of the things of evil, whereas previously they were even unaware of its existence. In fact the common language of Aeoliah, yet richer and more subtle than ours, has no word for the destructive and the evil, at most a few generic words or affixes for warning against imbalances or deficiencies. It is that Aeoliah is in the normal space, where the flawless play of the Divine Laws of Universal Love, Altruistic Help, Poetry and Harmony guarantees a pure happiness to all the beings, a total harmony where evil will never interfere in any way.

So that the soul rescuers had for speaking of the evil a special vocabulary, like a trade has its technical words. A vocabulary otherwise perfectly neutral and caring, non-judgmental and without any mockery. A conversation of the souls rescuers would be incomprehensible for an average Eoli. At first the whole village also learned that vocabulary, but still not to take the risk of spreading any miasma, they quickly used to surround with a kind of modesty the troubles they saw during the sorties, and not to talk outside of very closed technical discussions. Then the evil could not spread by media ballyhoo, and the good sun of Happiness continued to shine totally pure among the Eolis.

 

The soul first aid did not changed the appearance of the village, or the wonderful warm atmosphere which was prevailing. It helped to change some affinities, or to move friendships, but this is life.

There was still a consequence, with Milareva. She had to often be in the village to advise some, or to give strength to others. The evanescent pale ghost of the night, that the new Eolis remained forty years without seeing, had become a familiar figure, apparently made of as warm and firm flesh than any other Eoline. She restrained her strange gifts to remain a friend, a discreet presence, but vibrant and strong. In astral, she sometimes appeared to the rescuers as a snowflake of white light, floating and dancing, light as a bird feather, impalpable, or more often as a mere presence, devoid of any appearance, but diffusing a magical and steadfast energy, very welcome in some unsavoury situations. In her presence, all miasma, all ugliness disappeared, evaporated. The day in the village, she always dressed with her white gown, fringed with a bit of purple, and a little hat made of delicate rose petals, that Antonnafachto the hat farmer fetched who knows where. These petals, on her white curly hair with purple reflections, remained fresh and delicate for a long time, whereas normally they are dried (like our everlasting flowers) before making hats of them.

Milareva often came with Adenankar at lunch. She just did not eat. She spoke little in group, and when she was explaining something, it always was with simple phrases, poetry, round and complete like the body of a dolphin. Her voice was deep and oddly grave for so light an Eoline, this gentle bass which goes directly to the soul. She had not changed her eternal smile, her dreamy and ecstatic eyes, lost in the infinite, as if contemplating a wonderful sky beyond the physical world.

If she comes to talk to you, you must first be silent, her beside you, looking away, sometimes with a sigh of happiness, and her sweet breath and unique perfume. You, you are sewing at the light of a flower in your pumpkin, after the evening in the village, or some other activity which leaves the mind free. Milareva sways imperceptibly, and, at the right time from all eternity, with incredible softness, she told you what you wanted to know, or what she had to teach you in a few words. Then she looks at you, smiling like a lover, while you are ecstatic about this Wisdom, or your problem solved, dissolved, evaporated, as if it never existed. Then gradually her gaze turns back to the ineffable world she sees through you and into you. All wounds of soul or heart heal in her presence. Her sweetness, her silence, her slowness call the most powerful energies.

Why such beings as Milareva are not coming on our Earth? But they are there! And they make us nudges and winks: «Look how nice the real life is.» But often we do not see them, occupied as we are with nothing so luminous. If we see them, or only if we feel their aura, then it is for us one of those unforgettable moments, one of those ineffable revelations which all good willed people experience one day or another, more or less. In such wonderful moments, the miasma are swept off, and our whole being is receptive to the Truth, the Light of Life! But these moments are short, and we must eventually learn to find the thread by ourselves, and above all, live what we have learned with our heart, our feelings, and impose our will to the terrible inertia forces. So often we become discouraged, and we forget.

 

Meanwhile, the souls first aid had become the main activity of this village. Not that this situation arose any problem, certainly not, but such a specialization could not last long. It was not in the spirit of Aeoliah. The Eolis of the village felt, without still saying it openly, that the souls first aid had to be supported by more Eolis and Eolines, and thus shared with other villages. And Adenankar had other plans, which he began to allude to. He was waiting for three thousand years! The Eolis are patient, but still.

The resurgence of Aurora therefore fell at a turning point, where some things had to change. The most optimistic did not expected this reappearance for at least a thousand years away, and those who knew the diamond were much more circumspect. So it was a kind of pleasant shock. Even if the Aurora reintegration process would still last long, it was now underway. And for a Eoli, to see a work in progress which he cannot take part, it ITCHES him!!! Oh dear!! It is even almost the only way to annoy the Eolis. So naturally germinated the idea that the souls rescuers could help for the return of Aurora. Like all the necessary ideas, nobody remembered afterwards who had it the first, but it was an unstoppable logic: Who could be better placed than the Eolis to help a Eoline? Especially that, in the end, it was their fault.

And the uncompromising discipline of the souls first aid workers? Good in action. The Eolis remain essentially free to choose the purpose of their work. They were going to help who they wanted on Earth, and they freely discussed with the Gardeners of the Souls, who never refused their initiative without giving precise and detailed explanations.

The Cosmic Guardians did not manifested. Their Ethics allows them to intervene only in case of a problem. So, if we do not see them, the Cosmic Guards, it is that all is well, or, at least, the stupidity we are doing has not yet turned to a cataclysm. On the side of the Gardeners of the Souls, nor Adenankar neither Milareva or the other Eolis of Irizdar did not made any comments, about the project of the souls rescuers, when they heard of it. These harsh supervisors, who did not hesitate to reship you on your planet at the slightest failure, would they support the Aurora project, or will they oppose an absolute veto, as of a serious madness? The case was not at all obvious.

How these two groups, at the bottom so different, would manage to reconcile their opposite demands, Compassion for some, and Rigour for the others? Please read the following, dear readers, because it is in such situations that arise the deepest divorces.

The soul gardeners all went to the working meeting where the soul first aid workers had put the famous decision on the agenda. Some went as soon as the morning, from Irizdar or still further. They had spent the day on Adenankar's tree terrace, without letting out any clue about their intentions. In the evening they arrived, Ozoard leading with his violin of the great feasts, two times longer than him, the others bearing their bamboo flutes as much disproportionate, or various instruments. They spoke very late in the night, of everything except the Aurora project. They even not alluded about it. They sung and danced in a weird merriness while drinking fruit juices, sign of jubilation with the Eolis and Eolines. One could see Adenankar dancing into the fairy light of a circle of flowers, and even Milareva, more marvellous than ever, her dress hitched up to her thighs: Nobody, even not her, could resist the merry and vivacious violin of Ozoard, the genius troubadour with incendiary winks... Still later, when the light flowers were extinct, they snuggled up all together, whispering kind things, with the sound of a very gentle melody of flute floating on the blue silence of the night.

The decision to help Aurora was thus definitively sealed, from a common agreement, between the first aid workers and the soul Gardeners, without one word being said. The readers who expected some conflict or difficult negotiation are well made: the Eolis not having dualistic minds, there was nothing to reconcile.

The only question was to know how they would do it.