I recently turned seven months old and under mother's directions and encouraging jabs I've mastered walking and talking. As I had discovered, chimera grow up about three to four times faster than humans. As I reassessed my size and looks in the large, polished surface of one of the walls that functioned as a mirror, I noted that I was about as big as a four-year old human girl.

Mom crafted me a few simple dresses out of dark, thin, monster pelt straps. I started wearing them everyday, looking like a little savage princess.

My own gemstone mane had grown and crystalized over the passing months. It was the color of crimson rubies, just like mom's. The texture of my crystalline hair was inexplicably soft and yet very glossy, sparkling on my head like a ruby-covered crown. Under mom's supervision I trimmed some of it off and left it out on the windowsill.

After a while, the gems hardened, becoming very tough, while the black string holding them together remained elastic. In a way, I was my own gem-growing lab. Using them, I decided to make basic jewelry out of my hair such as bracelets and necklaces. Mom had approved as apparently doing such was very common among chimeras.

On a day of a gloomy snowstorm, I gave the first bracelet I made to my dad as a good luck charm for the hunt. I had no idea how he felt about me, since we don't talk much, but at the very least he was now wearing something I made. I wasn't sure if his stoic behavior towards me was just how he normally behaved, or if chimera familial relationships were simply like this.

Thanks to my strengthening claws I've managed to successfully climb all of the interior walls of our skull-house, investigating every nook and cranny. The ceiling continued to elude me as I simply wasn't strong enough to hang off it.

I will get you someday, ceiling!

Mom assembled a rope netting for me in the side of the living room, which I have been practicing on.

"You can do it, my little sunrise!" She said encouragingly as I attempted to defeat the ceiling for the hundredth time. My grip was simply insufficient. My hands slipped and I fell down towards the net beneath with a squeal.

Mom laughed.

Not funny, mom! Seriously!

I glared at her, eyes filled with angry tears. She laughed even more. There's no justice in this world. Yet I must try again, because the girls climb while men fly. I suspected that soon enough I would be forced to climb things outside and will have to deal with my apeirophobia.

While the view from the teeth-filled balcony was quite epic in terms of mountain vistas filled with cascading waterfalls and mossy valleys to the brim, looking down was still beyond me.

I fearlessly drove my bike across Chechnya and Georgia and hiked below the slopes of mount Elbrus and yet... the Chasm beneath our home was nothing like the mountains of Earth.

Whenever I looked straight into it, my mind simply struggled to embrace its impossible vastness. It felt immeasurable, insurmountable, unconquerable.

Mom started taking me outside more and more. She knew that I was terrified of the Chasm and decided to help me deal with it by introducing more Chasm into my life.

She took me to the sideways forest surrounding the chasm. The trees here were strong, much stronger than those on earth. All vegetation here clung to the nearly vertical wall. As mom climbed through the extensive network of roots she pointed out various creatures from big and small that lived in the sideways-woods and taught me to recognize them.

With every expedition that she took me on to collect various plants, she taught me the names of every bug, plant, and tree. I was expected to identify them. As I struggled to memorize all of the new things around and to say their names correctly she got progressively annoyed and irritated with me.

I didn't like it when she got mad with me. Whenever she snapped at me because I couldn't immediately recall some obscure plant name I mentally closed inward and lamented about everything I had lost on Earth.

. . .

One day, she climbed to a lower level of the chasm, a few hundred meters down and showed me the giant trees and animals that lived in the upside-down woods that clung from a large pyramidal rock that extended outwards from the side-wall of the chasm. It was the most bizarre thing I've seen.

There, in the upside down patch of forest other chimera girls were present. Some of them carried their children in belt backpacks, others were by themselves and some mothers had their girls climbing along with them.

Mom took me out of the backpack straps and sat me down on a large branch. I immediately clung it for my dear life because beneath me there was nothing but the endless Chasm.

"Juni, stop it," Mom hissed angrily. "Be brave in front of others. Don’t embarrass me!"

I let go of the bark beneath me, trying to calm myself. It wasn’t working. My heart was beating madly.

I looked around, trying to distract myself from the stress. I saw other chimera kids as they played around, amongst the branches like little monkeys. They were merrily picking on each other, fighting or chattering. Not a single one of them was afraid of the chasm like me!

I saw a girl who looked to be around four years old carrying a large pack on her back. The young chimera followed her mother as she climbed across the rock face without a single worry. There were no boys at this gathering. It confirmed to me that the chimera society was heavily segregated.

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An old-looking, slightly wrinkly chimera had approached us, gracefully traversing the enormous branch. Her dark-gray, crystal hair was very long, far longer than the others. It was also somewhat dim and matte in appearance, not as reflective.

She wore a long, dress-like outfit woven from gold and brown flakes. An ossified corpse of a yellow bug held her wrist in its embrace. The bug was covered in reflective, bewilderingly complex, gold patterns. A large red gem sat within the bug's semi-hollow body. The old chimera's brown-tinted skin was covered in gold spiral drawings. The tattoo patterns on her body were incredibly elaborate, reminding me of the tattoos worn by Maori Polynesian people from New Zealand. Judging by the way she was dressed and presented herself, she was most likely the local shaman.

The chimera shaman eyed my mom as she stepped forward to us on the wide tree branch.

"So, this is my little Juni, yes?"

"Yes." Mom nodded with a deep bow. “Thank you for saving her life, High-Cendai.”

"It has been quite a while since I've seen you, Ambriia. Why is that?"

Mom looked embarrassed at the question.

The old woman stepped closer, observed me.

