09 February 2026 

Hello, beautiful soul, and welcome to the third Alchemy Scroll - a letter from a jaded, yet hopeful romantic.

While we're in the midst of “the month of love” and a few days away from Valentine's Day, I wanted to discuss the reason behind the abundance of roses and carefully curated gifts wrapped in ribbons of white, red, and pink that you see all around.

Romantic love…

Not much thought went into this one, and the scroll revealed itself to me when a tear wrenched free from my heart and rolled down my cheek in my favourite cafè in Nelspruit.

I'd been writing - ghostwriting a romantic scene in my client’s latest order, to be exact - when an influx of heartache stopped me in my tracks, freezing my fingers over the keys I use to create magical love stories from nothing but pure imagination.

A familiar tightness wound in my chest, and I had to take a moment to step out of the story I was writing, and remind myself that I'm not a mystical creature in a fictional world built to house the likes of werewolves and dragon-shifters.

I am just a human, navigating the world of heartbreaks and mishaps that should have stripped me of the gnawing ache to experience romantic love with someone special.

But I am a hopeful romantic.

Hopeful, because no matter the challenges I’ve faced when it comes to romantic love, I do believe that extraordinary love between two people can exist. I know it does, because I exist, and while I am just human, I am a being capable of celestial, majestic, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love.

I exist with a heart of glittering, sparkling, shimmering gold, flowing in iridescent ropes of warmth and spectacles belonging to the constellations that make the darkest nights the prettiest.

Of course, unyielding, devotional love would be mine to have. If I exist with a heart like this, surely, there is a heart out there just like mine. A giver, like me, who will pour into me, who will amplify the love and abundance I radiate. Like a mirror, but not for me to see my unhealed wounds or to trigger me, but rather, to nurture me and reflect all the goodness I have inside.

But here I am, blissfully single, though I have a lot to tell you about romantic love. And no, it’s not because I’ve ever experienced it myself, but rather, because I’ve envisioned what romantic love could be like.

Should be like.

I'd always been a dreamer. I'd always been that little girl who imagined that her knight in shining armor riding a horse named “Black Beauty” and wielding a sword with which he banished demons and fought through foes meant that she was the princess worth saving.

A damsel in distress, whose only hope of escaping the tower was by being rescued by a valiant hero on a stallion.

This dream, however distorted and dysfunctional it used to be, allowed me to escape into a world of fantasy where mythical creatures understood the sacredness of loyalty, honesty, accountability, authenticity, and monogamous love.

I turned my dreams, my vibrant and vivid imagination, into a promising career. What began as a frivolous pastime writing fanfics from a BTS fan account on what used to be Twitter, and then posted under the pseudonym “writerkimyumi96” on Archive Of Our Own, I went on to ghostwrite a total of forty-seven full-length romance novels since August 2021. I am on my forty-eighth.

I am drenched in romance from head to toe, soaked in it as if I’m caught in the rain, filled with it as if it is my only form of sustenance. As the Alpha male leads in some of those books are addicted to the tooth-achingly sweet scent their fated mates exude, I am a sucker for writing happily-ever-afters and weaving together love stories in which both the leads choose each other.

I’ve noticed a pattern, however. My female leads are always strong, independent, fierce women, sometimes stubborn, who turn out to be witches.

They’re literally me, and it’s not because I planned it that way, but because the universe sends me clients who pick up on my strengths when it comes to writing this type of character, and they love it, while I get to live vicariously through my characters. I weave intricate pieces of myself into the characters I create, allowing them to wear parts of me with the honour and dignity I bestow upon them.

But as I live through them, the harsh reality is one I must face in the closing lines of the books I write. Their happily-ever-afters become the goodbye letters I write to my characters, detaching myself from their stories as I’m jolted back to the reality of a cold half of a bed and the absence of strong arms that will allow me - just for a breath - to fully soften and be a little girl again, instead of a fierce, fiery boss lady who has to do everything by herself.

