Geist
By Inno Tenshi

“Hey wait!” she says, running out the door and pulling on her big hoodie. She runs up to the man walking down the street, and slows her pace once she catches up to him.

“Hey kiddo. How’s it going?” he asks her, looking down.
“Not bad. Things are nicer than usual,” she says with a wide grin on her face, her voice sparkling with laughter and bubbles in champagne.

The man’s face lights up and his almond eyes; ocean blue freckl’d with gold – shimmer and crease at the sides. He continues walking alongside the younger girl, his hands behind his back, face to the horizon.

For a moment, they walk in silence.

When they arrive at the end of the road and the beginning of the field with an enchanted-seeming forest in the distance … they sit on the edge of the sidewalk, and watch the Sun drown in the grass and trees.


“I ran away there once.” she whispers, breaking the sweet quiet and nodding off to the distance coolly.


The wind tugs at their hair, and he stretches his legs as she leans back on her arms, her legs crossed and her baggy pants overflowing with trinkets stuffed in the pockets. Her earrings jingle and as she leans back, hands settling on the cement, palms grazing the roughness with her wrists to the fading light. He brushes some dust off his professional-looking suit, and bends his knees to lean his hands on them. Looking to her and prying his eyes from the sunset, he looks first to her arms, then to her cheeks.


“…Why?” his voice trails off like smoke in the air, mixing with the purple and orange clouds.


She sighs, shifting her weight and leaning on one knee, half-facing the man but still not looking straight at him… as if she were possibly intimidated.


“I didn’t like it here. I wanted to escape.
I followed a little light, and tumbled down an old un-used grave by accident …
dug up by animals, maybe.” she says, pausing to think.
“What did you find when you fell?” he asks, pleading her to continue.
“… I – I found a …” she stutters, tilting her head and closing her eyes halfway, imagining a daydream in the blur of the moment.

“…I found a place where I belong.” she says, speaking softly.


The sound of an electric guitar strums in the far-distance from behind them.
A simple but passionate melody entwined with a hint of secret love.
Birds complete the song with their   e c h o  e   s ~


“I fell into a pool of tears … no.
It was an ocean. I remember it now.” she mumbles for only him to hear, lifting her chin to the breeze and closing her eyes, the images coming back to her.

“It was a storm.” he whispers, looking down to his shoes.
“Yes, … how did you know?” she asks, looking back to him with awe.
“Because you told me of it.”
“Can’t be. I’ve never told anyone of that place,” she blurts out quickly, sitting up to look at him directly.
“Well, you did. Without words, you did.” he says, looking at her – this time, right in the eyes.


Her sky iris’ glow wild and shaken, her vision blurred by the passing light; making her pupils dilate as her hair flows untamed in curls towards the street. The girl shivers, his eyes locked into hers – exactly what she was afraid of.

The man has an odd way of looking at people. Odd in the sense that when he does, they feel as though he is not looking at them … but through them.
Behind the eyes which he seems to capture.
And then: below.
At shadows.

The man seems to know darkness as though it were a friend, and is familiar with the subject even though he is filled with child-like laughter and happiness. The girl knows him only on the streets, but can see by his aura that light consumes his soul. He isn’t old, not at all! In fact, … he seems younger than her. Even with his business suit and fancy shoes, comparing him to her punkish style and attitude is not possible. They are alike in many ways, and yet so different.

She swallows hard, captured, unblinking. He smiles gently, silently and warmly welcoming her to look away if it hurts.

They spoke without words, sometimes.

“How did you know?” she asks again.
“Silly little bird,” he replied. Sometimes he called her his Wren, because when he first saw her, she had bumps on her back… like wings. “… you came out of that forest, and don’t you remember who found you?” he continues, still looking at her, looking away.

She squints as the sunlight weakens straight into her eyes, recollecting, and leaving calm in her moment. He lets her remember, still watching her, and not the horizon.