"You should have come to the meeting grove sooner. Is there something wrong with your little spawn, perhaps? Something that you’re embarrassed about?"

I squinted at the old chimera. What was she implying? There was nothing wrong with me!

"She's… a tad slow to learn the names of everything," Mom confessed after a deep pause. "She's… obstinate in her pronunciation too. She'll catch up, I'm certain… I just don’t understand why she is like this."

The old chimera grunted. "Well, let's hope so. It seems that she's quite the amxituaii. Aren't you Juni?"

I didn't answer. I just stared at her, confused. I had no idea what the “amxituaii” word meant.

Why was the old chimera addressing me like I was a lot older? Was I supposed to reply or keep pretending like I’m a clueless seven-months old child?

I glanced at other kids my age around the upside-down forest. They were actively talking to each other! Damn it. Chimeras learned to talk and walk a lot faster than humans!

"Don't you speak, child?" The old chimera pressured me for answers.

I was silent, not sure how to respond.

"You're not mute, are you? I thought as much. You don't have the look of a mute, so what's the matter?"

"She's still very young, Eunice," my mother muttered.

"What is it, then?" The old woman persisted, ignoring my mom. "Do you not know how to speak? Are you unable to say anything? At least nod if you understand me."

"I know how to speak," I said.

"Oh good," Eunice smiled. "Bringing this one back from death wasn't a total loss."

Mom nodded with a sigh.

"Can I ask you a question?" I said finally, trying to be polite.

The old chimera turned to me, her head cocked to the side.

"Of course, of course, Juni. I'm always happy to answer a question from my little monci-cendai."

I hesitated. Presumably the last word meant something like little cousin… little girl? maybe?

"Eunice, I was wondering..." I stopped.

"Wondering what?"

"How exactly did you bring me back from the dead?" I finally asked.

"Oh, well, it was quite easy and also hard. I was given the opportunity by the gods. It's true that I didn't expect to find you, but I did. It was the right thing to do and I’m now very glad that I did," she rambled.

"Find me where?" I asked, trying to comprehend the slightly odd structure of her sentences.

"In the land of the dead, of course. When you stopped breathing, your soul was lost, it had drifted away to the Still Forest... but I got it back." Eunice smiled. "So you best not disappoint me."

"Got my... soul back how?" I continued my interrogation.

The old chimera tapped the bug-bracelet on her wrist. "This is my focus tool. Her name is Enni. She dove for me into the land of the dead and caught you, fished you from the Still Forest."

I looked at the dead bug held by the bracelet. Right. Things started to make sense. I looked at Eunice's hand. It was covered in the same circular tattoos as I had seen upon my birth. In fact, it was the same hand! Original Juni must have died upon birth, likely strangled by the umbilical cord or had another issue.

From what I recalled around half of humans died as children before modern medicine started to aid properly with childbirth. Because of it, the average lifespan of a hunter-gatherer was around 31 years old.

"Spend time with your friends Ambriia," Eunice ordered, shooing my mother away from me with a flick of her bug-bracelet wrist. Mom bowed and departed, leaving me alone on the branch. I immediately grabbed onto the bark once again with my hands.

"You are... different!" Eunice observed my panicked motions. "You are afraid of the Chasm?"

I nodded, trembling. I was exposed pretty quickly by this experienced chimera. Would she kick me off the branch into the Chasm for being… different?

"It is not often that I am able to bring a child from death," Eunice continued. "But when I do... they can become like me."

"Like you?" I blinked.

"A speaker for the Allmother," Eunice declared. "A high-cendai. I can tell that you are special, a new leaf."

"A new leaf?" I asked, trembling. "Cendai?"

"Yes," Eunice nodded. "I can hear it in your voice. Your pronunciation is wrong, erratic. You do not know how to say the words properly. You do not know how to sing with your soul. It is Seeeeaaa-Seeaennn–Daaaiiiinn,” she sang slowly for me, the single word expanding into three distinctive musical tones accompanying the syllables.

I looked at the shaman’s lips as she sang. She was somehow making impossible whale noises, just like my mother. I had no clue how she was doing that.

“She who has witnessed the Still Forest and returned from the place where the dead dwell forevermore with power,” the shaman explained.

"Why would I know the words? Why is so much expected of me?" I asked.

"Ordinarily… chimeras inherit the memories of their ancestors,” she explained. “A mother's soul shard passes into her daughter. A father’s soul-shard passes into his son. We are akin to a tapestry covered in knots, a chorus of memory that stretches endlessly into the depths of the past. I can see it in your eyes, in the way you move, in your fear of the Chasm. Your mother's shard was clearly lost in the land of the dead. You do not remember, cannot recall your mother's tongue. You have learned it instead. It has been seven months and the memories of our tribe have not awakened in your soul. You're a lost segment, a knot torn away from the greater tapestry of the tribe."

I gulped.

"Your mother is undoubtedly getting frustrated with you as my mother was frustrated with me," Eunice demurred. "This is normal. You must accept it and endure, broken chain. Before you lie many new branches of the all-tree, many new paths. These are paths inaccessible to your parents. While they have the memory and experiences of their ancestors to depend upon, they are also bound by their ancestral memory, tangled up by the chorus that they carry. You will be misunderstood, not accepted by others... but also you might be able to bring change to our tribe."

"Change?" I muttered.

"Change can be good or bad," Eunice nodded with a smile. "Change can strengthen or weaken our tribe. Do not be afraid. I will nurture you. I will set you on the right path. I was the one to bring you from death... and so I will be your Master."

I didn't like how she looked at me with a wide, smirk made of sharp, shark-like teeth.