It was during the closing and the grieving process of book number forty-four that I decided to give up on the notion of romantic love in my lifetime. I honoured this decision with a poem:

Grief

Hello, my old friend

I guess it’s time to greet you again

I used to think that it was only death I would grieve

Yet here you are, while I am on my knees

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Torn apart, grieving the life I once desired

A partner I have never met, with whom to build an empire

He never existed, except in my mind

And even if he appears now, my jaded heart will keep me blind

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It’s actually a cruel joke, don’t you think?

I write romances for a living as my own ship sinks

Even the Titanic witnessed a love so profound

Yet my story is one that is yet to be found

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I live vicariously through the characters I create

Sometimes I’m Astrid, or Emily, or Jade

I suppose it’s cruel fate that they all have fated mates

While I am here, just expected to wait

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So I greet you again

Because I no longer have patience

This jaded heart is tired of waiting

I’d rather bury this hatchet, so I’m saying goodbye

Laying to rest someone who might never have been alive

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Emily with her blue eyes,

Astrid with hers green

Romance was something I wrote for them

Something only their eyes had seen

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My time with Jade was much too brief

These brown eyes of mine have only seen you, Grief

Perhaps I’ll make peace with what I should believe

That you are my only real destiny, my old friend, Grief.

~ Yumna Vally

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I wrote this poem a few months ago, and shortly after, my dear friend, Giselle, sat me down and begged me not to keep my walls up so high. She asked me to believe in love once more, and reminded me how beautiful I am - a thing I’d forgotten to stop and see because I was too busy being masculine and doing, doing, doing, to take a moment to appreciate all my feminine qualities - and she reminded me that it’s my heart that is most beautiful, worthy of the love and devotion I am capable of giving. The kind of love I'd given up on.

I don't believe in coincidences, and her advice came without her knowing about this piece I wrote. It was Divine orchestration that led to the conversation we had, and that's why I followed her advice.

I dropped the walls I'd built around the fortress of my being, the walls that hid the castle I slowly and quietly renovated in solitude through my healing journey. But it was more than romantic love I opened my heart to, and I recognized the love I was able to receive from my friends, who quickly became family, as well as receiving an abundance of blessings from God.

Truthfully, I still have my reservations about romantic love; I am still jaded, even if I remain a hopeful romantic. Love is much easier on paper, and the unfortunate thing is hearing and seeing the horror stories out there, romanticized under the guise of “first loves” and “fairytale weddings”.

“Love” is so often misunderstood, believed to be a mythical construct of romance, and something unattainable. With the words “I love you” thrown around so easily these days between two people who suffer from codependency and simply cannot exist or breathe without the other, regardless of how toxic the relationship is, it's hard to see the magic in love. Love has lost its essence, the grandeur of a frequency so closely linked to God and the universe itself.

And vying for a man’s attention as if it were a prized possession, while the very same men hold fish they caught in a local dam in the pictures used in their dating app profiles, like they’re poets utilizing metaphors… is ridiculous. There’s nothing poetic or romantic about referring to a woman as a fish, of which there are “plenty in the sea”. The unfortunate thing is that while many men consider themselves fishermen, many women are stooping low enough to consider themselves replaceable and disposable as fish.

One thing healing taught me is that I am whole on my own. Always have been, always will be. I maintain that it would take an actual Saint to sweep me off my feet, and healing allowed me to see my worth first, which in turn allowed me to have standards. And while perfection does not exist, it takes more than just a fleeting emotion or a casual “I love you” in passing to form the foundation of something lasting, a relationship that asks you to make vows with God before each other.

Because the truth is, a romantic relationship isn’t always about the roses and carefully curated gifts that are exchanged on one day out of the year. True romantic partnership isn’t as simple as a book opened on a Sunday morning and closed on a deadline a month later. A real romantic relationship rooted in loyalty to God first, before self and others, takes work.

It’s a conscious decision to wake up every morning next to the same person and choose to love them. Just as you wake up every morning and consciously choose to love yourself, to honour yourself with your thoughts, words, and actions throughout the day, and show up as the best version of yourself. Putting God first and honouring yourself is how you’re able to show up better in romantic relationships.