“Do you remember… when we first met?” she says, tilting her head towards him, and prying her eyes from the line of fire that remains in the field, setting the tree-tops aflame and lathering magma into the tall grass.

“Of course. Like it were yesterday.” he replies, looking to her necklace of a biohazard.
“You told me… ‘This gets harder.’ …well, it did.” she says quietly, resting one of her hands on her knee and putting all her weight on the other.

The man nods, closing his eyes and breathing softly. He opens his mouth once, but no words come out. Perhaps, he is afraid of jewels and pearls falling from his lips… like last time.

“Wanna grab a coffee with me? Place down the road’s always open late.” looking over to him, she smiles, still avoiding his gaze.

“Only if I’m buying.” he says, smirking and looking up to her as she stands. She grins back at him, leading the way down the road.


The street-sign says ‘Stone-Quarry St.’, and the girl looks up to her bedroom window as they walk through her neighbourhood. All the lights are out at home. They pass her house and come to an intersection, taking a left and walking side by side in silence under the streetlights towards the coffee shop in the near-distance. He walks with his hands in his pockets, and she with her hands tucked away into her hoodie.

She stops walking abruptly for a second, looking up to a burnt-out lamp, as if looking to a person or creature sitting atop it, looking down at her. The man stops to wait for her, raising his eyes to follow hers, to the top of the lamp-post. Nothing’s there. He looks down again at her, and tugs gently at her sleeve. She blinks and keeps walking as if nothing happened.

He’s gotten used to her doing that.
When they reach the shop, the barkeep nods at her and asks if she’ll be having the usual. Rolling up her hoodie’s sleeves and revealing studded bracelets covering her forearms along with all sorts of other shiny things, she sits casually at a table as though she’d done it many times before and invites the man to sit with her. He orders a hot chocolate, and sits facing the girl. The man waits for the barkeep to bring her mocha and his hot cocoa before addressing her.

“What did you see this time?” he asks, tilting his head and leaning his elbows on the plastic chair’s back, playing with a toothpick.

“I saw…” she mumbles, “…a boy.”

He frowns and looks up from his toothpick.

“A -?”
“A boy.”

The man now leans forward, towards her, lifting her chin and turning her face towards himself, trying not to touch her too much since he knows it bothers her. She never looks at him when it happens. She looks into nothing.

“He … he looks like you.” she whispers, the words pounding at her tongue with drums.

The man simply stares, blinking occasionally, waiting for an explanation or a description.

“Wren, you saw a boy? On the street-light? The dead one?”

She nods, her eyes still glazed and wide. He sighs. He usually understands her eyesight better. He usually trusts it.

“And he looked … like me.” he says, stating it as fact just to be sure.
“Yea, … but different. Ya know? He had longer hair, and it was blond. And paler skin, moonlight like mine. But his eyes… his eyes glowed in the dark like yours.
Aqualine.”

The last word resonates throughout the sky, the clouds disappearing to reveal the stars all in one swift movement; as if the very sound of it had cut the haze in half like a sword to let them shine their milky light upon the two friends.
The man looks up, surprised at the reaction of their surroundings to her words, and yet not surprised at all. Looking back at her, she blinks twice, and looks at him in the eyes.


“I saw him in the forest too.”


This time – the man’s heart skips a beat.

“Wren. Wren, look at me, ...” he says nervously, remembering the last time she saw something he didn’t. “…tell me exactly what you saw in that forest, please.”

Her face bunches up like a flower closing its petals for the night. He knows he won’t hear the full story yet, because her eyes well up and fill with rain, the drops hitting the table like hail in a summer thunderstorm.

The man stands; pulling her cup from her little hands, and kneels beside her… She stares at the table, but he knows she sees him, even from the corner of her eyes.

He opens his arms, welcoming her to his soft embrace. She sniffles and in an instant lets herself fall into his warmth, letting him wrap his arms all around her like a blanket. Beneath his hands, her shoulders tremble as she shakes furiously, suppressing sobs as hot tears roll down her flushed cheeks and hammer the pavement in earthquakes. Not a single cry escapes her lips, though, for she learned long ago how to cry quietly. He grips her tightly. There’s a look on his face… in his eyes. Pain? Rage? It was impossible to tell, but holding her like that, she couldn't see his face.

