Chapter 1: Arrival in Nieuw Vlaanderen
The light here had weight. It pooled in the squares between cobblestones, thick and golden as honey, slowing the world to a liquid pace. Yaa Mensah breathed in, and the air tasted of damp stone, blooming jasmine, and something underneath it all—warm dough from a bakery just out of sight. The scent unlocked a memory so sharp it hurt: her mother’s kitchen, a Sunday morning, sunlight through a window. A memory from before.
She stood still, letting the feeling crash over her. There was no panic in it, not like the end had been. Just a deep, resonant ache, the echo of a life lived in a cage she hadn’t seen until the door was already closed.
A figure materialized beside her, not with a flash, but as if the light simply gathered itself into a more concentrated form. The Guardian Angel. They were neither man nor woman, their features serene and shifting like light on water, draped in simple flowing linen that seemed to hold its own gentle glow.
“Welcome, Yaa,” they said. Their voice was quiet, a sound felt more than heard. “This is Velmire. Your beginning.”
Yaa found her own voice, smaller than she remembered. “It’s… quiet.”
“It’s yours.” The Angel gestured with a long-fingered hand toward a canal that glittered under an eternal dusk sky. A glowing tram, silent as a breath, slid past. “The noise you carried has been left behind. Here, you only hear what you choose to hear.”
They began to walk, and Yaa followed, her shoes—simple leather flats that had appeared on her feet—clicking softly on the damp stones. The architecture was a love letter to a Belgium she’d only visited in dreams: stepped gables, arched windows spilling soft light, cobblestone streets that wound like secrets. But between the familiar lines, New Earth breathed. Holographic wisteria cascaded from a real brick wall, its petals dissolving into soft light where they touched the ground. A small café table held drinks that shimmered with internal, shifting colours.
“How does it work?” she asked.
“However you need it to,” the Angel replied. They turned down a narrower lane, cool shadow washing over them. “The only law is fundamental: no soul may diminish another soul’s becoming. Everything else is exploration.”
Becoming. The word lodged in Yaa’s chest. In her first life, she had become a wife, a daughter-in-law, a silent figure in a strict, devout household. She had folded her love of vibrant highlife music into a small, locked box. She had pressed her attraction to women—the glancing touches, the way her breath would catch at a certain smile—down deep into a dark place, until the strain of holding it all down shaped her very posture. She’d been raised to be free, then taught, meticulously, to be ashamed of that freedom.
They emerged into a small, intimate square dominated by a fountain. Water arced in slow, deliberate ribbons, each droplet holding a perfect, tiny reflection of a gilded clock tower that rose above the surrounding roofs. Beneath the tower’s long shadow, wrought-iron benches curved around a hidden alcove.
The Angel stopped before a row of ivy-clad townhouses, their doors painted in deep, rich hues—forest green, sapphire blue, plum.
“You may choose any door,” the Angel said, their tone holding a note of infinite patience. “A home will form itself around your needs, your comforts. It is the first act of your becoming.”
Yaa’s eyes drifted over the options, a flutter of unfamiliar choice making her hands feel unsteady. Then her gaze snagged.
On the last door. A simple, sturdy wooden door painted a soft, weathered grey. And on its surface, nailed just above the eyeline, were wrought-iron numbers. 44.
The air left her lungs in a soft rush. The square, the scent of jasmine, the murmur of the fountain—it all receded, swallowed by a tidal wave of sense-memory. Chipped green paint on a gate. The specific creak of a third step. The smell of koko from a neighbour’s pot.
44 Avenue Rene Piret. Etterbeek. Her childhood home.
“But this one,” the Angel said softly, as if not to startle her, “already has your name on it.”
Yaa took a stumbling step forward. Her hand rose, trembling, not yet touching the aged wood. The numbers were exact, down to the slight curl in the base of the ‘4’. A sob climbed her throat, but it got stuck, a hot, painful press behind her sternum.
“Why?” she whispered. “I left it after Dad passed away. I lived life. I married. I moved across the seas.”
“The heart’s first map is often its truest,” the Angel said. “This isn’t a copy. It’s an echo of the feeling. Safety. Unconditional love. The person you were before you learned to hide.” They paused. “It is an offering. Not a mandate. You can still choose the blue door, or the green. You can choose a void and let the walls build from silence.”
Yaa stared at the number. She thought of the house it represented. The apartment where her father told stories. The hallway where she’d ran with her older brother, the music freeing and made to dance. That was the last version of herself that had felt whole.
Tentatively, her fingertips brushed the cool iron of the ‘4’. A vibration travelled up her arm, not a sound, but a frequency—a hum of profound rightness.
From the alcove under the clock tower, a new sound wove into the moment. Music. A simple, acoustic guitar, its notes clean and bright in the twilight air. And then a voice, a woman’s voice, rich and low and unafraid, singing in a language Yaa didn’t know but understood instantly. It was a song about missing a place you’ve never seen.
Yaa turned her head.
On one of the iron benches, a woman sat with a guitar. She was tall, her posture relaxed, her skin the colour of roasted almonds. She had locs and wore a simple, rust-coloured tunic. As she sang, she looked not at the crowd—for a few others had paused to listen—but at the space between her own hands and the instrument, a small, private smile on her lips.
Yaa felt it. The old, familiar clamp in her chest. The instinctive, conditioned flinch away from beauty, the internal lecture beginning: It is not for you. It is a sin to look, a deeper sin to want. She almost turned back to the door, a retreat into the safety of a remembered past.
But the Angel was watching her, their expression placid. No judgment. Only presence.
And the music kept pouring forth, not defiant, but simply free.
Yaa didn’t run. She let herself look. She let the woman’s voice wash over her, the ache of it, the strength in it. She felt the clamp in her chest not tighten, but… soften. Uncurl. It was just a feeling. It was hers. And here, it was allowed to exist.
The song ended. The woman glanced up, her dark eyes scanning the small, appreciative audience. They passed over the Angel, and then landed on Yaa.
For a second, they held the look. The woman’s private smile deepened, just a fraction, into something like recognition. Not of Yaa, but of the moment. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
Yaa’s face warmed. She looked down at her own hands, then back at the plum door.
The choice was no choice at all.
She stepped forward, wrapped her fingers around the cool, brass doorknob. She didn’t look back at the Angel, or at the musician on the bench.
She turned the knob, pushed the door open on silent hinges, and stepped across the threshold into the scent of her mum’s herbs and the waiting, quiet embrace of a self she thought she’d lost forever. The door clicked shut behind her, not as an end, but as the first full breath of a beginning.