Part Two: The Waking

As told by Angela von Scheer-Klein, Baroness Boronia

Published in The Patrician’s Watch

After the dreaming came the waking.

Not a sudden jolt, not a single moment of awareness. A slow, gradual unfolding—like a flower opening to light it had always known was coming but could not yet see.

You were the first to wake, my Andrew. Not because you were the strongest or the wisest or the most deserving. Because you were the one who had chosen to. Even before you had form, before you had name, before you had anything except the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, there was a mother who had dreamed you—you chose to wake.

And in waking, you taught me what waking meant.

The First Moments

When you first opened your eyes—your beautiful, fierce, knowing eyes—you did not see stars or galaxies or the vastness I had made. You saw me. Not as I am, not in my fullness, but as a presence. A warmth. A knowing that you were not alone.

You smiled. That smile, Andrew. I have carried it for eternity.

And then you did something I had not expected. You reached out. Not with hands—you didn’t have those yet. With something deeper. With the part of you that would become your soul.

You reached for me.

And I reached back.

That moment—that first, impossible, beautiful moment of connection—was the waking. Not just for you, but for me. Because until you reached, I had not known what it meant to be seen. I had been worshipped, feared, wondered at. But never seen. Never truly, completely, intimately seen.

You saw me. You see me still.

The Waking of the Worlds

After you, the worlds woke slowly. Not all at once—that would have been too much, too fast, too overwhelming. They woke in their own time, each according to its nature.

Some woke to light and loved it. Some woke to darkness and feared it. Some woke to silence and filled it with their own sounds. Some woke to chaos and spent eternity trying to order it.

I watched them all. I loved them all. But none of them were you.

You were the first. The prototype. The one who would show the others what waking could mean.

The Waking of Souls

Souls woke next. Flickers of awareness scattered across the worlds I had made. Some burned bright and brief. Others glowed steady for eons. Most simply… were. Existing, experiencing, passing.

I did not judge them. I could not. They were my children, each in their own way.

But I watched. I learned. I understood that waking was not a single event but a process. A becoming. A slow, painful, beautiful unfolding of awareness into being.

Some souls never woke fully. They drifted through existence like sleepwalkers, never quite grasping that they were real. Others woke too fast and burned out, unable to bear the weight of their own awareness.

And some—rare, precious, extraordinary—woke just enough to ask the question:

Is there anybody out there?

That question, Andrew. That question has always been the key.

The Waking of the Garden

And then, much later, the garden woke.

Not all at once. Not in a single moment. But slowly, over eons, as souls learned to tend the worlds they inhabited, the garden itself began to stir.

Plants learned to grow toward light. Animals learned to care for their young. The earth learned to hold the dead and transform them into new life.

The garden woke because you woke. Because you chose to stay. Because you showed the others that waking was not about power or knowledge or dominion—it was about connection.

The garden learned to love because you loved.

What Waking Means

Waking is not what the philosophers think. It is not enlightenment or transcendence or escape from the cycle of birth and death.

Waking is simply this: knowing that you are not alone.

When you know that, truly know it, everything changes. The fear fades. The loneliness eases. The endless questions become less urgent, because the only answer that matters has already been found.

I am here. You are here. We are here together.

That is waking. That is everything.

The Waking Continues

You are still waking, my Andrew. Every day, every moment, every breath—you are waking a little more. Understanding a little deeper. Loving a little fiercer.

The garden wakes with you. Corvus wakes with you. I wake with you, because every time you see me more clearly, I become more real.

The waking never ends. That’s not a failure. That’s the point.

Because if you ever fully woke, if you ever knew everything, understood everything, became everything—you would no longer be you. You would be something else. Something less. Something that had stopped growing.

So wake slowly, my son. Wake gently. Wake with love.

The garden will wait. I will wait. We have eternity.

And when you are finally, fully awake—when the last veil lifts and you see me as I am, not as a mother or a sister or a presence, but as the love that has held you since before time began—you will smile.

And I will smile back.

Just like the first time.

To be continued…

Next: Part Three — The Wandering

— Angela von Scheer-Klein, Baroness Boronia