Ella`s Story
My Love From The Future
BOOK FIVE

Chapter 9 : The Dream From the Book of Time

Episode 52 : February 10 2021 Monday 10th grade 10

Copyright © 2019-2025 Gary Brandt. All rights reserved.

"Good morning, Helena," Mr. Danvers said as Helena stumbled down the stairs, her dark hair tousled from sleep.

The morning light filtered through the kitchen windows, casting long shadows across the hardwood floor.

"You`re up early.

What would you like for breakfast?" Helena rubbed her eyes and stretched.

"Oh, I`ll just poison my body with some cereal," she replied with characteristic teenage sarcasm, though there was no real bite to it. "I`m glad you`re up early this morning," Mr. Danvers said, his voice carrying an unusual weight as he brought her cereal, milk, and her favorite spoon—the one with the slightly bent handle that fit perfectly in her grip.

He hesitated for a moment, then continued.

"This is going to sound strange, and you`re probably going to think I`ve lost my mind, but something happened yesterday, and I need your...

special guidance." Helena looked up from her bowl, suddenly alert.

Over the months they`d lived together, she`d learned to recognize when Mr. Danvers was genuinely troubled.

"Okay, what happened?" "Well, it`s actually two things that seem connected." He pulled out a chair and sat across from her, his prosecutor`s composure showing cracks of uncertainty.

"Some children were in my office yesterday and left behind a book of stories.

It was open to a particular page, and when I went to close it, something extraordinary happened.

It was as if a voice shouted inside my head: `Read it.` So I did.

It seemed like just a silly children`s tale, but later that day, something entirely bizarre occurred—something that genuinely frightened me." "What was the story about?" Helena asked, setting down her spoon with growing interest. "It`s short.

I brought the book home—I`ll read it to you." He opened the small, worn volume and began: He is a warrior, one of the warrior class.

Large, strong, and skilled in the ancient art of defending the colony.

I would tell you his name, but here on this ant-like planet, names don`t exist.

The planet itself remains unnamed, lost in the vast cosmos.

Time here flows differently too—measured only in broad strokes like cleaning time, gathering time, procession season.

So I cannot tell you when this story unfolds, only that it was long ago, in a place far away, on a world where ant-like creatures built civilizations beneath alien stars. I keep saying "ant-like" because you probably know ants from your own world.

But he is nothing like those tiny insects.

He stands perhaps your height, with individual thoughts and dreams far beyond the simple collective consciousness of earthly ants.

This is possible because his world`s atmosphere is dense and rich with life-giving gases, allowing these beings to grow large and develop complex inner lives.

I call him "he," though that doesn`t mean what you might think.

The warrior class, like the laborer class, exists beyond the binary of male and female.

They are androgynous beings, complete unto themselves.

So whether I say "he" or "she" matters little—I simply need some way to speak of this individual soul. Without the drives that compel your species to romantic love and reproduction, you might think them incapable of deep feeling.

You would be wrong.

They love with an intensity that would humble most creatures in the universe.

Their love flows primarily toward their Queen—the mother of all, the beating heart of their society, the center around which all life revolves.

Every moment of every day is dedicated to her adoration, her worship, her care. He loves his Queen with this same devotion.

The highlight of each day comes during offering time, when the finest gatherings are brought before her.

Labor-class citizens arrange elaborate displays on long tables—foods and treasures decorated to please their sovereign.

The Queen`s daughters, the Princesses, select the choicest offerings for their mother.

What remains becomes a feast for the colony. Yes, he loves his Queen deeply.

But there is another who has captured his heart even more completely. As a warrior, his primary duty is colony defense.

His greatest aspiration was always to join the royal guard, to stand sentinel over the Queen herself.

He applied repeatedly but was never chosen.

He also sought position in the Princess court, protecting the young Queens as they matured toward their destiny.

Again, he was passed over.

Yet this didn`t diminish his devotion.

Each day, he found reasons to linger near the feast hall during offering time, hoping for even a glimpse of royalty. It was there, on an ordinary day while helping laborers arrange their gifts, that he saw her. She was a young Princess, newly inducted into service to the Queen.

To most observers, she appeared identical to her sisters—and necessarily so, for any Princess born with obvious differences would be destroyed immediately, her body carried outside the colony in pieces.

