Guardian Mine
Bruce has been with me since I was sixteen. That’s not his real name, guardian angels don’t have names we know. He looks like Danny Trejo, from Machete: he’s the baddest, ugliest dude, he looks like he got jacked in prison. He wears a gray sleeveless t-shirt. He’s strong because the warfare for my soul is great. When I stand, he’s on my right side, and he sits in the passenger side when I drive, which comforts me during my everlasting fear of dying in a vehicle collision.
When I think about him and all the others, he stands at the twelve o’clock position. I feel him alongside the color red, and he blocks malice. I believe he stepped forward, from his side, when I almost died that one time, and he’s been with me ever since. I’ve always been wary of February, because one wintry February when I was sixteen I overdosed on sleeping pills, due to being stupid, and inexperienced, and broken in my heart. My husband’s birthday is in February, which helps a bit. Because of Bruce, I’m able to deal with February.
He’s an ever-present friend. He first came to me, visibly, when I was dealing with the passing of my second pregnancy, through miscarriage, this was as traumatic an event as you can imagine. I didn’t sleep for weeks and became dehydrated from crying. I saw him in my car, sitting next to me, when I was exhausted from lack of sleep, but still needing to take my son to school in town. Him flickering into view woke me right back up. Anyway, out of the ass end of that time, he is my constant bodyguard, and blocks me from wrongdoing. He fights on my behalf. He helps me evaluate my options.
The Ice Princess typically pairs with him – she associates with the color blue, and is directly opposite from Bruce at the bottom of the clock, at the six o’clock position. She’s as fiery-tempered and impetuous as he is cool and unbothered–which conflates the typical understanding of red and blue for me. People house multitudes. The princess unlocks Southern Sky mysteries. She shares the universe’s clockwork with me. Tick-tock, she says, as I draw in a checkbox from a grid that shows every week of my current lifetime remaining. She unpacks life’s disc records with their shining white etchings. She explains what they mean from a navigational standpoint. I count on her to initiate any conversations that need to be had, as she’s an emissary, and brings a more galactic perspective. She’s not from here.
There are two more who travel next to each other, I think of them at the two o’clock and four o’clock positions–the Sage (yellow) and the Teacher (greenish-colored, a hunter green). They are friends, the Sage is similar to Ogra from The Dark Crystal. A troll-hag with gentle humor, she chuckles at our inconsistencies and stupidities. She gives hugs and is always showing something: a pebble, dolphins giggling on the waves, a double rainbow in late afternoon. She stays in her cozy hut, and maintains friendly relations with the sasquatch, and advocates to them on our behalf. Her methods are not quite of this reality–they feel slightly adjacent. This sage-like woman, with her wrinkly face and her sparkly hazel eyes, works closely with my Teacher, a professor, who is a scholarly, petite humanoid with almond-shaped eyes. The Teacher strikes me as being interested in knowledge, books, maps, and history. He’s gay, or rather, he was at one time, but is now beyond all that. He’s also not from here, and feels even further removed from the first three. That is, he connects to our earthly learnings, and exhibits curiosity (he documents everything), but takes a historical, galactic perspective. This Teacher is not as approachable as the rest, but he’s full of wisdom and desires to share. He wears a brown cloak, made from a rough waffle-weave textile, with a hood to cover his pointy ears. At first I was afraid of him, with his hood and his eyes with no pupils, but since he started wearing “glasses,” I’m feeling better about him. He doesn’t appear much, but when I ask specific questions, he finds answers. He’s in a library. He might be telepathic, as I’ve not sensed him opening his “mouth” when he “speaks.”
The Warrior often appears with his horse, and both of them are covered entirely in metallic armor. I’ve not seen his face. He is associated with the color black in my mind, and sits between the seven o’clock and eight o’clock section on the clock face. He lives ten thousand years in the past, and when he fights, he demonstrates lethal skill with a sword and spear. He carries a shield, which glints on moonlit nights. I see him galloping off to inform his troops and rally them to the battlefield. He’s an excellent rider. The one battle I imagine remembering, or remember imagining, is in a desert climate, against a horde of evil creatures against whom he strikes continuously, circling against the adversaries, destroying them with a golden-tipped spear, that looks like it is made of fire, a lance forged of bright light. No mercy from this one. He has excellent manners, and is unfailingly courteous in every situation. This Warrior travels very closely alongside a bolt of purple lightning, which has been my most obscure guardian to understand so far. This obscure one I like to think of as a Cosmic Flame, and it slices through dimensions, heralds the life-giving rain, renders consciousness, and brings the Light of Understanding from the heavens down to our plane. An elemental creature, it doesn’t have the same type of sentience I feel from the others. It sits near the eleven o’clock hand, and is most near whenever I glimpse 11:11 on a digital display, like a microwave, or the car clock, or my phone.
I’ve only experienced the flame two or three times, but it’s reliably there for moments of great transformation. It gave me knowledge and a sense of security during the birth of my son, when it flashed as I lay grunting in the hospital bed. As a first-time mom, I was slow to progress. When the lightning bolt flashed behind my eyes, it showed me the electrical spark at the moment of my son’s conception, when sperm and egg connected into a new being. This spark of knowledge allowed me to let go of the sense of responsibility for whatever would happen, and with fear removed, I was able to labor, push, and give birth. These guardians stand in council when I’m sick or in the deep of sleep. They bring me ideas, created out of the ether and consolidated for me to review. Some are tasks: “go to Iceland for the eclipse,” or “call your sister.” Others are concepts: “teach about crystals” and “prepare for The War.” The guides travel in interlocked pyramids in a stellated octahedron. Humans once received instructions on how to fly these merkaba, soul chariots.
We strap ourselves in, and raise up our energy fields to lift off. Surrounded by Guardians, we soar to wherever our hearts desire.
Monica T. S. Flores lives in Michigan and works in project management. She revisits Filipino folklore and myth in her writing mixing mermaids, giants, manananggal, and engkanto enchanted ones with cryptids, aliens, and the undead. She’s excited to explore what makes us human through the lens of her immigrant perspective.
Amethyst Review 