Where to Begin?
I’d been away.
I don’t know when it is but I do know where I am.
I’m home now.
Zephrallezonn’s Retreat is my home. It always has been and will always be my home, and was…even before I knew it existed. I did have a life before I saw the House and my world changed but that time seems to exist only in memory, and seems to be a little harder to remember…as though the memories actually belonged to somebody else.
My journey to this particular moment in time, fluid though this precise moment is, has been…interesting…to say the least.
I’ve moved from existing in an Age of Doubt and Uncertainty to living in an Age of Knowledge and Power. I now have all the time in the Nine Dimensions to explore. Three Realms and nine inter-woven time zones to discover.
Reality is a moving target that can be so slippery, and knowing that elusive fact has equipped me with the strength to make the most of every moment…
I never could’ve predicted what might’ve happened.
I couldn’t have predicted anything.
Now I can control what will happen.
My name is Steven Winterkill.
I used to be a musician. I played bass guitar with a band called The Citizens Of Eternity. Some people loved our music. There were a lot of people who had never heard of us. Our fans probably miss us. For everybody else life has continued without change, unaffected by our lengthy career and eventual demise.
I used to have a family. There was a fire. I miss them more with every passing moment but their energy will be with me forever. They’re a part of me though we’re apart now. I accept that now but I was lost for a long time.
I almost chose not to continue living but finally decided I had too much living left within me. There was too much I hadn’t done and too many things I still had to do…and I had to keep the memory of my lovely family alive.
In time I’d learnt that some endings are truly (and eventually) new beginnings…
Now I have a different family, a family from before my personal past.
They’re very different. I’m learning a little more about them every day.
I’m not the man I used to be. I look different and, far more importantly, I think in different ways to how I once did.
I’m definitely a changed man. Scarred and detached…definitely changed.
I’m more than I once was.
You wouldn’t believe what I can do now. The power beneath Green Hill flows through me.
I’m in control of all of it.
Months pass like days on Green Hill.
Hours pass like days in Zephrallezonn’s Retreat.
Time is different here.
All the clocks stopped long ago at twenty-four minutes to seven. It took me a few weeks to realise the significance of that time.
Sometimes if the sun shines in my eyes I can’t see anything. Fortunately the sun rarely seems to shine on Green Hill so I can always see everything…everything right across the Nine Dimensions. My horizons have been expanded and I can see into different worlds and different times.
I can see through the rain, through the mist, through the clouds that seem to settle over the House, through the walls of the Retreat, through the void, through the darkness…into the light (but not the sunlight) of this Age of Knowledge and Power.
My power illuminates all around me…my light shines throughout.
I can see the multi-coloured flames flickering along my scarred arms and over my damaged hands when I use that power. The flames have no heat. The fire that took my family from me burned my arms, hands, and face but I no longer fear fire as I once did.
My spirit has been ignited by what lies beneath Green Hill, by what flows through me, by what is now mine. The power has healed so much about me that had been damaged by my past.
I was so damaged.
Broken.
Empty.
Now I’m filled with the light.
I can’t change what has happened but I can change what will happen.
I can control the present and the future is mine.
The infinite possibilities within every moment are mine to explore and exploit.
My journey along the Healing Road to this precise moment (brief though it is) has been long and involved. I’ve learnt so many things I would never have discovered if my journey had been different or if circumstances hadn't compelled me to take that first step on the road to now.
The pain and loss I’d endured had taught me to appreciate my life in ways I never needed to before. I had been complacent. I’d taken too much for granted. That attitude had led me to the Age of Uncertainty and Doubt when I was lost in the darkness of grief.
I’d had to rebuild myself after I rose, like a phoenix, from the ashes (literally) of my past.
My power illuminates everything around me and the shadows are also within my control.
I walk in the shadows created by my own light.
In the silence on Green Hill my head was filled with imagined and imaginary conversations, a running commentary on everything I’d done, was doing and was contemplating. And there was always the music…snippets of soundtrack sounds as though I was in a film of my life. Some of this music was spontaneously original, some of it reminded me of film music I’d heard before but most of it was simply stolen and edited in my imagination to fit the precise moments when it was being replayed.
I’m alone here but I’ll never have time to be lonely.
It has taken me some time to collect my thoughts. I’ve collected them from some interesting and unusual places. I’m still trying to understand exactly what they all actually mean. In time I hope to be able to share them with you. Perhaps you’ll understand them more quickly than I can…perhaps they’ll make more sense to you than they do, at this moment, to me. Our journey into the future is now a shared one, but to understand you’ll have to read what happened yesterday, and the day before that, and last week, and then you’ll see…I’m going to attempt to explain where I’ve been, and when.
It’s really hard to write about all of it. My thoughts are so random and jumbled, twisting and turning and changing as the light falls upon them in such a fluid way. The shadows within them and across them change their meaning and their appearance.
The experiences were real to me but sometimes, when I’ve read what I’ve written, I almost don’t believe what I’ve seen and felt. If I hadn’t lived it myself I don’t think I’d believe it.
So I’d understand if you dismissed my words as imaginative fiction.
The nature of my reality is different to yours…and this is the story of how it all began to change…