Clicking his tongue and petting her hair, “You shouldn’t cry so much.” he says.
“Can’t help it.” she replies roughly, wiping her eyes on her sleeves.
“Yes but when you cry, Wren… the whole world … cries with you.” whispers the man, glancing up again to the new dark clouds gathering over them.

Rumbling and tumbling over each other while gaining mass in the now ash-black sky as thunder shakes them into being, the clouds flash bursts of violet and cyan sparks and take quick strobic photographs of the world below. The storm accelerates…

“Let’s go inside…”
“But I like the rain!”
“Not this kind, Wren. Let’s go. We have to leave. Now!”

The girl is pulled to her feet by the man and dragged back up the street, back to Stone-Quarry road and towards the field.

“We passed my house!” she shouts over the cannons above, but the man either can’t hear her or doesn’t care. He holds her hands tightly and pulls her towards the forest. She begins to pull him back to the city streets, shaking her head.

“No. No! I won’t I won’t!” she yells, but he stands strongly and anchors himself on the spot.

The wind, once allied to the birds’ songs, now crashes against the two friends in warning; leading them to the safety of the trees. But no matter how she pulls and cries, he looks at her with a begging longing to head away from the threatening clouds. She whimpers and tries to get him to let go of her, tugging at him with all her might. He is stone, his features set with determination, holding back the pain and fear again.

“You can turn the city upside down like an umbrella, but it won’t keep you dry.” he whispers.

“What?!” she shouts, having only seen his lips move.
”You should have known better.” he replies.
”I don’t understand!” says the girl over the wind’s howls and the thunder’s screams.
“Wren, silly Wren… You should know by now I pull stars in with my gravity. When you’re around me, pathetic fallacy becomes reality … your crying made a storm.
Nature reacts to us. Our emotions. Life all around revolves around us being happy or sad… which is why you had to learn how to stay happier.” says the man, still holding onto her.

Her face writhes in confusion as she tries again to free herself from his grasp.

“... A great sadness overcame you when I asked you to tell me of the grave in the forest,” he says.

She stops squirming.

“…which in turn caused this immense storm.”

She swallows hard again, letting him gently pull her towards the forest. She finally complies, and he looks behind him once to see the storm pulling over her neighbourhood and lagging itself to the field.

“The only way to reverse this effect is to leave this place.” he says, leading her to the trees.
“B-but, how?”
“Ever hear of Alice in Wonderland? She tumbled down the rabbit-hole from a perfectly ordinary world into a tipsy-turvy one.
I plan on falling down that grave with you to find the otherworld and escape this one too,” he says.
“No! I’m not going back!” she says, removing her hand from his as they reach the first trees.

“Wren, perhaps you’ve forgotten how much you loved it there? How you never wanted to leave? And how when we first met you wanted me to throw you back down that grave in the first place, … so what could have possibly changed your mind since you came back from there?”

“… I met someone,” she says, glancing behind them to see the oncoming tempest.

“Who?” he replies, watching her sway back and forth in fear and confusion.
“A girl. She … she’s my friend. But… if I go back there, I won’t see her again.” she says, her voice cracking as her face flushes again and she looks down at her pants.

“She’ll be there.” he says, trying to console her.

“No she won’t!” she cries, bursting into tears. “That world is fake, everything there is FAKE!”


The storm quickens its pace, having spotted its targets. Charging across the field, the man grabs the girl again and throws her ahead of him, pushing her to run forwards and away from the street – away from the swirling mass of darkness.


“Don’t you believe in magic, Wren?” shouts the man, pushing her further and farther into the brambles and trees.

