The earth was as colorless and bare as she’d last seen it.
Black appendages stretched above her head, drenched in translucent, white substance. This substance seemed to float down endlessly in tiny drops to form a shroud for the dead earth around the girl. Her body shook uncontrollably, stiff and convulsive pain attacking muscle.
For the first time in this existence, she experienced cold. As unfamiliar and excruciating the sensation was, she felt no sense of danger, no urgency to do what any other living being would, to search for warmth.
Slender, trembling fingers, as colorless as the smooth ground, rose before her face, and she blinked at them several times, coating her eyes with sufficient moisture before she could clearly see them. The tips of her fingers ended in a pale blue color, fingernails.
Lightweight strands fell from her shoulders when she bent to examine her body, a veil across her vision. A tug let her know that were firmly attached to her scalp, which was too numb even to prickle, as it should have. The strands were dark, a stark contrast to the white beneath her, and long and thick enough to insulate the entirety of her backside as she sat.
She returned to further exploration.
Her hands dropped to her cheeks. Numb still. Her fingers had only the barest taste of sensation. Her face was soft, she concluded. They dropped to her neck.
Smooth, vulnerable skin. Her collarbones, her shoulders, were narrow, protruding structures. Her chest was two small mounds rising from a sturdy cage that housed all the vitalities of the mortal form. When her hands slid down below a soft stomach, she confirmed that she was biologically female, and in human form.
It could have been minutes or hours before she stood, having fully examined her female form to satisfaction.
She found herself grateful for the little insulation of the hair that fell at her back. She wore nothing else for protection. The body’s shivering had intensified, but she welcomed the discomfort, embraced the pain and the numbness and the mortality.
She laughed out loud, its musical ring not unlike the sounds she had once heard from the mouth of the lady. This was what she wanted. To be human again.
Abruptly, her laugh cut off. Lady? What lady?
There existed some vague memory in her newly formed mind, but stubbornly, it remained inaccessible. Certainly, there was a person. Try as she might, however, she could recalled nothing but the sound of that person's voice, which spoke in a language she did not understand.
She did not understand at all. She was human again, yes. So what was she before? And how did she come to wake here in this frigid forest? Fleeting along the edges of her mind were images of experiences she must have had, but try as she might, they slipped beyond her reach.
Perhaps, she should have been afraid or confused or frustrated. Instead, she felt quite numb, in both a physical and mental sense. Her body still shook, and although it was not painful, it was still rather unpleasant. Out of everything that eluded her, at the very least, she knew to seek warmth.
Movement, however, was a skill just as elusive as her memories. Her throat ached, from the laugh. It had been a long time since she’d last used her voice. Her legs shook, due to weak, unused muscle.
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She coughed a bit, in an attempt to rid the soreness from her throat. Then, tentatively, she lifted a leg, intent on taking a single step forward. It ached from the unusual movement, but her foot eventually crunched back down, a few inches into the snow before her.
The change in position threw her off balance, and the uncontrollable shivering her body endured did not help. When – in attempt to remedy the loss of control – she moved her other leg, she collapsed.
Her chest tightened. Her torso spasmed, arms and legs locking, from sudden contact with the frigid ground. Falling into snow, naked, was an extremely unpleasant sensation, as it turned out. So much so that it shocked her into–
A shuddering exhale was the last sound to escape her human voice.
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It was not so much darkness. Rather, there was no concept of sight.
Her sense of… self… floated in this void.
The loss of all sensation should have been disorienting. However, she felt… nothing. Nothing at all. Not peace. Not fear. Her mind held knowledge of the various concepts surrounding emotion, but nothing more. Simply, that.
She was certain now that she was in a form that was neither human nor female. Still, that identity persisted, even though inaccurate.
An indeterminate period of time passed before there was… something else. Some presence.
Although she had no limbs to stretch, no hands with which to grasp, still, she reached. And grasped it.
There was no warmth, no coolness, no tingle, no hard or soft surface. It was an intangible object that simply was. It reacted to her touch and seemed to stir, then it disappeared.
No. It did not disappear. She consumed it. And when it settled within her body, her self expanded.
All about her, images – no, it was the environment – flickered. Sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste. For the most minuscule and discrete milliseconds, her senses were restored. But then they faded.
Her mind, somehow more aware and more demanding, gained a desire. She wanted to see-touch-hear-smell-taste again. Where did it go?
With all her limbs, she reached. And she grasped.
There was presence everywhere. Uncountable within even the small space she must have occupied. All reacted to her, and she ate and ate and ate. Perhaps, if her body had been physical, her stomach would have ruptured by now.
With every presence consumed, the environment about her grew more and more visible, more touchable, more audible, more pungent…
Until finally, she could see the presences dispersed in the air, in the ground, within her self. It became apparent to her now that she had not moved far from the spot in which she sat in human form. In fact, there was one particularly sizable presence there still.
She moved closer. Reached. Grasped. Ate. Digested.
And then, the cold shocked her body into being. No. It was her body that came into being, and then, the cold came.
Her ears picked up on a shuddering inhale. Her shuddering inhale. She saw-touched-heard-smelled-tasted.
No.
I.
I felt everything again.
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RACE Fleeting Spirit LEVEL 1