and we tore our dresses and stained our shirts
but it's nice today
oh, the wait was so worth it

[ a beautiful mess -- jason mraz ]

Legend has it that there is a monster that roams this land.

It is told that he is a demon, one so dark and loathsome that he was cast out from the darkest parts of hell itself. He was once an angel, cavorting and frolicking with merriment in the highest of heavens. But being so high up meant that he had a long way to fall -- and fall he did. He fell victim to the qualities of humans, letting greed and a lust for power corrupt his vision until it was all that he could see. Disgraced and cast out of heaven, it wasn't long before the shadows and malefic whispers lurking around every corner in hell corrupted him even further, turning him into something completely unrecognizable. A monster. His outsides began changing, shifting; an odd sort of transmogrification overtook his body until his outsides were as hideous and twisted as his insides. He became a dark, beastlike creature, with scars and and disfigurements tarnishing every inch of his body. To this day, no one is entirely sure as to exactly what he looks like, for nobody that has gone to seek him out has ever returned.

When he was cast out of hell, he roved from world to world (for there are many, although few choose to recognize so), eventually settling down in Etherlight. Rumor has it that the barrenness, the empty bleakness of the land is what caused him to stay; it is told that the desolate feeling enshrouding Etherlight reminded him of his own soul -- what was left of it, that is. He is now a wanderer at best, preying upon the souls of innocents unfortunate enough to stray across his path. A fate much worse than death, they say. Every last shred of decency has left him, leaving him bereft of any good qualities, rotten to the very core.

But despite all that, he has a goal in mind. The legend also foretells that if he is not stopped, if souls are not kept safe and away from him, then the day he destroys his one thousandth soul will be a day of darkness, the first of many. For he only needs one thousand souls before he is able to return to heaven or to hell, powerful enough to overtake either, sending the balance of all worlds into peril.

The beast is famous enough in this world that even the slightest mention of his name is enough to send shivers down the spines of the bravest of souls. Ombre. Feared by many, Ombre has become a legend of sorts in the realm of Etherlight.

But Ombre is just a tale, nothing more; his story is simply something told to the naive ears of young children and foolish adults.

Isn't it?

Darkness filled every pore of the boy's body. He felt as though he were floating, wraith-like and free, yet somehow comfortably enshrouded in a small pocket of air -- his own little piece of the universe. However, the darkness surrounding him was rather disconcerting; it tugged persistently at the small crevices in his mind. No sooner had he arrived at this conclusion when a pale sort of light began seeping into the darkness, filling up the corners of the boy's consciousness.He opened his eyes slowly and looked down at his body, realizing that he had somehow managed to leave the accident scene undamaged. Or had he?

For everything around him was enshrouded in a thick white mist.

He was no longer standing on a highway; instead, he found himself standing amongst a thinning copse of trees. The trees seemed dull, muted at best, but then again, everything about the landscape surrounding him appeared to be the same way. It seemed as if he was stuck in a different land, one so nondescript and characterless that it would be easy to forget it even existed. What was more, when he looked down at his body, the color seemed to have seeped out of it; the chroma of his skin and clothes was now a uniform grayish white.

The boy slowly sat down upon the forest floor, staring at everything and yet nothing in particular. He had so many questions, but no suitable answers for any of them. Why was he here? Where was here, exactly? And by the looks of it, there was no one else around who could shed some light on his predicament.

But wait. Isn't this what he had wanted? Hadn't he wanted some sort of escape -- any sort, really -- from his dreary life back in Boston? Back there, he had been nothing more than a vagrant, trapped by Boston's foster care system. He hadn't ever lived with a family for more than a year, and as he grew older, foster homes had become harder to come by. Nobody had ever shown him that they truly cared, that he actually meant something to them. So he had run, slipping through the cracks in the system like so many before him, but he had never expected to actually succeed. And maybe he hadn't -- his freedom had come at a price, and he was still ignorant of what exactly his 'freedom' in this world entailed.

With a small yawn of bewilderment, the boy laid his head to rest upon a small pile of dead leaves nearby. Perhaps his circumstances would improve by morningtime, or at least he might be sensible enough to arrive at a reasonable conclusion by then.

[insert more stuff here]

"Back in New York City (my New York City, not yours), I spent a lot of time reading poetry. One of my favorite poems was This Bridge by Shel Silverstein." Maura closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled slowly before she began to recite the poem.

"This bridge will only take you halfway there
To those mysterious lands you long to see:
Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fairs
And moonlit woods where unicorns run free.
So come and walk awhile with me and share
The twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known.
But this bridge will only take you halfway there--
The last few steps you'll have to take alone."

For a moment, Maura and Jacob were both lost in thought, but then Maura broke out of her reverie and continued on. "One of the things I've learned during my time here is that you always have a choice, whether you choose to recognize it or not." Maura's eyes shone as she gazed steadily at Jacob. "I'll do my best to explain, but you must be willing to listen. Etherlight is a different world, a parallel one. It lives in coexistence with all other worlds -- yours, mine. There is no world that is above the others, so to speak; all worlds are of the same caliber and importance. However, Etherlight is not exactly a traditional world, meaning that you cannot be born here, nor can you die (NEED TO FIX LATER OKAY). It is more of a transitory place, a place where someone might stop briefly on his or her journey, but it isn't exactly a place where one can permanently stay. Normally, in order to travel between worlds, there must be a door of sorts. They're not easy to spot, but with a trained eye, you might be able to notice a small shimmer in the air, something to mark the placement of a door. These doors were supposedly created during the angels' fight against the renegade ones. Afterwards, angels closed off most of the doors between worlds, but some were overlooked -- perhaps purposely, or perhaps they just fell through the cracks. Either way, that's normally how people manage to travel between worlds."

"Normally?" Jacob asked slowly, rolling the word around on the tip of his tongue.

"Yes, normally. But Etherlight is far beyond a normal world. As far as I know, it's the only world that's a way station for the others." For some reason, Maura paused slightly, her eyes shimmering, shifting from a dark blue to a foggy gray, then changing back again.

[more here]

"It must get lonely."

"You have no idea how much I've thought about it, actually." Maura laughed slightly, but Jacob noticed the bitter tinge in her chuckle. "But after thinking about it for a while, I've realized that maybe this is for the best. If I somehow managed to find my way here in the first place, it's not like my life was that great to begin with. And here, at least I have a purpose, a reason to actually belong."

"Has anyone ever offered to help you? You know, with your...job and everything?" Jacob said slowly, shoving his hands nervously into the pockets of his jeans.

"Jacob," Maura said softly, her voice cracking. "This is my destiny, not yours. You must find a way to move on to wherever you are going. It wouldn't be fair to either of us if you stayed."

[more later]

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art

♥️ - Fox
♥️ - sien