The Journey of the Mist
I disentangle myself from the branches of the tree where I’ve been resting, settling lightly over the soft grass below as I collect myself into a more physical form. I watch long pale fingers stretch out from the shimmering violet mists of my being through eyes that are also materializing inside a face. As a neck forms beneath it, I roll it to the side, ears touching shoulders as they manifest. I often wonder how muscles can already be stiff when they were weightless vapor moments before, but Mother assures me it’s normal.
We’re advised against taking on bodies too often, but I can’t help it. Human form is intoxicating. After all, what other form facilitates adventure so readily?
And tonight, I’m going on a new adventure entirely. I’m going to cross the boundary mists.
I freeze the breath in my newly rediscovered lungs as a golden glow shimmers in the branches of the oak to my right, but Mother settles back. She was only shifting in her sleep.
I release the breath and pad off on my tender-souled feet.
As I break for the boundary, I duck at every fluttering sound of the roving night-fae. It’s not as if there’s anything they could do to one of Us, but my human form always feels more fearful of such things. Such solidity is so utterly noticeable; it’s unnerving.
I look at my hands again as they are bathed in the pulsing rainbow colors of the Dancing Grove I’m passing. They are such odd shapes, like overfed but flat-squashed hairless spiders with stunted legs. I use these fingers to pluck a leaf from a nearby tree--”sorry”, I murmur with soft, mouth-tickling vibrations of my breath for the damage done by my unrestrained wonder--and twirl it between them. Direct physical interaction is so strange that I still giggle to feel this leaf with this sense of touch this form has. I tear the leaf in two, hearing the crinkling sound of the division, feeling the life in its still-moist insides bleed a little onto my fingers. Sometimes I am afraid of the destructive desires this human form holds. But what is a little destruction when it brings discovery?
Don’t stay distracted for too long, I remind myself. Get distracted, discover, but move on. There are bigger discoveries to be had tonight.
I splash through the stream, delighted by the sensation of sound in my ears and damp earthy scent in my nose and the wet that lingers on my skin after I am through. Everything in human form is still amazing, but all the same I’ve done all this before. Tonight I am set on something new.
Time is also a thing I perceive in this form; I concede it is one of my least favorite aspects. It seems like it takes a great deal of it to reach the boundaries.
A gentle rain begins falling, bleeding through the soft mist-tendrils that enshroud some portions of this form. The farther I walk, the more I settle into the ways of this form, of moving and perceiving with it, until I almost begin to feel I belong in it.
Eventually I am there, face to mistform with the Great Guardians. To these eyes, they are a rippling, glittering wall of violet mists permeating the outer limits of the woods.
If I were in my true form, an attempt to cross would see me absorbed into the ranks of the Ones who Watch the boundary. The stories vary on whether there is any means of escape, but no one has risked it in my memory.
But in this solid form, I take a deep breath-- and I simply walk through. Slowly but surely, I cross out of my realm.
My senses are confronted by more new sensations than I have sensed in what must be at least one or two alwayses. It is still raining here but that is the only thing that is alike. This world is jagged and blaring and bright and-- it’s so much, too much, to take in. There are trees, but they are gaunt and few and crammed in odd little boxes. Who would do such a thing? There are lights, but they are blander in color and don’t flow in swirling rainbows like the Dancing Lights of the Fae--they’re mostly golden (far duller than Mother) but cut by a sharp red glow reflecting from sky to ground that suddenly flashes to green as I jump back from it. The earth is hard, moist like the rocks by the stream but much more regular, an uncurved plane of stone that is unnaturally flat and yet coarse in a way that scrapes my legs as I fall backwards. The screech of an aberrant creature threatens me out of its path. They are everywhere, these shining, growling monsters-- I have known many monsters, but none like these.
“Hey! Are you alright?” a human running towards me asks, one with a slightly smaller form than mine.
I open my mouth but stumble around a bit in search of human words. Communicating with vibrational trills as they do is adorably quaint, but also deeply inconvenient in times like this, especially when I am already so overwhelmed.
“Ye-h... yee? Yeee.”
The human looks at me in puzzlement, tilting its head. As it moves to speak, another one of the great beasts leaps at us and the human pulls me out of the way.
It makes a soft sound of dismay and pushes hair back from my forehead, looking at it with concern. “Did you bump your head when you fell? You might have a concussion.”
“I don’t think-- a con-what?” I look around at this chaotic, sharp-edged, sonorous realm once more. “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t’ve come here.”
It nods sympathetically. “The city can be really overwhelming when you’ve never been in one before. Where are you from?”
“The Lande Beyond the Violet Mists,” I offer. The name of our Lande sounds much grander in our tongue, but that’s the nearest translation I find myself able to render.
“What?” she makes a nervous vibrating sound with her words and pulls back from me a bit.
“I need to go back.” I break away from the human’s curious arms and bolt back for the portal, slipping into the familiar mists of our borders. Soon, the embrace of the forests’ arms settles around me. I breathe deeply and let them comfort me from the wild chaos I’ve just experienced. Stress still tingles all along the limbs of my human form. Well, there’s no particular need to keep them up anymore, I suppose. I release the form, dissipating back to my true self, watching my hands dissolve out into smoky amethyst tendrils. Every ache and scrape and thrum melts away with my form. Adventure is fun, but it’s a relief to be back to normal.
“Whoa,” a breathy gasp sounds behind me.
It’s the human. It followed me through.
* * *
I decided this year to finally use my blog for the kind of abstract fantasy fiction I’ve always been angling towards and actually tell a story from this Lande of Violet Mists I’ve always hinted at. It’s not edited much at all, and of course I reserve the right to revise it later, but that’s how things always tend to turn out when I make these year-end buzzer beaters. I did consider writing another philosophical reflection, but honestly it wouldn’t’ve been that different from the one I wrote last year. I’m still figuring out who I am and what I want to do and how and what I want to create, and so I just wanted to push forward and make something new this year. I’m not making a New Year’s Resolution about it or anything, but perhaps I might continue this story before December of 2020 rolls around. We’ll see. (If someone were to comment upon this it could possibly increase the odds of such an occurrence, FYI.) In any case, as I enter the new decade, I’m finally delivering on the concept of my blog with an actual tale from the Lande Beyond the Violet Mists.
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