Yvette had a strange dream. Nicodemis wanted more and more of her presence lately, showing up on her phone or in her mind when she was least expecting him. Now he clearly haunted her dreams as well. Yvette had a single, vivid, terrifying memory from the dream. She is sitting on a great throne made of stone, wearing light Egyptian garments and thick golden bracelets, while a figure clad in black robe lays in front of her, with his black hood up, but still she knew who he is, begging for her, like for a Goddess, in a strange, ancient language which Yvette did not understand but the meaning, the obsession, the desire burned through them like the blaze of hot iron in a forbidden cellar workshop.
Grace left early morning, with a gentle kiss on the cheek. Yvette spent the rest of the day with taking a short hike around the lonely family house, sitting in the middle of the forest. She found a peaceful clearing and stood still under a great oak tree to meditate.
Her subconscious worked on her conversation with Grace last night. The world offers plenty but the challenge is to satisfy ones true desires. The wildflowers need sunlight, water, soil around their roots and bees to help them in reproduction. These are their true desires. The wildflower knows this, and acts accordingly. But the wildflower, unlike us, knows nothing else, and can’t do anything else.
Sometimes we identify pleasure with physical, mental or even spiritual pain. Ecstasy is escapism. If one remains silent and pays attention to her innermost callings, the true desires, and answers to them, than the world around will change from hostile and frightening to caring and harmonic. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. The subject determines everything by classifying, categorizing, tagging things and events of the outside world. Yvette realized that this is what quantum consciousness must be about, something she is just scraping the surface of - maybe this will be the one real Truth she wanted to uncover since she started her journey to know more about the things people usually avoid.
Her one true desire is unconditional love. But is it something one can achieve? You can work on love, you can work towards love, but you can’t create love. Love is created by the Universe. One, two generations back, people loved each other, unconditionally, by decision. Young men and women, living in the villages and towns, did not have an elaborate process for dating each other for months or years, and they married young, especially women. Their love was sanctified by their children. After that, there was no place in their lives for anything else but unconditional love. One of the toughest challenges of the new generations is to find that trail again, to learn again how to trust universally and love unconditionally. Yvette realized that it is not up to her, it is simply beyond the capabilities of a single person. Unconditional love is created by the “Universe within oneself and the ability to love someone no matter what they don’t do or say” Self-less Love of another without expectation.
So, there is only as much as she can do except to continue to love and accept herself, be grateful for the love that presents itself and to quit obsessing over not knowing every little detail.
When she got back to the house, she spotted Jack’s car outside. Her heart pounded and she got wet, than immediately embarrassed. Her sexual willingness was significantly heightened since that night in front of her laptop, wearing stilettos. Since then, her fantasies about having sex with complete strangers returned being more vivid than ever. Doing it for real, that is something she never even considered, and deemed impure. Only those kinds of women would do such thing, her morals were higher, and she was not that easy. But now the rules and obligations she lived by earlier did not seem so important. Their lost their significance. Did they have any at all? Do these things exist for anything else, besides themselves? Aren’t they just like memes on the Internet, used again and again to describe this or that situation in life? For some, they are needed, for sure. Clear and simple rules, like electric fence for the sheep. After someone learns to trust her inner self, they lose their function. For making matters worse, Jack was wearing his working clothes, the classic grey bridled working trousers, and his million dollar smile above his well-built upper body. He sat in the driving seat of his old Land Rover, waving to the small figure appearing at the edge of the woods.
“Hey there, Yvette. I just saw your Audi in the driveway but no one answered the doorbell, I figured I wait a bit, maybe you return. Now I’m glad I did.”
“I’m glad too. Come in, I get you something hot. It’s a bit chilly now.”
“Nah, thanks a lot, but actually I’m on my shift and I got some addresses. I just thought I drop by and tell you about the prints.”
“The… prints?”
“Yes. You know, the letter you gave me?”
“Oh! Sure. Those… fingerprints.”
“Yeah, well, it worked out fine, my cousin, that geeky little devil got the pattern in no time with his toy set. Actually, you don’t really need much else than a little powder and a thin brush. Now, thing is, he has been playing investigator since he was like, four. It means he took the fingerprints of basically everyone who ever visited their house. I was a kid back then, I remember, he even took prints from the postman, Mr. Valdez. It was so embarrassing. My auntie was always turning red like a tomato when Jimmy ran to the next guest with the ink cushion and the paper. Well I knew this, but it still just blew my mind when he started to go through his collection. It was insane. He has literally hundreds of prints there! He is 14 now, and he took prints from everyone who got to their place in the last ten years! And since his mom, my auntie Rachel is a teacher and there are always kids coming to study with her… and Uncle Jamie has these big board game parties… there’s hardly a living soul in Ten Oaks who did not turn up in their house at least once, through all these years. Well, anyway, sorry to hold you up, Yvette. Thing is, he got the print. Jimmy identified the fingerprint. He had it.”
“Are you...serious? Wow.” Yvette did not know if she was amazingly entertained or shivering in fear. The story was completely weird.
“Yeah. Now, what I wanna say is… it was a teenager, and I’m sure he means no harm to you… kind of a loner… perhaps he spotted you somewhere and thinks he has fallen in love with you, which, I think, is easy to understand…” Jack threw a gleaning smile at Yvette again, and she blushed. She had no idea what to say.
“Who is he?” she pressed the words out somehow finally.
“So, you sure want to know? I mean, I did not think all this through very much but I don’t want the kid to get into any trouble… not him and not Jimmy…”
“Oh, of course! I want nothing like that either. I’m just… curious.” exclaimed Yvette “I would love to know more about this, but for sure, I don’t want to frighten the kid. You say he is a teenager?”
“Yep. 16 years old. Okay, his name is Kevin. He rarely leaves his room, playing on his computer all day, you know, nerdy kid. It’s hard to imagine him coming out here… but I saw the print myself, and well, it was similar. Same pattern, really, as far as I can say. Jimmy sat there, spent at least two hours while he went through his… freaking database, and then spent another half hour to make sure those are the same prints. They are. If it’s not him, well, that would be… well, that can’t be
Yvette did not know what to think of all this, while she stood at the gate, watching the off road vehicle disappear in the corner of the road leading down towards the town.