Ymajika
Legacy Name: Ymajika

There once lived, in a city of crystal spires and golden sunlight, a young girl. She lived atop the highest tower and spent her nights gazing up at the stars, wondering if they gazed back. Every morning she awoke to mechanical bird song below her and a sky of palest blue overhead. She dressed herself in robes of creamy silk and ran barefoot across the dewy grass that grew up between the marble cobblestones, past the icy trees laden with blown glass fruits and over the bridge that spanned across the exquisitely wrought silver river that appeared to flow. The girl ran all the way to the Halls, where more cold, hard wonders were being forged, blown, hammered and polished daily, and on down to the Old Garden. Her passing was marked by the shaking of heads and scornful glances; oh that one so young should be so taken by the Garden.

Within the Garden the girl danced beneath an old apple tree with gnarled roots who bore wrinkly yellow apples, their flavor slightly tart. Beneath her feet was grass, real grass and real flowers. Usually only very old People came to the Garden, for only they could remember. They remembered a time when the river truly ran and the birds were not mechanical. The towers were wrapped in flowering vines and there were no cobblestones, only grass. Only they are wise enough to miss what was once had. But then came the strange young girl, who loved living things so much she often fell asleep in the flowerbeds. In the Garden every day she sat beneath the apple tree and wrote in her little leather bound book all the wonders she saw. She wrote the flowers songs and sang them, or played them on her little bone pipe. In return they bathed her in their silky petals, perfumed her skin and entangled themselves in her spidersilk-thin hair. They whispered to her of things long past, places and people who had long since passed from mortal memory, secrets held deep within the earth and in time her eyes were no longer that of a child.

With this change came several others. As she grew, her skin did not stay moonbeam white, her hair bluish and brittle. She was golden and bronze, the light of the sun seeming to glow from beneath her skin. Her hair was a river of soft brown waves woven with vines and petals. She gave up her tower room entirely and slept in the Garden. With these changes she developed a longing for other places, places where people did not fear the process of age and renewal as hers did; that was why they surrounded themselves with cold, hard things, so they need not see. And one day, the young girl set out on her journey. With her she took nothing but her book, her flute and a few wrinkly apples.

She walked for many days, taking herself farther from the city than she had ever ventured before. She slept under the open sky with the damp earth under her fingertips and between her toes. She walked through purple-green twilight fields with fireflies haloing her head, candy coloured sunsets over canyons that went down down down and rainbows stretching down below her as she stood above the clouds, waiting for the mountain rain to cease. The world was a beautiful place and she had never felt more alive.

One day, she came to another city. But this city was not metal and ice, it was crumbling concrete thick with graffiti and a foul stench crept out from within it. The young girl, now a young woman, stepped into the city. She could not see a foot in front of her face for all the acrid smoke and needles broke beneath her feet. Soon it became clear to her that this was not a place of life. The people wandered through the smoke wearing sharp metal jewelry and torn black clothing. Their nails and teeth were filed to points and their heads lolled sickly on their shoulders. The girl staggered between their porcelain skinned bodies and thought she could see things, strange things, reflected in their dull eyes. A mob of angry zombie-children swept her away and thrust her into a small dark room with a buzzing electric light. There they changed her. They shaved off her hair and dressed her in tight black clothing; she could feel it suffocating her. They shoved her feet into big black boots and placed a choker of needles around her slim throat. "There," they said, "Now you are one of us, you can forget. Forget."

And she did. Her skin peeled, becoming their same ashen, smoke-bloated grey. She wandered their streets without a word, simply waiting for the next time they would come by the kick her until she could taste the blood, tell her she was ugly, she was shit, no one wanted her; "But," they told her, "Its alright, you belong here. No one wanted us either."

But one day their spell was broken. She wandered too far and spied a single yellow flower growing up through a crack in the ground. It all came back and she ran. She ran as hard and as fast as she could, ripping off the hateful clothing as she went. Finally, when she could run no more, she collapsed. Her strength was gone. She simply lay upon the sweet, damp grass and soaked up the clean sunlight, let the rain wash her lungs clean.

When the terrors had faded and her hair was a golden stubble upon her head, she headed for the mountains. There she found yet another city, one older than time itself and which ran so deep into the earth you could not help but hear her words. The people were tall and thin with skin the colour of old ivory, sad eyed and bald. They never spoke above a whisper and preferred not to speak at all. Their long delicate fingers were always turning the pages of books, furling and unfurling scrolls. Knowledge was their passion, so much that they tattooed ancient words, symbols, star charts, anything onto their limbs. Once they showed her their pride and joy, their library; it stretched out for so long she could not see the other end. Books of animals, books of stars, books being written, books so old they were never touched and their contents taught verbally.

While fascinated with life and the study of it, they simply did not fully understand. For you see, they were immortal. 'Death' was merely a word to them, unlike life; life, but a quiet and cold one.

It seemed to the girl that the entire world was sleeping, or simply running down like a mechanical bird. Was the earth tired? Her words were slow and archaic and tedious to document. All that the girl had seen of the world had confused and saddened her. A tempest grew beneath her breast, threatening to burst forth from her back as a pair of twisted and bloodied wings. She lost her book of wonders and her flute no longer played. She returned to the forest and hid within the walls of her cottage.

For seven years she has not ventured from her home, nor spoken with anyone. She is watching, waiting for a sign, something to tell her that the world has reawoken. And if that sign never comes, she will make it herself.