168:

Her reaction was... to melt.

He chuckled again. As if, in a way she couldn't help herself. And he liked that he elicited this reaction. It wasn't as simple as loosing oneself to a sexual passion or desire. No, Tracy wasn't offering and he wasn't pushing that way. Not at all.

It was the abandon of all that rigid conviction. When that other girl sometimes came out. The touch was simply a conduit, that brought it on. The personal acknowledgment that she needed others.... Him, she needed, or at least wanted.... Him.

Her hair tickled his face as a slight breeze chilled their faces. He turned and touched his nose to her neck, still warm, still protected by hair and her hat. "You need me." He said, and felt her reflexive swallow.

She knew what he meant, and often when he said it, she tried to clarify, but tonight he knew that she wasn't going to. That feeling of peaceful quiet was too encompassing. The first personality and the second, less well-known one, were in union tonight. A rare feeling.

"You need me." She answered instead catching him off guard. "You're working hard to reach the inner girl, but I'm sensing that inner guy you're hiding."

This was unchartered territory. She didn't usually dig into his psyche. So doing gave them too much togetherness, too much building, she had once told him, and her feelings for someone else were beyond what she wanted to build with him. It rankled a bit.

"You have personas as well."

Was that all? Everyone did. He told her so.

"Not everyone." She answered. "Most are simply self. Not attracted to, nor claiming any other motivation but their own. Experiences have molded them into opinions. But inside you... is a live thing, not attached to or responsive to... outside stimuli. There's a deeper core, isn't there, Blaze? Not knowing it bothers you."

He was following her.... But her words struck a chord he otherwise might have fought against. Self-image was his dictator most of the time. Anything else would be an acknowledgment of his lack of attention to who he really was inside. In a sense: a betrayal. He didn't want to face that. Had she faced it? Was that what he felt within her? Did she know?

"Betrayal." He said. It was the only word he latched on to in that diatribe inside.

He sensed her indrawn breath. She nodded.

It was forefront right now. He tightened his arms around her, not wanting to confront it without her protection. What lay at the inner core?

There was the outside stimuli.... He knew that, knew it was that way for everyone. Whatever was going on in a person's life at the moment, dictated who they thought they were as well. If he hung out with Tracy and the kids, he began to see himself in the role of brother, or father, or provider, or protector. He couldn't help it, and neither could anyone else. It was human nature, to be influenced by the most current stimuli. But he found himself, uncharacteristically attracted to it.

And by God.... It wasn't part of his life.

Or was it?

He shied away from it. Betrayal came from having lived a certain lifestyle all his life and now looking for something else.

Actually, the betrayal came from not exploring all possibilities or shunning traditional values when presented with them.

Could he accept that about himself?

"I don't believe in an afterlife that is anything but clouds and harps and everlasting bliss, or everlasting burning in hell. I don't believe that what we do here on this planet dictates in any way where we will go after this life, except really bad stuff like.... Murder and really bad violence. But I don't think that our language or our hobbies, or our sexual proclivity or our....Sabbath day activities are of any interest to a supreme being if there is one."

He rubbed her fingers on the post, kind of harshly as his thoughts were confused. "What if there is a God?"

Tracy hadn't followed his thoughts, but she shrugged anyway. "There is." She said.

"He doesn't care about Sunday's."

She shrugged. "If you believe he exists, then you believe that he has a purpose."

"I believe that he might have a purpose, but that it isn't to meddle in our lives or give us stupid mundane rules. We are to love each other, and do good things." This was said with a certain amount of sincerity coupled with smug awareness. He had been taught somewhere about God, and he was sure he was right, and all her little lifestyle eccentricities were a cultish waste of time.

"Maybe his purpose is to give us a chance to survive."

"What? Survive?"

"Like go beyond this existence."

"We will go on after this life. Of course, we will. This isn't all there is."

"To what? To sit on clouds and play harps?"

She'd read his mind.... Again. "What's wrong with that?"

"Well, I think you should try it, is all."

"Try it? I can't make myself sit on a cloud." He scoffed, and laughed at her.

"But you think God can. And that's what God wants out of you after he gave you this shit-hole life to live? To spend the rest of eternity on a cloud? Well, maybe so, a good place to isolate a bunch of people who don't know what they want out of life. So they can't just go off and create worlds or anything, they can't just have children, what would they do with them? Say, okay kids go down and be alone, no direction, we didn't believe in directions ourselves. You won't be able to play piano, or sing, but maybe without any help at all, you'll suddenly develop harp skills and anti-gravity ability, but not anything else, because you won't be able to focus, no direction, see?"

"I don't follow you." He said very softly, trying to understand her outburst, wanting with all that inner core to get it.

She turned in his arms, and he let them fall to his side. She cupped his cheeks as if trying to make him understand her, her eyes sparkled in the dim starlight. He realized that they were full of tears.

"God hopes that you will want more than to sit on a cloud, son. He wants you to picture eternity playing a harp and decide that might be a bit boring. He wants you to figure out that he put parents and children here, in the order they are in, parents and children.... Blaze, there's no other way to get here, you have to be born, you can't do anything about it, you have to have a parent, a father. That's what we call a God-Given fact. You have to accept it the way it is, mankind can't mess that one up, they haven't yet figured out how to put a spirit into a body without a father and a mother." A single tear stain suddenly sparkled along her cheek, but she didn't wipe it, she smiled. "And hopefully you will have the desire to be like him."

"Be like him." He repeated.

"Well, he had kids..... he wants us to have families too. He made worlds... he wants us to be able to make worlds as well." She was staring at him frankly. "Those of his children who choose to that is. He would like for all of his children to choose to be like him, but not all of them will. So, it makes sense, he gave those of his children who want to be like him rules, and guidelines and tests and trials, and all kinds of things to help them.... Become like him. Really they have the potential, you sense that, don't you? They just have to prove themselves to themselves and then to him, so he can give them this gift of...."

"Kids and worlds." He said, and she could hear the disbelief.

"It's called eternal life." She said and dropped her hands.

*****