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Chapter Two

TRIS'S POV:

I feel my mother's hand guiding me. I let myself be taken away by her embrace. I don't know what comes next, what to expect, but I have been forgiven and my mother's arms are warm and sure. I am not afraid.

Brightness surrounds us. It becomes so light I am blinded by it, immersed in light.

Then slowly, suddenly everything changes. It is instantaneous and it lasts an eternity all at once. I am yet I am not. My body is no longer who I am, I am who I am, pure and true. I have no eyes yet I see more clearly than ever I could with my physical sight. I hear every sound there is to hear, sense every smell, feel every feeling. I am nowhere, I am everywhere. I am in constant movement as the sea, I am as strong and sound as the mightiest mountain. There is no limit to this being I have become. I marvel in this feeling, overwhelmed by how free I feel. Never before have I truly known freedom.

My mother speaks to me in this way, which has already become normal, of speaking without a mouth. "My dear Beatrice, you have been so brave." She is like me now, everywhere and nowhere, there yet without form. I observe her and seem to be truly seeing her for the first time. Her selflessness, her strength, her humble manner… It's as if all the things that one could see of Natalie Prior in life had fallen away like a veil, leaving behind only that which was truly her. She is beautiful.

I try to remember what she means and all my life comes back to me in one instant. I can see every act, every decision I ever made. I see good and bad, strong and weak moments. I see my hesitance at being Abnegation, my desire to know some other life, my fear and overcoming that fear, over and over. I see my parents, trying their very best. I see Caleb and I wonder now how I ever could have overseen who he really is. I see Tobias and there I see so much love. My heart (do I have a heart?) aches faintly. Then I see the last few weeks, the plans we've been making, the decisions and actions that brought me here. Have I been brave? Maybe. My intentions were sincere. But somehow, it all doesn't feel right.

I do not speak but my mother knows. It seems as if she is drawing closer to me (in a world with no space) and she says, "Being here like this, it gives us a different perspective, I think. We understand the past in a new way." My new bodiless self nods in agreement. "Things that once seemed so right and clear now appear to be meaningless," she continues. "Give yourself time. Take it all in and you will make sense of this."

Time? Is there such a thing as time? I wonder. But my mother's words have the right effect. I take it all in. I perceive not only myself but all of existence around me. I lose myself in all that there is. At first I just feel a sense of connection to every thing there is: to every grain of sand, every rock, every tree, every plant, to every drop of water, to every animal and human being, to the entire Earth and then beyond it to the other orbiting planets, to the powerful sun and all the stars great and small and then farther, farther, to galaxies and galaxies beyond and to other beings on other distant worlds. Everything is one and I am one tiny speck in the midst of it all. For the first time ever, I understand how big the Earth is in comparison to what I have seen of it before. I realize that there are people all over it, human beings light and dark and familiar and exotic, wonderful and terrible. And then I understand that even this Earth is as nothing before the greatness of all that is. I am humbled. I exult.

Soon I realize I can focus my awareness to specific things amongst it all and I peruse the Earth with my mind. I am running alongside a fox, its red and white tail low as it steals away from danger. I am a snail on the ground with my own sense of time and space and movement, living in a world of grass and soil. I dive into the dark deep of the ocean, the color of Tobias's eyes, hearing the whales sing to each other. I am the tree, I feel its steadiness, its connection to the ground, I feel its longing for the sky as its limbs stretch higher and higher. And I am a mother, a father, a son, a friend. I breathe fresh air, I feel my lungs burn as I run hard, I sleep, I eat, I laugh, I hurt, I cry. Most of all, I love. I love over and over, I love my daughter, my son, my parents, my friends, my lover. Every person is searching for this connection and I am at the center of it, connected to them all.

Somehow I know that I am crying. I return my awareness to everything instead of something and I let myself be taken by this wave of emotion. I remember the ocean with its cold embrace and I imagine I am but spray on the tip of a mighty wave, being carried away into oblivion.

This is true life. How did I ever think that I was alive before? How did I spend so many years on this beautiful Earth, never knowing, never understanding any of this? How can humankind have come so far and still not see the most obvious truth?

I feel my mother's comforting presence. I wonder about this new life, try to imagine remaining here forever. It isn't hard to do. It seems I have been forever already. But my attention returns again and again to the world I knew before. How can they go on, not knowing any of this? I can see the suffering, I can feel it deep within me and I know it isn't going away.

My mother smiles. "You see now Beatrice."

"I see," I reply.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Beautiful is too small a word to describe this, but I nod. "Yes. It is. But it's also… sad."

"Sad? Here there is no sadness. But you are sad for them." She makes a sweeping gesture and it takes in the entirety of mankind.

"Yes," I say. "I am."

We remain quiet for a moment, an instant, an eternity.

"We think we're solving our problems by doing the things we do. We think we're helping ourselves and each other by separating into groups, by creating factions, by saying these people are genetically damaged and these people are genetically pure. Divergent, not divergent. But we aren't. We're all one. Everything is one. None of it matters in the end. How can nobody see that?" I feel frustrated, but I don't know why exactly. I also had no idea while I was alive. I fought those battles, too, first for this, then for that, and never gave a thought as to where it all might lead. I want something but I don't know what it is.

"You want to go back, don't you Beatrice?" My mother seems to answer my question. "You want to help them."

I do want to go back. But I also want to understand why I want to go back. "We all thought it was so important to show people who we are. The Amity with their exaggerated happiness, the Dauntless with their pointless stunts to prove how brave they are, the Candor with all their loud talk… Even the Abnegation, though they deny the self, somehow they still parade their selflessness around like some trophy with the gray clothes, the pulled back hair, the quiet demeanor. Outside the experiment in the compound it was different somehow, but it really wasn't. There it was about being GP or GD and which side you were on in the role genetic manipulation has taken in our country's history." I shake my head, the head I no longer have. I'm beginning to feel exasperated and something else, too. It's a strange feeling, like the tiniest tugging sensation from within me. "What we don't see is that it doesn't matter what we call ourselves and how we dress and what we think is most important. In the end, we will all come here and we will see for ourselves what truly matters. There is so much beauty which we either overlook or destroy. We should be living lives of joy and love, helping everyone around us to progress and also live lives of joy and love. That's what matters in the end."

My mother seems distant. She shakes her head. "You're right, dear. You're right, but it's not as easy as it looks from here." She sounds sad.

I look to her and now I see she truly is distant. The tugging feeling has grown stronger and there is a darkness surrounding me slowly. Suddenly I feel afraid. "Mother?"

She smiles at me sadly. "It brings me such joy to see who you have become. I will wait for you here, my love, but you know now that I'm not really far away from you."

I nod. I understand now. I do. I have to go back, but this world isn't really separate from the other. They, too, are one, it's just not easy to see that from down there. The darkness surrounds me more and more and I surrender to it. I have one last sudden thought, "Will I remember this Mother?"

She is a faint speck of light in my vision. I hear her voice as clearly as if she were standing by me, though. "If you will it."

The darkness envelops me.