The Land Between
Why did Mirelda appear to me in a dream?
Read the entire House of New Bethany series here.
Why did Mirelda draw near within a dream?
The moment did not stand alone. It arrived already prepared.
For years before that recognition, my attention had been shaped by a converging fidelity—by Caelia’s flame, where courage and tenderness are held together without division. Through that flame, my heart was drawn toward a horizon not yet named: a realm shimmering just beyond the visible order, waiting to be received rather than claimed. Then came Mirelda—the first light upon that horizon, the inceptual glow of what would come to be known as the Land Between Banner and Chalice.
Tradition speaks of Mirelda’s passage toward the far shores after upheaval scattered the first witnesses. There, within a mountain hollow given to silence, she spent her remaining years in contemplation. In solitude and patience, she became a bearer of nearness—carrying within her the fire of dawn and the fragrance of a garden once sealed.
As the first to remain where others fled, the one who listened, wept, and turned toward the Voice that called her name, Mirelda carried an inceptual light to those distant shores. In her abiding, a bond was formed—not asserted, but born—between heaven’s nearness and a land still unnamed. This was the first pairing of soil and Kingdom, a union held quietly within silence.
Centuries passed, and the Golden Thread was taken up again. A royal heart was drawn into fidelity, and through that yielding, a people were gathered into coherence. What had been planted in stillness began to take root in history, flowering not as domination, but as ordered belonging.
Long after, Caelia appeared—bearing the unspeaking banner of flame. Before the powers of her time, she testified that sovereignty does not originate in crowns or conquest, but in obedience to what transcends them. Her words resounded not as argument, but as thunder beneath the Veil, renewing the covenant of the Land Between Banner and Chalice.
Generations later, the land was gathered again beneath the Queen’s keeping, sealed not by force, but by entrustment—drawing Caelia’s flame into Marian stillness.
And then, in hiddenness, another fidelity appeared. A small life, enclosed and unseen, released a fragrance that traveled far beyond its walls. Through this hidden way, the Land Between Banner and Chalice was gathered inward, revealed not through spectacle, but through love made patient and complete.
Thus unfolds the lineage of this land—not as chronicle, but as the Golden Thread woven through time: from Mirelda’s silent hollow to Caelia’s flame, and into the cloistered heart where hiddenness became radiance. Each yielding, each entrustment, each act of fidelity added another gleam to the tapestry of nearness.
This land, in its inmost truth, does not belong to geography. It mirrors heaven not by imitation, but by memory. Its soil remembers footsteps; its sky retains a shimmer. It was there—within this lineage of stillness and flame—that I first began to glimpse the Sky-Veil itself: the place where heralds and saints breathe as one, and where what has always been given waits patiently to be received.