The foliage thickens, dense but penetrable. They fumble through it, as though it were a wall towards the rest of the forest. Branches tug at their clothes and scratch their skin, but still he pushes her to lead him to the old grave. The clouds have not reached the tree’s perimeter yet, so the stars shine through the leaves which then make patterns and designs beneath the two friends’ feet – like water’s reflections at the bottom of a pool.

As they run, the city lights begin to fade.

The man can’t tell if it’s because they’d ran so far now into the woods or because the clouds had decided to swallow the whole place up behind them, either way he keeps running.

The girl is slowing down however, and she stops abruptly to catch her breath. Coughing and panting, her lungs feel as though they are burning as her chest heaves.

“That’s what I get … for spending hours and hours … at a screen,” she wheezes, “…I’ve only ran so hard… a few times in my whole life.”
“Well, keep running… or it’ll catch up.”
“I can’t!” she replies, bending over in a stitch.
“What have I told you about that word, Wren?”
“… ‘T’ belongs in tomorrow, not with can. Can stands on its own,” she mumbles with slight annoyance.
“Right. Now… where are we, and how far is it to that grave?”
“I’m not taking you to it.” she says firmly, forcing her heart to slow its marathon by taking long breaths.

“What are you so afraid of, little bird?”

She looks up at him from her standing point, and takes a long look around. Standing straight and still breathing heavily, the girl makes a full turn to all their surroundings, then turning back to the man. His suit is full of dirt and rips, as are her pants.

“There is only … one path in this forest. But it’s hidden. You have to know it’s a path to call it a path. It leads … to that weeping willow over there,” she says, pointing towards the opposite direction of the way they came.

The willow is the tallest tree in all the forest, shimmering and gleaming in glory. It is what makes the entire wood enchanted.

“I’m assuming that leads to the grave as well?” asks the man, eyeing the gargantuan colossus further away.


A roll of thunder threatens the two of them from behind, making the girl spin around to see the horizon and most of the edges of the forest paved in dark billowing smoke. She turns back to the man, who motions that they continue forwards.

After a few more minutes of running, they reach a crescent of tall trees who, seeming large, could only measure to half of what the willow stands on the other side of their trunks. Ivy and moss cover their bark, filling up any gaps as cement and creating a green brick wall since the trees are so close together. Thicket covers the ground below the trees.


“A dead-end. We could never pass through that, … there must be a way around.” says the man, beginning to walk around, but the girl grabs him by the sleeve.

“The trees all around grow too close together to pass anything more than air through them … and they’re too tall and have no branches on their trunks to climb. The path is on the other side, come on,” says the girl, diving in the thicket and wading through the thorns and twigs, pushing aside the leaves before ducking into a hole and disappearing.

“Wren? … Wren?”

No answer.

A shuffling from the other side, and finally, a voice.


“It’s safe! Come on!”

The man looks down at his suit and scrunches his nose, but a booming nearby tells him to hesitate no more. He cautiously steps into the thicket, stepping where the girl left her footprints, and then ducking into a dark tunnel made by branches between branches.
Roots and leaves cover the humid and chilly earth where the man crawls, mumbling to himself about just having dry-cleaned the darn thing, when finally he is grasped by two little hands and pulled out on the other side of the trees.

Relieved, he sighs, looking way up behind him to the highest branches and ivy of the crescent and brushing himself off. Turning back to the girl, he staggers back with a gasp.


The trees on this side of the green wall create a path by entwining their topmost branches into arches that reach the sky.
The woods are much less opaque here, the trees still tall but thinner and more spread out between each other. From left to right, the forest fades into a blackness with a hint of orangey hue, … and the willow ahead sends off a bright fiery light.

As they walk towards the pillar of radiance, the man’s eyes flicker to and fro through the trees, seeing tiny lights sparkle at the sides of his eyes. The girl on the other hand pays no attention to them – she’s seen them so many times before.

“Who could have thought sadness could make something so vicious?” she asks herself aloud.
“I could, actually.” replies the man, taking a few quick steps to catch up to her.

