By George Norwood
They had always moved through life like twin stars orbiting a shared gravity—Bill and Sue, woven from warmth, the comfort of shared laughter, and the unspoken rhythm of souls in harmony. Neighbors admired them, quietly. They fit. She, with a thirst for wonder. He, with feet firm on the ground. That balance made their world feel unshakable.
Until the tremor came.
It began simply, like a grain of sand in a polished engine. A church group. Bible study. Nothing threatening, just a few evenings a week. But from the moment Bill walked through the door of that chapel, something ancient stirred.
The man leading the group had a voice like carved stone—deep, rich, layered with echoes that felt older than language.
When he spoke, his cadence wound around the listener’s thoughts like smoke, and the songs—looped chants brimming with emotion—wrapped Bill in a cocoon of holy certainty. He emerged changed.
He came home shining like Moses from the mountain, eyes alight with something fierce and final.
“This is it,” he said, voice tremulous with awe. “This is the truth. Everything else is noise.”
Sue felt the first shiver of dissonance rise in her chest.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Are you saying… everything we explored together—spirituality, meditation, all the questions—that was just noise to you now?”
Bill’s eyes held no doubt. Only fire. “It’s all in the Bible. Nothing else matters. You need to come with me.”
But Sue had been to the edges of herself in meditation. She had seen inner space expand like a nebula, had heard silence whisper truths deeper than words.
What she heard now was not truth—it was entrapment wearing the costume of salvation.
“It feels like hogwash,” she said.
Something shattered. The warmth between them, once a constant hum, flickered and fell silent.
The days that followed were ghost-thin and unspoken. They still shared a bed, but the nights were empty, like echoes bouncing through a forgotten temple. She cried. He prayed. And in the darkness between them, something sacred decayed.
It might have stayed that way—drifting hearts orbiting loss—if Sue hadn’t reached through the silence.
“We need help,” she said, voice a filament of resolve. “Someone who won’t take sides. Someone who sees.”
Bill hesitated. But somewhere inside, a deeper part of him—the part not yet colonized by doctrine—stirred and whispered yes.
It was Sue’s friend who recommended Zim.
An unassuming man with the stillness of old trees and eyes that seemed to shimmer faintly, as if reflecting something just beyond the visible. He wore no robes, offered no sermon. Just a room, a presence, and questions that slid under the skin like starlight into dark water.
Zim didn’t confront.
He invited.
“You say the Bible is the only truth,” Zim said calmly. “And I honor that belief. But let me ask you this, Bill. Is it the words that move you… or what lives behind the words?”
Bill’s response caught in his throat. “I don’t know. The words… they feel powerful.”