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The Confession of Muirgen Kai

“My life changed the moment a hand appeared, grasping for evidence of a world yet unseen. I expected a placenta.

I waded in a small pool within the Eden convent, in one of the small gardens outside an Elder sister’s cell. There shone an ancient pool fed by a hot spring from beneath the earth. I attended a panting woman who rested in the warm water for comfort. Her elbows steadied her on the stone steps of the pool while the rest of her body bobbed like an ancient sea creature. With a wail, the first child appeared. Torchlight danced across the surface of the garden pool and stars glared fearlessly overhead. Women in white robes, Maids, stood along the edges of the garden, murmuring in approval at the birth of a longed-for girl-child.

I cut the cord with ceremonial shears and handed the babe off to one of the other attendants, whose murmuring turned to the ancient lays, the songs of celebration. Soon the child, the next Matriarch of the religious order, cried from within the convent walls. The babe’s mother remained propped against the steps that led to the garden pool, the lower half of her body still lapped by the embrace of warm spring water, the worst of her labor past. I encouraged her to come further up from the water, onto a cool stone ledge surrounding the pool. “Bring more light,�� I called, expecting the placenta.

I didn’t expect a hand.

Fear for this unplanned babe gripped my heart. We never expected, never dreamed of a second child. I’d delivered babies in all circumstances in my travels, but birth within the convent walls remained a rare and carefully-choreographed event.

My first concern, however, was the hand. Babies should come head first. I began a healing song, a low humming, as I ran my hands across the mother’s protruding belly, trying to visualize the baby’s position.

I reached within the mother, searching for a head. The child wrapped its fingers around one of mine. The mother’s body shuddered with another contraction. Violet tufts of hair peaked through the perineum. I held the little hand in one of my own, to prevent the shoulder from coming through before the head. Confident there would be no tearing,I carefully delivered the head.

An awe descended the moment the infant’s hand touched mine. As an empath, I sensed her thoughts, her life-force, but more then that, the moment she grasped for my hand, I experienced something I’d never known before. In that brief moment, I fell to my knees under a heavy sense of destiny. I lifted my voice and prophesied.

I did not know which of the forgotten gods I spoke for, but I came undone.

Her small body slid out easily.

The woman standing above me frowned. How much had she heard? “You forget yourself. This child is not meant to be. Only one is necessary, one is customary. Two might tear our order apart.�� The Matriarch spoke from over my shoulder, inserting her will over my own with her mind, and I understood the true nature of her command.

“I don’t understand. This child has a destiny.��

“The first one will be the next Matriarch, and lead the Maids into the next generation. Our world is swiftly changing, Muirgen. Off-worlders pollute our skies once again, and many in the cities have abandoned the old paths. Now is not the time to disrupt, to change the way things always were. We will lose our place. This child is not needed, and is too powerful to live without the geis of a purpose. Return her to the Sea Gatherer.��

“I understand.�� I didn’t plan on doing what she commanded, this woman who did not realize the numa, the holiness of all life. Worries about our ocean world entering the Interplanetary Alliance and of the city being built to orbit our world were often spoken of in the villages. I imagined these same concerns weighed heavily on the old woman as well.

I cut the umbilical cord and placed the child in the basket that I had intended for the placenta. The Matriarch waited over me, holding me in a careful regard. How was I going to steal the child away from the convent? In the end, I was left with no choice. I sent her to sea in the reeds of a funeral basket, with prayers to the Sea Gatherer to guide her way. Surely the same spirit that overcame me at her birth hovered over the waters of Mir?

That night I dreamed. I rose before the sun, taking only my medical bag, and I ran. I ran as fast as my aged body would allow.

I ran until I found a son of the kingly line.��

a portion of the Confession of Muirgen Kai, left telepathically imprinted on an orb, found in Mir’s seas and sent by Pheenix to Princess Anahita Nereid Kai on the day of Lairdin Kai’s death.

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Long ago, a loving family member gave 13 year old me a book of scripts from the original series, birthing in me a love of Trek and all things sci-fi. By the time I was 15, I spoke fluent Klingon.

I can recognize now some of the reason I latched on to the Star Trek Universe. That was a hard time in my life, my family went through some difficult things. Kolinahr seemed a pretty attractive option to a teen dealing with overwhelming emotion. In time, the characters I identified with changed, though I never did see a reason to leave the Star trek universe behind.

This hasn’t been a bad thing. I recently earthed up some of the fan fictions I developed as a teen and reworked them in a universe of my own creation. I published my first book, Mir Maid, just a month ago, and it seems to be doing well. Some of the Star trek based��characters I invented during that time of my life were able to transcend teenage angst and even the universe of their birth.

Lately I’ve��been thinking��a lot about Star Trek, personality, and archetypes. What was it about certain characters that made us identify with them? What was it that made us love them? Is there a difference between the characters we are drawn to and the ones we identify with, and does that difference have anything to do with our own personality?

So, if you would be so kind, the link is to Survey Monkey and only has three questions. Will post again soon with the results.

