Twelve Realms

Chapter 20

My head is spinning. My ears are ringing. I feel a pressure building in my head, and yet I cannot take the time to focus on righting these issues. I have a job I must do. Father told me that to disappoint a human is to jeopardize their loyalty, and that is something I must never do. 

The girl is standing alone, her eyes closed. She is sharing my plane of existence, but she does not know it yet. Her form is here. Her consciousness is not. She cannot tell she is here. This is good, for I have yet to build the facade. If she were to open her eyes now, all she would see is the remote corner of the Realm of the Gods I have sectioned off specifically for these meetings. 

I steady myself and begin to build. Ordinarily, father has me make some recreation of the Realm of Eternal Winter, with the purpose of keeping the girl grounded in her faith. But today, father has told me to build something else. 

I place the girl on a cliff of rocks and wind. In front of her lies a steep drop. Behind her, a stretch of tough grass. A thin dirt path winds across the grass, leading steadily downwards until it feeds into the mouth of a cave.

I hide myself from view before summoning the girl's consciousness into her form. I watch her orient herself in her body, twitching her fingers, adjusting her facial muscles, taking a breath and realizing the scent on the air is not the one she's been expecting. 

The girl's eyes open and drink in the scene around her. Her hair dances around her face, carried by the wind, but she swats it down. 

She gingerly glances over the edge of the cliff, spies the crashing waves and unfriendly rocks below, and turns away, instead opting to follow the path. She walks carefully, but her eyes never cease moving, constantly sweeping everything in their range-- the grass, the sea, the sky. She speaks not my name yet in her gaze I can see her call out for me. It is an aspect of humanity that I am unfamiliar with, and yet one that amazes me. Father tells me that I am above the humans, that I must never forget that they have their place and that place is far below me, but how can I scorn these creatures who trust so completely, place all their faith into me when all I have done is make requests and provided assistance but one time? 

The girl reaches the gaping opening of the cave and hesitates for the first time. She tilts herself slightly forward, in a vain attempt to try and spy what comes at the end of the passage, but it is useless. I have specifically made sure that she will see no such thing. 

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself, and takes a first step into the cavern. A wind comes rushing out to meet her, and her face crinkles, an involuntary reaction to the unexpected gust. I wonder if the breeze, which she could interpret as a warning of dangers lying within, will slow the girl down, but she demonstrates the determination I am beginning to come to expect from her. 

The girl continues gingerly downwards through the cave, her pace slowing gradually as she is granted less and less light. She reaches out a hand to the side, requesting in some small way to be relieved from her vulnerability through touch. I wonder if it is me she stretches out for, but when her hand connects with the unfeeling rock wall of the cavern, the expectancy of her reach fades. She moves forward, slowly, testing each step with the very edge of her foot before she completes it, running her hand along the wall for its unyielding support. 

I feel the impatience radiate off of her in waves, or perhaps it is anticipation. Human emotion is still something I do not quite understand. In any case, it is easy to tell that the girl is eager for something new, eager to discover what will happen when this tunnel of rock runs out. 

Her eagerness overtakes her caution as her steps hasten, no longer carefully probing the ground beneath her before entrusting it with her weight. Her eyes pick out a single point of light ahead of her, and I hear her take an excited breath, feel her emotions rise, see her hurry towards that light as it grows larger and larger, swelling from a speck to an overwhelming mass of white, brightness overtaking her so that she cannot see what is on the other side, so that she is forced to run blindly into it, and to find, on the other side...