“Wren, what are these lights? And why do they disappear when I look straight at them?” he asks, twisting his head in jolts to try and catch the little sparks, trying to see if he can be fast enough to seize a glance.

The girl looks over her shoulder and gives him a day-dreamy air, her voice echoing in the silence.

“I don’t know. You’re the first to see them too.” she whispers.

He looks at her curiously, but she turns and keeps walking to the end of the arch-way. The fiery light coming from the willow is now explained – the leaves on each weeping branch are golden.

The man blinks once – twice, to be sure … and looks up. Way up.


The willow is at least 500 feet tall and 15 meters in diameter, … at least twice the maximum size of a Sequoiadendron giganteu, the biggest trees ever recorded which are themselves extremely rare.


“This … is…” he stutters, trying to gather himself.
“This is Saule Pleureur,” she says quietly, looking up with him.
“ ‘Soul Plehpleh’ ?”
“… no, silly. Saule …”
“Hmph.” he scrunches his nose again at the French name, taking his eyes from the top to the bottom and staring at the roots, which are twice as tall as he.

“This … is one big tree.” he says, patting the root and leaning on it with one arm, “… so, where’s the grave?”

“I brought you to the willow, not the grave.”

“I know. You’re afraid of something from the otherworld. You’re afraid of going back.”
“No.”
“No? Then what is it?” he says, turning to face her and looking over her shoulders to the dark storm coming for them still.

She looks down again, fixing her eyes on her pants and hanging her head.

“I’m afraid of … of leaving this behind. Of … leaving her behind. She … she’s not in that world. Neither are you. Neither are any of my friends. I’ve made friends now …” she whispers, avoiding his eyes again.

The man nods in understanding.

“When you first fell down there, … you had no reason to stay here.” he says, trying to help her find the words.

She nods slowly, looking at the weeping branches and their golden leaves, which are also gigantic. The man sighs slowly and looks behind her to the oncoming clouds. A saddened look appears on his face, suddenly replaced by curiosity. He looks at the girl – not exactly looking at her, but through her. At the lights. The little shimmering floating sparks that fade in and out slowly in the forest… like   f i r e f l i e s.

Leaning on the willow’s root, he sighs in relief, a deep calm overwhelming him. Closing his eyes, he smiles to himself, only to jump as the girl calls for him.

“Look up!” she says, pointing a finger to the sky.

It was either a meteor shower, or a miracle. Stars begin to fall out of orbit and shoot themselves at the clouds, making the dark smoke disperse. Bright little flashes of light jet across the sky, leaving glitter dust in their wake, and attack the storm. The lights reflect off the great willow’s leaves, making the blaze blinding.


“This buys us time.” whispers the man, hauling himself from the large root and walking over to the girl, who is sitting on a golden leaf and watching the slaughter of the darkness.

“Please Wren. You have to take us to the Otherworld, or this won’t stop. I can’t keep it off much longer.”
“I knew you made them fall.” she whispers, “… you pulled them in, didn’t you.”
“… yes.” replies the man, putting a hand on her shoulder gently.

“But we have to go now.”

The man looks at the girl, who still doesn’t look back at him.

“Where is it, Wren?”
“You’re serious about us having to leave here, … to stop to the storm,” she mumbles.
“Yes. If we don’t leave, this world will never escape darkness and it will rain acid forever. We will fall to pieces. You and I … we’re magnets with opposite poles.
But look at us… so close.
Which is why I keep away from you sometimes … if I didn’t, this would happen much too often. This effect will continue until we disappear from the world completely. If we don’t… the planet will disintegrate, and the storm will only grow.
…It would reach your friends and loved ones too.” says the man quietly, his eyes full of stars.

“For them, then. I do it for them.
…I do it for you.” says the girl, standing and grabbing a strong hold of the weeping branch.

The girl then begins to climb the terribly long branch, using the willow’s golden leaves as temporary footholds as she steadily climbs the swaying branch. The man looks at her with his jaw slightly open, looking up at the top most branches and how they intertwine into each other to create a Sanctuary inside of it.