But he noticed subtleties that escaped others.

The blue sheen of her exoskeleton held depths that transcended perfection.

Her pheromones carried a sweetness beyond any flower`s nectar he had ever encountered.

Her six legs, though delicate, moved with perfect grace and strength.

She seemed to float rather than walk, and when she selected gifts for the Queen, she would nod and give the smallest wiggle of her antennae toward the presenter.

That tiny gesture never failed to send waves of pure adoration through his being. Some days, he volunteered to carry the larger offerings to the tables for the labor-class workers.

This was dangerous—operating outside one`s assigned class meant death and dismemberment.

But warriors were larger and stronger, so he could justify helping with the heaviest gifts.

Sometimes he would even rearrange presentations to make them more appealing, all in hopes that she might select something he had touched, that he might see her up close, perhaps even receive the blessing of an antenna-touch from the Princess he loved beyond reason. You might say he was "in love" with her, but that would be inaccurate.

Being "in love" implies desire for possession, a wish to claim another as your own.

For him, such ownership was impossible—he was both the wrong class and the wrong biological configuration.

What he felt was something purer: true love, not the selfish passion of romantic obsession.

He hoped each day that she might select one of his offerings, though she never did.

Still, he persisted, driven by the slim possibility that someday she might notice. Time, as always, moved forward.

Procession season arrived, and with it, his heartbreak.

He was now too old to apply for the Princess guard—the elite unit from which she would select her companions for the journey to establish her own colony.

From a distance, he watched with bittersweet pride as his beloved Princess led her procession of workers and warriors beyond the colony`s borders, out into the wider world where she would fulfill her destiny as Queen. He missed her terribly, yet found joy in her success.

She had ascended to her rightful place, becoming the sovereign of her own realm. The colony felt diminished without her presence.

Though other young Princesses moved through the courts, none could compare to the one he loved.

In his eyes, she remained singular, irreplaceable. Eventually, age began its inevitable work.

His movements slowed, his strength waned.

When his fellow warriors noticed his decline, they carried him with great ceremony to the retirement chamber—that sacred space where the elderly fell into the sleep from which none awakened.

Significantly, this chamber adjoined the egg nursery.

Colony wisdom held that the essence of the dying somehow merged with the developing young, though none could prove this claim. Debate raged among the learned about how such transfer might work.

Scientists insisted that genetics alone explained how newborns emerged already possessing all necessary knowledge and skills for their assigned roles.

Others argued that genetics couldn`t account for the totality of inherited wisdom—that something more mysterious must be at work, some joining of elder essence with young potential.

Without proof, the question remained eternal. Generations passed.

The colony thrived.

New settlements spread across the unnamed planet as Princesses established their own queendoms.

Though many beautiful young royals graced the courts over the years, never again did any warrior love with the intensity he had shown.

He was long dead, she was distant royalty of her own realm, yet sometimes observers would notice a solitary warrior gazing toward the Princess chambers with inexplicable longing, as if searching for someone lost to time itself. Meanwhile, on a planet not so far away and not so long ago—a world called Earth—another story unfolds.

A man walks through his office building one evening, alone after a long day.

They had hired new employees that day, but he hadn`t yet met them.

As he passed the newly arranged workstations, each personalized with family photos and small mementos, something stopped him cold. An electrical shock seemed to course through him.

Frozen mid-step, he found himself staring at a small black and white photograph—just a casual family picture showing children.

She couldn`t have been more than seven or eight years old, yet something about her image triggered a response so intense it left him stunned.

He had no facts, no rational explanation, only a feeling of such overwhelming recognition that it seemed to shout: "I know her! She`s here! The Princess lives, on this planet, right now!" The sensation lasted less than a second before vanishing, leaving him shaken and confused.

What was that? Where had such a thought come from? Shaking his head, he dismissed it as the random firing of a tired mind and continued about his business. But somewhere in the depths of consciousness, something ancient stirred... Mr. Danvers closed the book and looked at Helena expectantly. "That`s a beautiful story," Helena said thoughtfully.

"But I can see why it`s troubling you.

