The Vision That Returned

 (Moon Ink Chronicles — Entry VI)

Some visions don’t arrive to be understood immediately.

They wait.

Yesterday’s events in Australia stirred one I hadn’t thought about in years — not because it demanded attention, but because it resurfaced intact, unchanged by time.

The vision first came to me in 2009.

I was at home, preparing to leave with my son. Everything was ordinary until it wasn’t.

Gunfire broke the moment open.

Men in uniform were firing — not at a single target, but into people. Into space. Into chaos. I remember the sound before the fear, the way it fractured the air.

I ran.

I was holding my son, my entire body orienting around keeping him alive. We found shelter with others who pulled us inside, shielding us from the shots. For a moment, I thought it was over.

It wasn’t.

When I tried to leave, the firing had not stopped. People were still being injured. Still being killed. There was no sense to it — only urgency.

I boarded a bus, believing it would carry us away from danger. I didn’t realize until too late that it had been overtaken by two men fleeing the same violence. They drove erratically, desperation steering more than intention.

I held my son and the seat in front of me, bracing myself so he wouldn’t be thrown or hurt.

That’s where the vision ended.

I woke calm — but unsettled in a way I couldn’t name.

At the time, I wrote a note questioning whether the dream could be connected to the events at Fort Hood that had occurred around then. I didn’t know what to do with the experience, and I didn’t turn it into meaning. I let it rest.

Yesterday, as news surfaced and conversations reignited around violence, weapons, and safety — particularly here in Australia — the vision returned without embellishment.

Not as prophecy.

Not as warning.

Not as fear.

As memory.

What struck me wasn’t the imagery. It was the tone — the same calm urgency, the same instinct to protect, the same clarity of movement without panic.

I don’t claim to know what visions like this are meant to do. I don’t draw lines between events to prove anything. I don’t believe every image predicts a future.

But I do believe some experiences arrive to teach us how we respond under pressure.

This one taught me how quickly instinct sharpens when love is involved.

How protection becomes direction.

How clarity can exist even in chaos.

Some visions don’t come true in events.

They come true in who you become capable of being.

And sometimes, years later, the world brushes against the memory — not to frighten you, but to remind you that you already know how to stand steady when it matters.