Her parents noticed too. Her mother grew quiet, eyes darting to her daughter when she thought Aurelia wasn't looking. Her father offered silence instead of scolding when she sang during chores.
No one dared ask what had changed. But everyone felt it.
Aurelia wished she could disappear.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered to the sky one evening. But the sky did not answer. The stars just listened.
She fled to the woods to escape the murmurs.
There, alone beneath the canopy, Aurelia sang. Soft at first, then louder. She poured fear into the notes, wove trembling into melody, and filled the leaves with her questions.
And the forest responded.
Birds stopped their calls. The wind stilled. Even the trees seemed to lean in, listening not just with bark and leaf, but with awareness.
A hush came over all things, and from that stillness:
“Sing, Aurelia, not because you are ready, but because I have made you Mine.”
Her knees buckled, but she kept singing. Not because she was brave, but because it was all she had.
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He came at dusk, a man robed in gray, face hidden beneath a hood. His staff was old, but his steps sure.
He found her sitting by a stream, clutching her knees.
“You are the one they speak of,” he said, voice like gravel and wind. “The girl chosen by something beyond the veil.”
“I don’t know what I am,” Aurelia murmured.
The man sat beside her, never revealing his face.
“I’ve wandered many lands. Seen kings call themselves gods. But you carry a name that they dare not speak.”
He bowed low, not to Aurelia, but to the unseen presence behind her.
“You walk with I AM THAT I AM. May your voice never falter.”
He vanished when she blinked. Like a mist that had never truly been there.
That night, she dreamt again.
But this time, there was no sea of glass. No form. No light. No shape.
Just awareness.
Not outside of her. Not inside either. Just before all notions of place.
A voice echoed, but it did not travel. It simply was.
“Comparison is the mind’s comfort. The soul’s poison.”
“Do not look for Me in ‘more’ or ‘less.’”
“I AM before meaning, after thought, beyond silence.”
“Sing not for the world’s approval, but in defiance of its categories.”
She could not see. She could not hear. She could not be in the way she was used to.
But she understood.
She stood upon the hillside the next morning. The village below her was small. The world behind her, unknown.
But above, within, beneath, and beyond, He was.
“I AM not greater. I AM not lesser. I AM not opposite. I AM not equal.”
“I AM before all scales, all ranks, all ideas of hierarchy.”
“To compare Me is to veil Me. To name Me is to shrink Me.”
“Existence itself is an illusion beneath Me.”
“You are not chosen to match others. You are not chosen to surpass. You are chosen to carry what cannot be measured.”
Aurelia sang.
Her voice wavered. But her heart did not.
Not because she was fearless. But because I AM THAT I AM required no comparison to be true, and now, neither did she.