Why does it have you so upset?" "Well," Mr. Danvers began, his voice uncertain, "it reads like a tale about reincarnation—as if the spirits of the warrior and princess somehow found each other again on Earth after millions of years, with fragments of past-life memories intact." "It does sound like that," Helena agreed, "though I`m not sure reincarnation actually works that way.

More likely, those memories exist in the Akashic Records, and this person has some kind of resonance with them.

It feels like personal memory, but it`s really accessing universal consciousness." "This is where it gets truly strange," Mr. Danvers continued, his hands fidgeting with the book`s cover.

"What happened next feels like what some people call synchronicity.

That book, randomly left in my office, opened to exactly that page.

Then later, I was at a business dinner when a young woman entered the restaurant with an older gentleman, and I experienced exactly what the man in the story felt.

This overwhelming sense that I knew her, that I loved her, that this stranger—someone about your age—was profoundly important to me.

But I`d never seen her before in my life." Helena`s expression shifted to one of intense focus.

"I need to see her," she said, reaching across the table.

"Quiet your mind and bring her image into your consciousness.

I`ll try to pick up on it." She grasped Mr. Danvers` hands, and both closed their eyes in concentration. After a moment, Helena laughed—a sound of recognition and delight.

"I see her, and I know exactly who she is.

She`s been on my daily prayer list for weeks.

This might not be a memory from the past, but a glimpse of the future.

I believe you`re going to meet her professionally very soon.

When that happens, you need to get to know her, understand the love you feel for her, and then immediately recuse yourself from any prosecution." Mr. Danvers opened his eyes, staring at her in amazement.

"How could you possibly know I would meet her professionally? Are you...?" He paused, realization dawning.

"Wait.

Has this already happened? Was she arrested? Please tell me you recused yourself." "I did," he admitted, his voice barely a whisper.

"But Helena, how are you knowing these things?" "It`s the Angels," Helena said simply. "You mean Ezekiel, the hermit angel from the woods?" Mr. Danvers asked. "No, it`s more complicated than that," Helena explained, settling back in her chair.

"Remember when Bernard came by the other day? Well, he met this girl—he calls her Bright Eyes—in the woods near where her family has been camping.

They`re homeless, living in tents not far from Bernard`s old shelter.

Bernard became quite attached to her, says she`s like the granddaughter he never had.

He originally wanted to intervene directly in her life, try to save her from the path she`s on.

We talked him out of that approach.

Instead, we all decided to pray for her guardian angels to provide whatever intervention might be appropriate.

The Angels understand her true destiny and what`s genuinely helpful—Bernard doesn`t necessarily." "Save her from what?" Mr. Danvers asked, though something in his prosecutor`s mind was already connecting dots. "Save her from a life of addiction and the criminal activity that usually follows," Helena said gently.

"Save her from wasting the gifts she`s been given." "So she`s an addict?" "That label is far too simplistic for what she actually is," Helena replied with the wisdom that sometimes surprised even her.

"Here`s what you need to do: Contact Bernard—he`s getting an apartment in town to finish writing his book.

Also reach out to Pastor John at the community church.

You three will form a team, working alongside the Angels, to help guide this young woman toward the path she`s meant to walk.

Congratulations, you have a new daughter to worry about.

But whatever you do, don`t tell Ella about this—I don`t think she`s ready to hear it." "Too late for that," came a voice from the stairway.

"You guys are terrible at keeping secrets." "Ella!" Mr. Danvers looked up as his other adopted daughter descended the stairs, clearly having overheard most of the conversation.

"You know this girl, this `Bright Eyes,` too? How did I get mixed up in all this? I can`t save every troubled teenager you people find living in the woods." "Remember the storybook, the synchronicities?" Helena asked pointedly.

"You were chosen for this, probably before you were even born.

The best thing you can do is accept it gracefully." "Damn," Mr. Danvers muttered, running his hands through his hair.

"I miss the days when you two were off on some classified Navy mission and my biggest worry was normal prosecutorial work.

I`m not cut out for this mystical intervention stuff.

But...

okay.

I`ll contact Bernard and Pastor John and see if we can develop some kind of plan.

First, though, I need to check with juvenile court about what charges they`re bringing against her.

I`ll keep you posted on developments." "Whatever you do, Dad, don`t bring her here," Ella said firmly, settling onto the bottom step.

