Parting the Veils, Book One
Epic Fantasy / Visionary Fiction / Magical Realism
Date Published: 04-19-2025
Colleen Addison fears that the messages she receives from a place called Ophia prove she’s losing her mind. As she grieves for her lost twin sister, Earth’s civilizations, divorced from magic and wonder, crumble.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Partition, Esperidi Mon-Sequana discovers she’s the last surviving Sophryne, a Wakeful Dreamer cast adrift as Ophia convulses beneath the weight of atrocities done to Her, spilling Her anguish in fire and floods.
With naught but dreams and waking omens to guide her, Esperidi ventures across a ravaged land where marauders are a law unto themselves, and the Shetain priesthood demands that Ophia’s children appease the Rupture with penance and blood.
Lost and bereaved, Colleen and Esperidi reach for hope and salvation beyond the camouflage Veils, unsuspecting of the ties that bind them across lifetimes and worlds…
Excerpt
The sum of our dreams can be strung into a prop circle, casting our life journeys in the light of a stage production. Within such a play, we may see aspects of the plot that eluded us while we were identified with our roles within that drama. How many times have I witnessed this? The audience yells at the speaker on the stage, trying to awaken him or her to some crucial fact, despite knowing that such a ruckus can never alter the story’s trajectory.
The spectators can't help themselves.
I hope you’ll forgive me for all this dramatist’s jargon. I was—am—a man of the stage, and I speak as my nature and training lean. And I’ve been conditioned by my tenure as a Sophryne, a Wakeful Dreamer. There are times—particularly during historical moments of great unrest, tension, and change—when the dreams of a multitude coincide, creating an even larger, overarching narrative.
I call that narrative living theater. Many others refer to it as myth.
And perhaps (partly) because I'm accustomed to blurring the distinctions between "dream" and "reality," I've been asked to narrate—as concisely as possible—my people’s most beloved myth: "The Twin Souls and the Parting of the Veils."
Within the context of this tale, the lines between dreams and reality are sometimes in stark contrast and sometimes scarcely discernible. On occasion, I daresay, they even seem to trade places. I've heard this is often a characteristic of twins. Who could resist the temptation to at least try it, to explore—to borrow a phrase from Colleen Addison's world—"how the other half lives"?
For art and dreams are life's twin blessings.
Those not native to my home world of Ophia, who share Colleen's points of reference more intimately than mine, might feel that some information about my people, the Shaini, and the origins of our most revered teachers, the Sophryne, might be in order.
Ah, but I ought rather try and catch a golden mahseer with my bare hands, were I currently possessed of fleshy hands, than try to satisfy this demand. You see, little history survives from our earliest ages. Only the most nebulous clues, clothed in symbolism, are preserved in oral traditions. That's because time itself was (is) malleable. Many possible paths were explored. Each of these, in turn, thrust roots into their own “pasts” and “futures.”
During those earliest epochs, the Shaini tangibly felt and participated in Sorsajna, the fire of Creation. Later, when we no longer felt Sorsajna in the pit of our being, our Speakers, the Sophryne, were obliged to find more demonstrable ways to evoke its essence. They had to almost confound and beguile the minds of their kindred in the hopes of awakening them to old inner knowledge.
They reminded us of magical inner movements we felt divorced from in waking. This was the birth of art and drama—and language itself—arising alongside the dreaming life of humankind. Primitive peoples, like the Oskwai tribes you'll hear about, could gesture towards objects in their physical world. But for those more intangible feelings of possibility, magic, and wonder that dreams awaken in us, words were needed.
How else could that wonder be shared when it couldn't be related to anything in one’s surroundings?
And so we early humans tried to convey what we'd experienced in our sleep-time excursions using sounds, gestures, and pantomime. Once upon a time, we'd inhabited a living dream. Then, suddenly, we were Ophia-bound, entrenched in material bodies, and subjected to the laws of Space and Time. We clothed ourselves in flesh as Ophia clothed itself in ground.
And now we had to survive, to pluck Her fruits to sustain ourselves. Might humankind (Shaini or Oskwai) forget that the world's manifest beauty was a reflection, albeit a fractured one, of luminous Sorsajna, from which all existence flows? Could we retain the memory of our origins? These questions led to the birth of all the Sophryne arts, which reminded us of that boundless and nameless realm from which we emerged.
Thus, you’ll find little “hard history” here. We can only approach any version of truth by chasing the wind trails of our most venerated myths. But it’s empowering, methinks, to recall that we all participate in Creation. From the raw stuff of life, we bring forth forms that can be seen, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted. And sometimes, to our eternal enrichment, souls clothe themselves and walk among us to remind us of the dimensions from which we are (seemingly) sundered. The twins I spoke of were—are—two of the most renowned.
