Part V: Eden (Prologue)

Derek wandered through the festival as if he had swallowed starlight and forgotten how to be merely human, with each step a dance between intention and surrender. The Spirit Guides tuned his senses like instruments finding their key: colors ignited, sounds sharpened, the world itself resonated in celestial frequencies as they guided him through Boulder’s Arts in the Park.

The air was perfumed with charred meat and pine sap, laced with the faint electricity of summer heat. Voices buzzed around him from stalls heavy with the clink of jewelry, the rustle of canvases, and the shimmer of gemstones in the sun. A guitar’s cry wept through the crowd, yet Derek barely heard it. His mind was elsewhere, attuned to the symphony of life in the stars, a music that tempered his restless soul.

The Guides had not first appeared in grand revelations but in night’s still chambers, those late-hour electronic music sessions that became unwitting rituals. As melodies and synths wove their spell, Derek’s affinity with the music grew so profound his heart swelled like the universe at first breath, light bursting into cosmic euphoria. In those moments, he felt them: the masculine, pulsing steady and warm like a heartbeat in stone; the feminine, mercury-cool, flowing with a warmth that carried no weight.

Now, moving in rhythm with their celestial chord, Derek followed a gravitational pull toward the canvas folds of an artist’s tent. Inside, walls bloomed with landscape photography: mountains shouldering the sky, deserts shimmering with the sun’s golden breath, ocean cliffs singing in the voices of the sea. His gaze drifted frame to frame until Eden blazed into view.

The photograph seized his breath, sending his heart into a stutter before it raced ahead. A dense forest cradled a waterfall spilling in silver ribbons down emerald-clad cliffs into a crystal pool. Mist lingered like the breath of angels, while light sifted through the canopy with an otherworldly glow, a scene fit for a fable.

The Columbia River Gorge. Pacific Northwest wilderness.

Awe deepened across Derek’s face. This wasn’t a mere fleeting desire. It was the cosmos leaning close, summoning his spirit to stand in its presence.

The calling blazed a fierce resolve beneath his ribs, drawing Derek beyond the festival grounds to Karinelyn’s home, where Zebulon’s presence hummed in the charged stillness of her sanctuary.

“You don’t have to go,” Karinelyn said, Zebulon’s wisdom flowing through her voice as she caught the fervor in Derek’s tone. Yet Derek confessed a burning pull toward the Columbia River Gorge, his voice carrying a trust that startled even him.

Karinelyn’s certainty wavered, unease flickering through her connection to the stars. “Something is going to happen on this trip,” she revealed, Zebulon’s ancient knowing heavy in her words.

Still, Derek’s resolve held firm, synchronized to the same celestial chord that had led him to Eden. Whatever awaited in the Gorge—beauty or fire—his spirit burned to answer its summons.

“Then Zebulon will accompany you,” Karinelyn voiced. And Derek’s restless soul found peace in knowing he would not walk alone as the path kindled beneath his feet.