Ultimately, a romantic relationship will hold up a mirror to show you all the parts of yourself you’ve been running from. Nowadays, it’s so easy to cower from that mirror, and all it takes is another “swipe right” to find a different mirror that might show you a little less than the previous one.

What most people are searching for isn’t a soulmate, but a wound-mate - someone who won’t hold them accountable, someone who can fill a void in their unhealed traumas, or someone who can make them feel validated just by having a piece of arm-candy on their arm.

In this day and age, it’s rare to come by someone who wants to put in the real work for a relationship rooted in divinity.

Gosh…

There’s so much keeping us separated, like religion, societal beauty standards, materialism, ‘status’, culture, ethnicity, etc., so that even when the partner God has chosen for you is standing right in front of you, your vision is so clouded by judgement that you refuse to acknowledge God’s divine plan.

And yes, this is spoken from a self-proclaimed jaded heart, simply because I have been there too many times to count. I’d taken my friend’s advice and opened my heart up, only to face disappointment that led me into another round of healing. I was, once again, forced to see my worth, and that my “muchness” is not just my most valuable asset, but it makes me intimidating to any man who isn’t ready to step up and be a man.

This is why I implore everyone reading this, and finding themselves alone on Valentine’s Day, to put in the work on themselves. Any relationship you have on the outside is simply a reflection of your inner relationship with self and with God. A failed relationship isn’t the end of the world, nor is an “almost”. Sometimes, these come as little nudges from the divine to get you to reclaim your power and not seek it from outside sources.

When you’re whole, a relationship will naturally complement you, not complete you. You are complete on your own, as long as you work on your relationship with yourself and with your Creator.

It’s a lesson I have learned time and time again.

Now, I love in silence, choosing the kind of love that doesn’t ask me to dim myself or wish that I were someone else. I slipped up and loved again, but it was brief, and a passing wind whisked that love away as if it never existed at all. That’s the beauty of being in divine feminine essence and presence – you become one with the earth, follow the ebb and flow of lovers lost, and strength reclaimed through grief.

I do not regret loving. I do not regret loving the way the characters in the books I write love so fiercely, so honourably. And while this jaded heart of mine remains wary, she is still hopeful that a love worthy of bestsellers is what God has set out for her. A love that doesn’t ask her to be a ghostwriter, or to use a pseudonym. A love that accepts her as she is, and is valiant enough to stand by her side.

Because the truth is, I never needed a valiant hero to save me from the castle. I became the dragon who saved myself and claimed the castle as my fortress, and only a Saint bearing the gifts and secrets I’ve whispered to God is allowed inside.

That’s why I always say to my ladies that it’s okay to be alone. We have wondrous, bountiful hearts full of love, but only a man of God is deserving of that type of love. I hope you keep your standards held high with dignity and pride, and never settle for anything less than you deserve.

With that said, here is my Valentine’s gift to you…

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A Garden Of Roses For A King

A garden of roses only bloomed for the king

He walks through it with his head bowed as he sings

Praises for its beauty, a sight he surely beholds

Painted in pastel pink, crimson, and flashy gold

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Gold unlike the shades of flowers, but its ethereal aura

That glitters and shields the delicate flora

He inhales deeply, a moment of respite

Drops his guard down, and basks in delight

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He takes a moment to appreciate a ripe bud

Pricks a fingertip on a thorn and draws blood

Remains unfazed as his lips curl to smile

The garden serves as a reminder that he’s human

Even if it’s just for a short while

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It’s that grounding he needs in which to plant more seeds

He nurtures it, protects it,

So that more roses can be freed

Out there, a benevolent leader, most revered

But in this garden, the most endeared

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Roses blossom at his silky touch

He admires how it doesn’t ask for much

Just his kindness, and to be treasured

The king knows that this beauty is beyond measure

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A pleasure to his eyes, delicate fragrance in his airways

A gift to his heart

Only the king can appreciate this work of art

The song on his lips is what his soul sings

So that this garden of roses can bloom for its king

~ Yumna Vally

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From my jaded, yet hopeful heart, to yours,

With love, 

Yumna Vally (Raaia)

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