quinn's paper-verse

Part 2

do you remember theo? you know, one of huma- i mean, mage-quinn's only friends? we'll be focusing on him now, but from a different universe.

this universe is.. uhh... let's call it the 'central universe'. it's the most superior universe in this story. you can control space and time in a very special place in this universe, and only this one. the people here are categorised by their eye shape. for example,,

round-eyed : has round pupils; the most common

narrow-eyed : has narrow pupils; very rare

blank-eyed : pupils are white; only applies to ghosts

wait, did that say 'ghosts'?! yes. yes it did. the central universe has ghosts, but we'll call them blank-eyeds here since they aren't your typical ghosts. blank-eyeds are kind of like spirits of the dead. they live in the place where they died, and blank-eyeds will always look the same as when they died. their corpse, however, ages like normal. it doesn't rot away.

for example..

if a boy dies as a child (which is.. very unfortunate) then he will look like a child for the entire time that he's a blank-eyed, no matter how old he gets. but, many years after he died, his corpse will look like a grandpa. so an 80-year-old blank-eyed could still look and sound like a child, which is very confusing.

only narrow-eyeds can see ghosts. they only learn this when they're in high school though, so if they ever meet a blank-eyed as a child they'll just think it's a normal person. which leads us to the story.

once upon a time in central universe, there was a girl named quinn and a boy named theo. quinn's grandmother became very ill when quinn was 7 years old. quinn had read about a very special fruit that had healing properties. people say it can cure anything - except death. rumour has it that this very special fruit grows on a very special tree in space-time woods, a mysterious forest that just happened to be right next to quinn's village. well, that sure is convenient. since the forest was close to her house, little quinn decided that she should hop to the forest, grab a fruit and give it to her grandma. even though space-time woods had no dangerous animals, it still had something else that was much more frightening.

little quinn was walking around when she found a shimmering lake that had a bunch of little islands and stepping stones. each island has its own little tree. quinn looked at the tree closest to her and found that it was different from the other trees. it had fruits that looked exactly like the special healing fruit, so it's got to be the right tree, right?

w r o n g .

she encountered the wrong tree. but she didn't know that. so she went across the lake using the stepping, making a bunch of ripples and splashes in the water along the way. she climbed up the tree and picked up a fruit.. and she instantly felt limp and her vision went blank. quinn knew there was a special healing fruit, but what she didn't know was that there was another fruit that looked exactly like that fruit, but instead of healing whoever ate it, it killed whoever touched it.

so, quinn died.. :( but this is the central universe, so she was reborn as a ghost. she was pretty sad though, because her grandma wasn't able to be cured :( but at least she'll also live as a ghost :) so quinn (i mean, ghost-quinn, but we'll just call her quinn) hid her corpse in a small bush so that no one would come here and be shocked because there would be a little girl's dead body lying around in a forest. she decided to wander around for a while.

the wandering was very lonely though, since almost no one could see her. so she got bored and went to an amusement park. there happened to be a narrow-eyed man that saw her, but he avoided her because there have been rumours going around that blank-eyeds can put curses on people. of course, it wasn't true. they're just poor unfortunate souls wandering around because they're dead and have nothing better to do. quinn stayed around the amusement park for some few months but got tired and decided to only come there once a year.

on a very fateful day, she met a narrow-eyed child called theo. he was 7 years old, and quinn was already 12. (but she still looked like a 7-year-old.) they were supposed to be the same age, but quinn messed up the timeline after she made some ripples and splashes in the space-time lake. after the timeline messed up, quinn and theo's birth was was rewound to a few years back. quinn's birth-time was rewound to 7 years behind what it was actually supposed to be, and theo's was rewound 2 years. so, in reality, theo and all the quinns were supposed to be the same age, but the timeline was messed up so now they aren't. i bet you're very confused. i don't blame you.

so anyway quinn and theo became friends. theo doesn't know that quinn is a ghost and therefore does not understand why everyone calls her his imaginary friend. quinn finds out all about ghosts and is sad. when theo grew a bit older, he was confused as to why quinn still looked like a child. quinn decided not to tell him. a few more years passed by and quinn learned how to operate the space-time lake. i dunno how tho. theo wanted to visit quinn's home (the forest) but she wasn't there, and he found her corpse instead. her fully grown corpse. (she was 20 by now.) theo didn't recognise the body but was a little concerned that there was an adult sleeping in a bush. he decided to just let her do her own thing and so he ignored it. the next day, at school, he learned about ghosts and also about the space-time lake. it was then that he realised... that quinn was a ghost. so he went to the lake and shook up the water, hoping that it would turn back time and save quinn. very dumb.

unfortunately, since he didn't know how the lake worked, he ended up messing up the universes instead. so he gave up. quinn came back to the forest and found theo crying over her dead body.

legend has it that he is still crying to this day.

* * *

but wait!!! since quinn knows how to operate the lake, doesn't that mean she can turn this whole mess back to normal and restore peace to herself, theo and the other three quinns?

let's put that idea to work!