He understands.

The grave is inside the center of the tree.

He quickly grabs another branch and climbs up alongside the girl, doing his best not to slip on the gold leaves with his fancy shoes. It would take them hours to reach the top, the willow being over five-hundred feet tall, but time seems to stop as they climb. They do not tire, and the storm seems to be waiting, or slowed down to a near-stopped pace. Their thoughts are forgotten or put on hold as they move upwards, climbing the fiery leaves with survival instinct.

Swaying slightly, they meet the ends of their branches, the rest of them arching up from the trunk. The girl grabs hold of the leaves on her branch at the stems and pulls herself forward, until she is sitting on top of the branch. Steadily, she puts her arms out for balance, and stands up on the thick arch.
She walks slowly towards the tree as though she was on a rope bridge, and the man begins to pull himself up as she did and follows. She then sits back down on the other side and slides to the place where the branches meet the trunk.

Once inside, time begins to tick again. The black clouds billow faster than ever towards the great weeping willow, and through the branches, the man and the girl can see they haven’t much time.

While looking at the storm, the girl grabs the man’s suit by the shoulder. She continues to stare at the tempest, but he turns to look at her. She holds on tightly, and then whispers to him. Her words are whisked away by the oncoming winds though, which pass through the branches and leaves; creating cries and moans in warning to the storm. He still has the chance to hear her before the winds steal them.

“It’s right behind you, don’t fall in.” she says in a soft voice.

The man turns around and almost slips, had it not been for the girl holding onto his sleeve, he would have fallen into the ‘grave’.

It’s as though a great void had eaten the inside of the willow. Blackness consumes the whole of it, leaving nothing to the imagination. All of the age-telling rings from the inside of the tree are gone.

The man stares, wide-eyed, and looks down.

“Hello?” he calls.


But there is no echo.


The man shifts his weight and turns to fully face the void, twigs and pieces of bark falling from underneath his feet, their sounds as they fall ricocheting off the sides of the rotten center.

“Why is that when I call out, there’s no echo, but when these things fell in, they did?” he asks the girl, holding onto her tightly as she turned around to face the grave as well.

“It swallowed my voice,” he whispers in wonder.

Looking around, he sees the top most branches have grown upwards and into each other, creating a dome of golden leaves and ultimately, a shelter above the great hollow expanse in the middle.

Tipping over the edge so slightly, she breathes in the scent of rotting wood. The man meanwhile looks at her hands, so small, pale and fragile compared to his. He thinks of the magic she’s made with her hands, the things she’s made come alive … when suddenly, she jumps and grabs her hands from him. A look of pain paints itself on her face, and she brings her palms to her lips.

“What is it?” he asks, looking at her questioningly.
“You burned me!” she says. The man raises an eyebrow at her. “What, you did!”
“Wren, how can I-?” he starts, raising his hands to hold hers, when sparks flicker from his fingertips and fizz to the ground, the embers fading quickly to ashes like a party sparkler.

They both blink.

The man tries to make it happen again, shaking his wrists and half-expecting fire to erupt from his palms or something – but the sparks do not reappear.

He shrugs it off as if he’s done the trick before. She gives him a ‘that was weird’ look before looking out over the sea of blackness again.

“This tree has been here so … so long,” she whispers, “… that it ate itself inside out.”
“So … animals didn’t dig this up, did they?” he mumbles, remembering when she told him initially about the grave.
“No. I didn’t think you’d believe me about a five-hundred foot tall hollow tree with a vortex to an other world in its dead center.” she mumbles.
“How did you climb out of this the first time, it’s so … big …” asks the man.

“When I first fell in, … the darkness took me and wrapped me in its safety blanket, stealing me away like a fey with a human child to its home. When I was thrown out, … I woke up at the crescent of trees we crawled under. I don’t know how it happened, but … it seems like this tree is the guardian of the portal.” says the girl.

At her last words, again their surroundings react. A bright light turns on all the way at the bottom of the trunk… perhaps even further into the ground, under the roots. The light pools its way up, reverberating off the sides and shining to the sky.

