It was like a glowing ember in my mind, Iwould do anything to escape the horrible pain. Escape: That’s whatI did; I escaped from my body to flee the unbearable pain. How? Howdidn’t matter, only the fact that by separating myself from myflesh, I was able to disassociate myself from the pain.
Yes. I was still myself, even though I wasseparate from myself. It sounded like bad Zen. Ok, so I’ve somehowmanaged to separate my mind or spirit from my flesh. Can I doanything like this? I looked around and saw that we were all in acave. Carl was tending to Mark, and Sara was now bandaging myhead.
Reaching out I found that I could ‘touch’ mybody mentally, so I probed my injuries. I could tell that althoughmy face looked like hell, the damage was actually minor. I checkedmy body from head to toe and it seemed that I was mostly intact.The various bruises and cuts seemed to glow a sickly orange to mypsychic sight. While I found it easy to mentally touch things, Iwas unable to affect anything physically.
I used that sight to quickly check on Markand the others and was relieved to see that nobody was badly hurt.I touched Mark’s awareness briefly and got an echo of his pain,similar to my own. The extreme agony that forced me to flee my bodymust have been caused by the psionic backlash of our destroyedshields.
I guess I couldn’t complain. Better to suffermental pain than to have been blown to pieces. Perhaps I could waitout the pain in my weird astral form. If so, would I be able tomerge back into my body? I had no answers. I needed answers. Thiswas all uncharted territory though, and it wasn’t like I could justGoogle it.
Sara and Carl began a conversation, and whileI could hear them, I couldn’t speak to them. Sara seemed to thinkthat after the blast, I was able to keep flying and bring everyoneup to her cave. That didn’t seem likely to me. When the explosionhit us, all I knew was pain and then darkness. With all the recentpractice I was getting pretty good at flying, but it still took alot of concentration. There was no way I could have lifted a singlepebble after that blast.
I had to do something. There were only somany times that I could look at us inside the cave, so I decided totake a look outside and see if I could spot anything. In my spiritform, it involved almost no effort to glide outside and lookaround. It must have been the middle of the night, but I could seeeverything as plain as day.
It wasn’t quite the same though. The rocksthat made up the cliff face were a dull blue, trees and plantsseemed a pale green, and living creatures glowed with a brightyellow aura. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It was like movingthrough a fairyland setting. Even the night time bugs flying aroundwere beautiful. They made it seem like I was flying amongst thestars.
I could clearly see two people in the treesnear the pool. They glowed brightly among the rocks and trees thatwould shelter them from normal sight. Sara should know about this.My weird out of body vision could beat the heck out of her mereeyeballs. I brought myself back into the cave in an instant andtried to communicate, but to no avail. After trying for a fewminutes, I gave up and steeled myself to try rejoining my body.
The pain was intense, but I strove to bearit. I opened my eyes and groaned.
“Linda, you’re awake!” Sara exclaimed,rushing quickly to my side. “How are ya doing, girl?”
“I’m cold, tired, and feel like my head isabout to explode.” I felt Mark beside me and placed my hand on hiswrist, taking comfort in his presence.
“Just try and relax. You had a nasty cut onyour head, but seem to be otherwise ok. What can you tell me aboutany other injuries that you have?”
I tried to answer her, but the pain was toomuch and I was overcome once again by the darkness.
I arose from the darkness slowly this time,and as I separated myself from the pain, I separated myself from mybody also. I had failed to get my message out, but was consoled bythe fact that I would eventually be able to rejoin my body. It wasonly a matter of time, but how much time did we really have?
There were people in the hills who weretrying to kill us. They had almost succeeded several times, and itdidn’t seem likely that they would give up any time soon. Severaltimes I tried to test the waters and rejoin with my body, but wasunable to regain control before the pain threatened to send me backinto darkness. All that I accomplished was to shuffle my bodyslightly before I was forced to retreat.
I finally decided that I needed to eitherstay in my body and deal with the pain, or stay out and wait for itto end. Trying to go back and forth was accomplishing nothing atthis point. Wanting to stay current on what was happening, I stayedastral for now. I would have to steel myself before rejoining and Ididn’t feel brave enough yet.
I went out for another scouting foray inorder to keep my mind occupied and when I returned, Mark wassitting up and talking. I was ecstatic! I tried sending him aloving message but it obviously got a busy signal, so to speak.Apparently I needed my mind to be inside my brain for that kind ofstuff.
Deciding not to press the issue, I listenedto their plan and figured that there was no rush for me to rejoin.I could take all day and night to let my physical mind heal. Iached to let them know that I was ok, but decided to stick with myplan and wait.
When the time came for them to leave, Iwatched our watchers closely. Any sign of them spotting Mark, and Iwould rejoin my body to warn them,