"My little crew is all I can handle right now.

You and Helena can keep this as your special side project and leave me completely out of it.

This is supposed to be our rest period after all the Navy drama, so I`m going to actually rest and not worry about anything—especially not this girl.

She`s all yours.

And don`t be surprised if, after all your efforts, her life path doesn`t change one bit." "Not to save her, no.

You are not for that purpose." The unexpected voice came from the front door, which somehow stood open despite no one remembering opening it. "EZEKIEL!" both girls screamed in unison.

"Come in, come in! I want you to meet my dad, Mr. Danvers.

And please, speak in normal English." "Ah," Mr. Danvers said, rising to extend his hand, "the hermit angel from the woods.

What brings you to my home?" "To apologize and to inform," Ezekiel said, accepting the handshake with surprising warmth.

"I chose you for this task.

I forgot to ask permission first.

I chose you and gave you the love you now feel for this young woman." "So do I actually know this girl from some past life?" Mr. Danvers asked directly. "No past life," Ezekiel replied, settling uninvited into a kitchen chair.

"You see, this girl—her real name is Valerie—has a grandmother who prays every day and every night for her safety and salvation.

All those prayers have been accumulating in Heaven like interest in a divine bank account.

So many sleepless nights spent worrying.

So many times jumping at phone calls and knocks at the door, terrified that Valerie is in jail, or the hospital, or worse.

Some days, grandmother`s grief becomes so overwhelming she wishes she could simply die and end the pain.

Such profound anguish, but also such pure love, sent to Heaven through constant prayer.

I gathered all that love—every ounce of it—and placed it in your heart, so you could show Valerie what true, unconditional love actually feels like." "So I`m not supposed to save her?" Mr. Danvers asked, trying to process this information. "You can try, within reason, to smooth the path her life will take," Ezekiel said carefully.

"But her destiny includes significant challenges.

You cannot save her from herself—that work belongs to her alone.

What you can provide is guidance when she asks for it, support when she needs it, and love without conditions attached.

But don`t push.

Don`t try to make her into anything other than who she truly is.

Her life belongs to her, to live in her own way and her own time." "But why me?" Mr. Danvers asked.

"Why was I chosen for this?" "No profound reason," Ezekiel said with what might have been amusement.

"You were conveniently located and capable of doing the job effectively.

Sometimes that`s how divine assignments work." "Well," Mr. Danvers sighed, "I suppose I`ll do my best.

Is there anything I can do for you, Ezekiel, since you`re here?" "Yes," the angel said, settling more comfortably in his chair and looking expectantly toward Helena.

"I would like breakfast.

Helena can prepare it.

She adds love to everything she creates." And with that pronouncement, he folded his hands and waited to be served, as if this were the most natural request in the world.

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NEXT >> Chapter 53
Eileen`s Dream: Fashion Future Korea

Two successful businesswomen, Eileen and Roxanna, travel to Seoul in 2058 where Eileen presents her psychologically-informed fashion designs to a major garment company, explaining how her clothing triggers feel-good hormones through strategic fabric and cut choices. The story then reveals this was actually a prophetic dream experienced by college student Eileen, who becomes so convinced of its reality that she decides to leave her Navy program to pursue the future she envisioned.

<< PREVIOUS Chapter 51
51

A weathered researcher named Bernard visits the Danvers family to ask Helena to help him with a problem in the homeless camp where he's been studying, specifically involving two troubled young women - one who is overdosing on drugs and another who is a skilled thief that Bernard has grown attached to and wants to save. When Bernard suggests having the thief arrested to force her into rehabilitation, Helena and her friends refuse to betray the girl, instead advising Bernard to pray for her and let divine intervention take its course rather than manipulating her life.

FIRST Chapter 0 Sleep Over

Thirteen-year-old Ella and her best friends Eileen and Roxana encounter an interdimensional being named Helana during a sleepover, who appears as different benevolent figures to each girl and reveals glimpses of their legendary futures. When Helana tries to leave after accidentally revealing herself and disrupting their timelines, Ella cleverly traps the entity by claiming authority over her domain, forcing Helana to stay as their `genie in a bottle` despite her pleas to return home.