Another shooting star passes, making the golden leaves glow.

The light from below turns warm and welcoming – right before dimming out.

The man frowns, pulling the girl back to keep her safe. He himself leans over the edge to look and see if the light might be hiding, and the girl turns to watch the progress of the clouds.

“They’re at the crescent,” she tells him, when she hears a funny sound of scraping and shoes grazing wood. Bits of twigs and rotten wood fall out of place and into the void, their sounds telling her he is still at the edge.

“Hey, you listening? I said the storm’s right at our door,” says the girl a bit louder, figuring he’s too intrigued at the hollow to hear her.

He was like that sometimes.

“Wha? Uh, yeah, I heard you.” replies the man, turning back to her and stepping away from the grave, “… I think the portal’s still open even if the light’s gone.”
“Of course it is,” she says, “The same thing happened the first time I was here. Of course, when the light went out … I figured I’d jump anyway and I’d be falling til I hit the bottom. I still woke up on the other side, though,”

She turns to face him, trying to smile. He looks at her sadly however, and just when he opens his mouth – the wood at the edge of the grave gives way.

The man tries to grab hold of a root, but all of the life has been sucked dry from the willow, and everything crumbles before he can touch it.

The girl bends over the edge and calls for him, extending her arm to the darkness as though the imaginary rope she was throwing to him would help.


He is gone.


Without a cry of any sort, he fades into the blackness of the enormous willow’s trunk. She waits, and waits, and waits more, in fear of hearing him hit the bottom… but the sound does not come.

After a few more minutes of impatient anticipating, she begins to cry.

One of her closest friends – gone.
Lost to the Otherworld.

And she can’t leave the others behind… can she?


Before she can answer herself, a puff of dark smoke hugs her ankles.


She gasps, the coldness of it making her jump and spin around only to face a great wall of black sorrow. The cloud engulfs her, wrapping its arms welcomingly as though attempting to feel like the shadows from the bottom of the trunk in the portal from the first time she fell.

“No! NO!” she yells at it, tugging and tearing at her clothes and pulling back from the cloud, when her foot hits nothing.

Leaning forward quickly in a jolt of fear, the adrenaline kicks in and her heart pumps in gunshots. She clutches her chest as though afraid her blood will boil right through her skin. Looking behind her, the great empty void looks calm and gentle compared to the sick ghastly billows in front of her, seeping through the branches and entering the dome.


“You’re invading my Sanctuary,” she whispers, a tear hitting her hand as she closes her eyes and clenches her fists around her shirt to keep her heart from attacking her ribs.

“I can’t let you infect the peace with your chaos.” she says, letting an intense tranquility sweep her off her feet and fill her lungs as she lets go of the fear, knowing she was only feeding the storm further.


She steps back from the smoke again, her senses screaming as the wind tells her there’s nothing that’s going to catch her if she falls.


As she looks up through the leaves, the stars glint and wink at her for a moment before the storm’s inky virus attaches itself to the sky like a fountain pen to paper.

Her tears fall slower than she does as she looks up the droplets of water hang in midair. She looks through them, their crystalline shape of circular liquid creating aerial magnifying glasses which, with the remaining starlight, shine rainbows onto the sides of the trunk.


Seeing this, the girl   s m i  l  e   s ~


She knows it’s too late to turn back now as her life flashes before her eyes, all the things she’s said and done, everyone she’s lost and loved... and for one, fleeting moment … she hears the wind whisper to her.


“They call it a grave for a reason. To enter one world, you must cease in the previous.”


She closes her eyes, remembering the voices from the first time she fell. They said the same thing.

She closes her eyes for the remainder of the fall, confident she’ll pass through the portal and enter the Otherworld, deciding to return to this place someday when the storm is over … to see her friends again, and show them the secret world of the

LOST BOYS.

[ ~ To be continued. ~ ]








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+ ALTERNATE ENDING + :: [link]