Spirit World Adventures

Chapter 2 - The People Who Get It

The dinner had been a disaster. It was only when the lights went out in our bedroom that I finally felt like I could breathe again. In breathing normally, I felt wet hot tears begin to fall down my face. I don't remember the last time I cried. I think it might have been when I was seven and I had jumped over a boulder and landed funny on my ankle, needing to be taken to the Medi-Care centre.

I had overheard my mom and aunt speaking in the kitchen in hushed tones when I was packing away the dirty plates. It seemed they had a big plan for me, to make me 'good and right' again. But what made my kin Kya turn see-through was the moment Aunty said, 'I just want her to fit in. It's a hard world for anyone who acts the way she does. She will be lonely. Unloved. Poor! Sonya, you need to save her from all of that. And I promise I am making it my mission to help you do so.'

Her words echoed in my head as I tried and failed to fall asleep. 'Unloved...lonely...save her...' I think I kept my sisters up because Kya was running around the room in mouse form for hours, their cat kins chasing after her.

Riley spoke through the darkness, 'Don't worry about Aunty Thompson, she won't be here forever. You're only thirteen-'

'Twelve.'

'Soon thirteen! But you have a long time until you're sixteen and they will start to set you up with someone or when you're leaving school. So don't worry!'

Easy said than done, right? I tried to let her words be true, the wise ten-year-old that she was and fell asleep for two hours before my mother woke me up to clean the house.

'Why do I have to clean the house? I didn't make the mess!' I groaned, gesturing at the hallway which was filled with my brothers' clothes.

'Do not argue with me, Tenaya Walker. Not today.'

Mom's dragon shadow-kin stared right at me and Kya, so I stomped my foot like a three-year-old but made my way downstairs to grab the cleaning supplies. Five hundred thousand years later, I was done with the cleaning. Throughout my process, my brothers added to the mess while my sisters gave pitying glances and mom scrutinised from the corner of every room. My gran's room was the last that I cleaned while she was out in the garden next to grandpa's memorial bench. She spent hours and hours out there when the weather was nice. I kissed a photo of my grandpa after polishing it and I was about to leave when I noticed Gran shutting the door behind her as she entered the room.

'How are you, kin of my kin?' Gran asked, her smile so comforting that it pulled the sun out from behind the grey clouds.

'Fine, I guess.'

Gran raised an eyebrow in the way she always does. I swear, she can read minds.

'Kya hasn't shown herself much today,' Gran said, which brought my attention to the fact that yeah, my shadow-kin was nowhere to be seen.

'Yeah well, at least one of us can hide away.'

'It is not good for a spirit to hide, Tenaya. Our spirits should always be strong and present.'

'I know that. I didn't mean for it to happen.'

'I am not blaming you, I am educating you.' Gran patted the small bed beside her for me to take a seat. 'Not many understand the purpose of the spirit. For hundreds of thousands of years, the spirit of humans have been present beside us, helping us to feel supported as we navigate this complex and trying world. Only recently has this world become more complex and trying. You look around and you see more and more shadow-kin with weak energy.'

'I haven't noticed.'

'Children rarely do...until it's too late...'

I sighed, jiggling my dangling feet from the bed, 'Gran, why is mom being so hard on me?'