Such beings are naturally drawn to Sophrynism, to Wakeful Dreaming, a practice that straddles the lines between life and death, here and hereafter, time and eternity. Powerful Sophrynes can work such an effect upon the minds and souls of those with whom they come into contact that the recipients begin to break through the barriers of the world they know. They begin to perceive and respond to other realms of being. Such epiphanies can also penetrate the sense of separation that we often experience with one another.
A seemingly insurmountable gulf divided the sisters' respective worlds. They needed to experience, in their blessed, fragile bodies, that more pervasive separation I spoke of. Both worlds had lost their sense of magic, and our heroines, Colleen Addison and Esperidi Mon-Sequana, healers at heart for all eternity, instinctively looked for ways to patch the resulting rift. That search carried them through the heart of their mutual bereavement.
In the line of Ophia's tapestry, into which Esperidi became a vital thread, the Sophryne arts were perfected out of necessity. I know because I lived during that cruel and repressive era. It was perilous for any of us to speak our minds. We writhed within a spider's web, our every movement, word, and emotion sending tremors through its strands. To criticize the ruling body with even a whisper... One might as well trumpet protests to a lynch mob.
Such was life under the Cordonne and its Weaving.
Imagine the living conditions of the thousands of Shaini inhabiting Ophia during that age. I, Sanyori, spent my formative years beneath the Weaving's eyes. I knew my community’s quiet desperation. Our security came at too steep a price. But who among us would dare raise voices of dissent? The Weaving would expose us. Even plotting rebellion would alert the Cordonne. One could not even get aroused by the prospect of freedom.
What recourse had we?
Ah, but the Weaving, the chief instrument of the Cordonne’s control, was still a physical construct within a physical world. It could never reach its fingers into the dreaming dimension. And so it was there that we learned to awaken, congregate, and communicate freely.
We who escaped Old Ophia during its last days, its decaying days, planned our emancipation while we slept. Shadowy omens and premonitions illuminated our way, foreshadowing possible perils and treasures. Abandoning the social compass, we oriented ourselves around inner whispers and nudges. They helped us to regain our bearings when we'd lost sight of all shores.
That's how we came to etch the essential structure of this Sentient Library, where I now inscribe these words and struggle not to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility bequeathed upon me. I must remind myself that a living myth is created by all who partake in it. This relieves some of the burden. It soothes my stage jitters, so to speak.
The drama we call "Parting the Veils" touched upon many worlds, altering their mental landscape and changing their historical trajectory. Those reading this testimony with at least a partial knowledge of its underlying myth may grow restless at this juncture. "Yes: We know what the twins achieved in the end. They forged a pathway between the worlds, allowing each to recapture its sense of possibility and wonder. But what did they actually do?"
With that question, the road grows nebulous indeed. How does one recount the travels of two heroines who walked as much in their dreams as in waking? How does one do justice to the supporting cast—again, forgive my theater training—when many of them aspired towards the same thing?
Despite such daunting challenges, I've done my best to limn the journey of Esperidi Mon-Sequana and Colleen Addison and the forgotten art that united them, finally—at least, for long enough to alter the destinies of their respective worlds.
It isn't always comfortable reading. For many beings on both sides of the Partition, existence had grown unmistakably dark. Both worlds were purged in fire, floods, cyclones, and upheavals, whether one might interpret these in psychological or physical terms. And in the depths of their suffering, each world began to long, more and more, for the other.
Sarpienta’s fangs! If I persist like this, I'll likely be out of breath before I begin! But perhaps you can better understand my attachment to this story’s emotional sweep if you consider—and as you'll discover—that I participated in some of its unfolding events. By which I mean I lived them in a physical body.
Remember, always, that the distance between the worlds is, to awakened eyes, akin to the distance between our twins: no more than the breadth of a thought. Or, as my teacher once said, "Naught but a wisp of gossamer gown."
And here I shall sign off for now, consigning myself to an “omniscient narrator” role until more personal commentary might bring clarity. Enjoy this tale as it unfolds. Recognize yourself within its tapestry. If you did not partake in the epic described herein, to some extent or another, on Earth or Ophia, you would not be reading these words.
Sanyori Mon-Sequestra
In the Hereness and Nowness
The Sentient Library
About the Author. . .
Throughout my life's myriad twists and turns, one desire has always stayed strong in me: to write epic tales that illuminate the inner world of our souls. I write fiction that depicts the journey of self-discovery in a dramatic and emotionally cathartic way. I'm inspired by methods of inner exploration like dream-work and shamanism, wherein one takes an inward plunge and then shares the fruits of that deep descent with the wider community. That, to me, is the essence of what any art form is really about.
I think the artistic impulse takes it for granted that the universe is forever unfinished; we all have unique gifts that bring something to Creation that would not otherwise ever exist.
My inspirations/influences include writers like Jane Roberts, L. Frank Baum, Barbara Marciniak, Stephen R. Donaldson, Frank Herbert, Lewis Carroll, Jack Kerouac, and Robert E. Howard. Though I've enjoyed writing in many genres and styles, speculative fiction remains my biggest passion.
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