A Whole New Beginning Past lives are never something I thought about. My family wasn’t religious or spiritual at all. I’m a doctor, and immersed in the world of science. I’ve always been more of an agnostic about God than a believer or disbeliever. A week in the community has given me way more to think about than I ever thought there was. Not so much about God, but about past lives and the journey of the soul. Apparently, once upon a time, Michael and I were of another race. Our souls were that of Ancients. They are the beings that were created alongside Angels, out of the remnants of the universe. But, unlike Angels, Ancients were meant to protect the lives on life sustaining planets. They guided and protected. They were created in pairs. Yin and yang. They balanced each other and couldn’t survive without each other. I don’t know what planet Michael and I protected. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. But we were once Ancients and bound to each other as tightly as the atoms that we’re created of. War broke out in the cosmos. Many Ancients sacrificed their power and position to live more mortal type lives. They gave up everything they knew to survive. Michael and I in that time — known then as Eternity and Kindle — didn’t get a chance to sacrifice our powers. We were destroyed before we could escape to the world we’d been protecting. Everyone thought that we’d been lost forever. That our souls had been obliterated. Obviously, we weren’t though. It took hundreds of thousands of years for our souls to re-form strongly enough for us to be reborn. Once we were able to, we took the opportunity to be born into human lives. Right now I don’t know why we chose human when we could have chosen anything else in the universe. Maybe because Earth is the focal point of so much in the cosmos. Or maybe because we knew there would be others like us here eventually. I don’t know. But we came here, lived our lives, and found each other again just like we were meant to. If not for fate stepping in, Michael and I may have lived human lives until we died. But we were guided to the Wingrider community. That’s where Shadrik found us. Just a couple moments after our arrival, he arrived in the tiger sanctuary. He just appeared and scared the hell out of both of us. But then he explained who he was and who we really were. There’s a whole host of new things to discover about ourselves and each other now. New things to discover about the universe and our place in it. Sometimes it’s scary how things work out. I don’t believe in coincidence anymore. We’re here for a reason, now it’s just about figuring out why. Family — Of the Extended Sort Memories from past lives have started filtering in since Michael and I came tot he Wingrider community. Not memories from our lives AS ancients, but other lifetimes that we’ve had together. To my knowledge there’s only been two other lifetimes — one before we became Ancients and one after. But, during that third lifetime together, I was one of the illegitimate children of the King of Iconia. There were only two of us, and that was more than enough. But Tanith and me were lucky to have a mother who had the leverage to blackmail the King. She didn't use it to better her own standing or anything, but she did use it to better ours. She held what she had over our father’s head so that we would be sent to the best schools our world had to offer. She wanted us to be married to men of status. But it was the schooling that changed everything about my life, because that’s where I met my half sister, Susan Grianne. Susan was one of the five recognized Grianne children. Her identical twin sister, Sophie, knew about Tanith and me. Susan and Sophie were several years older than us, and Sophie did everything in her power to make sure that no one at school liked me. She started rumors and she told everyone anything she could to make me an outsider among our peers. Susan was the only person to ignore the rumors and make friends with me. She became friends with Tanith, too. It infuriated Sophie to no end. She didn’t want her sister spending time with their father’s “bastards.” There were several very public scenes between Sophie and me once I became friends with Susan. But Susan never walked away from our friendship. She treated me like an equal. More than that, I think we had the sisterly relationship that her and Sophie never had. That pissed Sophie off even more, I’m sure. When Susan decided that she was going to leave Iconia with the other separatists, I decided to go with them, too. Tanith and Caleb were also going, so I would have lost everyone important to me if I'd stayed. We moved to the neighboring planet of Altear to colonize it. That’s where I met Nicodemus’ best friend, Jonah. Nic was Susan’s bondmate. The reason she ultimately left the royal life on Iconia for the much harder life of a colonist on Altear. The six of us were close during the roughly 25,000 years we spent on Altear. It was a very long and happy life together. But, eventually, Jonah and I died. I don’t know how yet. The memories haven’t become clear on that score, and I haven’t asked Susan, Nic, Tanith, or Caleb for details. For me, it suffices to say that we died — and probably together. Recently, since coming to the community, those memories have been coming back and Susan has confirmed what I suspected as I remembered more. Sophie also realized who I was. She wasn’t happy about me being back in Susan’s life. Or that Susan and I have become friends again. Tanith is also back in my life. Once again, in some fashion, we're the identical twins we used to be. These relationships are still quite new, but I have an extended family now. So I’m making the most of what I have available to me. I love Susan and Tanith to death. I trust them completely. And I hope that the future has a lot of good memories for us in them. Unexpected Parenthood Michael and me weren’t expecting to have children any time soon. We’ve been enjoying getting to know each other without children. But something happened that changed our plans entirely. There are labs that are recreating long dead Wingriders. They’re also in the practice of creating lab born children from their subjects. Apparently, BioTech — one of the companies that’s been bringing back dead Wingriders and creating children from them — worked with the CIA to wipe our memories and then create a child from Michael and me. We don’t know how many children they’ve created from us, but one of them ended up on our front doorstep. Averi — the he’d of the Wingrider’s Obsidian Order — showed up on our front doorstep mid-February 2018, with a toddler in her arms. She said the child was biologically ours. She asked if we wanted to take her or not. Faced with an 18 month old in need of a family, we couldn’t say no. We took her and named her Haven Nicole Scofield. In the short time we talked to Averi , we found out that Haven was born on August 28, 2016. We weren't told what kind of experiment she was, but we know that they were attempting to create a child to use against us. After taking Haven, we also made it very clear to Averi that, should she come across any other children who were biologically ours, we didn’t want to know about them. We were unprepared to have one child, let alone a houseful of children. And only God knows how many little Michael's and Sara’s are out there in the world. With our genetic material, they could make as many as they want. Finding ourselves as parents to an 18 month old has been interesting. Haven is a beautiful child with Michael’s skin tone and my hazel eyes. She’s a smart child, although she doesn’t talk much. Just the occasional “mommy” or “daddy” Mostly she points at what she wants and grunts or cries for it. Caleb says there’s nothing wrong with her vocal chords, she’s just not ready to talk yet. She’s steady on her feet, but not interested in climbing things. Although she does like to run. And those little legs go so fast when they want to. I didn’t realize that a toddler could outrun an adult until we got Haven. So far things are going well. They’re fun and interesting, if not a bit stressful trying to parent for the first time in our lives. But she’s our daughter. We’ll do whatever we have to for her, no matter how stressful or hard. Just so long as Averi doesn’t bring us any more.
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