Entering the Spirit World

⚠️ This article is archived, and should be considered non-canon.

Suddenly the blood drained from her lungs and she breathed in, only to double over, hacking blood into the grass between her shoes. She wiped her bloody mouth on the back of her arm and mumbled something like ‘sorry’ before coughing again. She slipped off her shoes and made her way to the clearing.

She saw the bones and knelt in front of them, laying some flowers out for it and waiting respectfully. After a few minutes she worked up the nerve to open her mouth, and when she wasn’t attacked, she began to talk to it in a soft little voice. She said she wanted to go to the spirit world, and it did nothing. She said she needed to go there because she’d been having dreams about great monsters rising up and destroying humanity. It didn’t move, and she glanced at the forest spirits that had gathered around her. She clasped her hands together and started to introduce herself to the bones. She was Tzipora, she grew up in the city of Vekllei not far from here, her parents died when she was young and her adoptive mother was struck by a truck and killed last summer. She loves her father and country and doesn’t want it to be destroyed.

As she talked more she found herself saying aloud things she’d never said before. About being a Gregori baby, about feeling separated from the rest of the human race, about the time she went to a festival with a Japanese boy who was gone now. She said she liked to write and hadn’t ever eaten a hotdog but she wanted to, and that once the older girls molested her out the back of the school. She said she liked her hair when it was like this; bouncy and self-regulating. She didn’t know why it wouldn’t stay like this all the time, but she didn’t have a hairbrush, so it was good that it looked good today.

An hour passed and she ran out of things to say and realised her entire life could fit in a conversation on an average bus trip. She unclasped her hands but didn’t dare shift from her kneel. All of a sudden, the grass beneath her disappeared and she plummeted, shoes, flowers and all, into darkness.

The above passage was written with this picture. This is the moment that Tzipora, a Gregori baby enters the spirit world to stop ancient creatures called Lehmenan from destroying the world. The Lehmenan are restless after a nuclear war between China and the United States. Very few people, and all of them children, know that spirits exist. Alone and terrified of losing the world to the Lehmenan, Tzipora goes to the bones of the Lehmenan’s creator, the now-extinct Derden, and asks it to let her into the spirit world.

I understand this is quite a lot to take in. Ask me a question, follow the links for more information on the parts of this world, or check my post history if you want more information. I love questions and comments.

EDIT: Sprinkled a couple more links in and decided to proofread.