Thanks

SJ Kimberly

Author of

So, what do I have in the works for the coming year? Glad you asked!

I am so excited about a rough draft I am working on now. The working title is “Jimmy Logan and the Lamplighter’s Curse��. It is a middle grade novel about a boy in a robot suit who perceives that his sea town is shrouded in a Mist, separating it from the rest of the world and dooming it to stagnation. After a vision of a fiery man in the rafters of his church, he discovers catacombs and the rich, turbulent history of his home, including the reason for the Mist. Can one boy save a town from an ancient curse?

The thing that excites me most about this story is that I will be collaborating with Summer Shank, a gifted artist, to bring my robot boy to life with her beautiful, quirky illustrations. I’m hoping to have a rough draft to Summer by the end of March, and begin the illustrating and editing process.

Two other projects slated for this year are the completion of a novella “The Magnificent Disruption of Shady Grove�� and the novel length sequel to Mir Maid, “Fraternity��.

Magnificent Disruption is a Mitford type story with supernatural elements. Fraternity will follow up where Mir Maid left off: with a Droid with multiple personalities, a space city in anarchy, and a Maid who is still finding her voice.

Follow me on my blog sjkimberly.wordpress.com for short stories, excerpts of works in progress and more!

When it came time to pick an Amazon category or two for Mir Maid, I had a difficult time. This story does not fall neatly into the category of “Christian fiction�� as we know it today. The name Jesus Christ is never mentioned.����Some of the characters use “bad�� language. There is sexual innuendo, drug use, human trafficking, and all of the characters are deeply flawed. There are no sermons, and some of the subject matter is quite dark. Yet, I will still call it Christian, and don’t plan on editing out the objectionable material any time soon.

Why Mir Maid is Christian fiction:

Because I am a Christian, and that influences everything I write.
It is Christian in the same way that Grimms original fairy tales were Christian. (Have you read them? I recommend spending a winter curled up with a good translation sometime). In Grimm’s tales,��bible all stars were given to showing up in the woods and teaching a naughty child a lesson or two. They were generally morality tales that relied heavily on the biblical allusion.
Because it is a redemption story. It is a story about a King and his Bride. The story of the King and His Bride is THE central theme of scripture.
I did include the requisite amount of cheesiness, but you have to wait for it till the end.
Mir Maid is much less shocking than the Old Testament passages it alludes to (Ezekial 16)
The history of the peoples in this story are written with a mind to biblical framework:

The universe of Mir Maid is one that I have been writing in for several years. It all started as a Christmas story, about how the star of Christmas was the last survivor of a dying world, singing over the earth in its salvation.

The next story I wrote explained how some of the descendants of Cain left earth before the flood, using technology given to them by the Nephilim. (The descendants of Cain lived very long lives and developed some amazing, biologically based technology of their own.) They settled on several different worlds. On a high gravity world, they grew to be the Paruud race. On the water world of Mir, they came to an uneasy peace with the unfallen race already occupying that worlds oceans.

In Kalendriel’s Song, occurring just before the Christmas story, we learn how the humans on Mir became increasingly warlike and corrupt. They eventually released a virus that threatened to wipe out both the dirt and water ��races. It is during this time that the Star Singer leaves Mir to witness the birth of Christ. Both races on Mir are saved and made into “One People�� when a Sea King Joins himself to a woman of earth with songs of healing.

Well, its been a year, but I am so happy to announce that my book, Mir Maid, has just been released on amazon. Next week we’ll be running a campaign and giving it away for FREE!

Sometimes it feels like I’m juggling more than I can handle, and believe me, sometimes I am. The latest curveball��are the buckets under my kitchen sink. We are a month away from a��total kitchen remodel, so when the pipe sprang a leak, I tried caulking it. It has become more and more apparent that the drain pipe is badly rusted, and the only recourse is to keep 5 gallon buckets under the��sink and empty them periodically.

Throw in a moody child, homeschooling, an uptick in our mailing work, various illnesses, my general ambivalence about turning a year older without having accomplished certain goals, and the result is me on the verge of a meltdown.

The past three days, through various scriptures�� and situations, I’ve started to get a different take on the whole juggling thing.

I am not the one juggling. If I tried I’d screw it up pretty quickly. He juggles. I take baby steps in the direction He sends me, sometimes darting between the balls, but never dropped. It is almost a dance, where I go from one thing to the next, lead by an unseen partner. I am faithful and obedient ��as I can be, and He controls the chaos. It is not for me to make things happen. I am not the answer, just a small part of the equation.

What does that mean? It means I wash my dishes and empty that bucket without worrying about the other stuff that I’m not doing. It means I continue to read Bible stories and give spelling quizzes, trusting Him to add the increase. It means listening to that still small voice when it tells me to speak up, or love on someone. It means letting go of the stress of not meeting deadlines I set for myself. It means not beating myself up about another year gone by without losing the weight.��It means I do what I can when I can, and know that He is faithful.

It means instead of juggling, I dance.