The Path I've Walked Chapter 1

Chapter 1

         I laid there, the spirits I'd befriended all around me doing what they can to keep me alive, but they know it is all for naught. They look down at my body, laying lifelessly there. Melody breaks down in front of the others, and begins to cry over my body. Zephyr, Maribelle, and Oleander blame themselves, I can see it in their faces. Suellen, Ariel, and Ara, look down closed their eyes and sobbed silently. Kione, and Sonya separate themselves from the rest of the group, their mourning solitary in separate corners. Petra, and Kezib look down trodden and sullen, but they seem as though they know something that the others don't know.

         I'm sorry if you're confused. You're getting here a little later than you should. Let's go back to recap what has brought us to this point. I'll start with how I met these spirits; how we became such a close knit bunch of friends; how we truly overcame many obstacles; and how we got in this mess in the first place.

         I was never an average teenage boy. I grew up without too many friends, I only spent three years at my elementary school before I transferred to a private school, out of the area, for another three years. I lost all but one of my friends from the first school and had one that lived nearby; without whom I may not have lived to meet such wonderful spirits or wonderful people. I was a sophomore, in a local high school, who had no friends. Hell, even my name is different, it's Kazuri which has no meaning or even a definite origin. But, moving on, I always felt a connection to nature, and an understanding of magic, though so many people don't believe it exists. I looked for different spells wherever I could find one, I found my first most simple incantation, and tried it out with surprising efficiency. I was interested by entities I had read about in this one book and I found nothing for the longest time. I was later confronted and followed by a kitsune spirit; one of the various entities I had read about. After she followed me around for a while we got to talking, she told me she had no memory of her past aside from her love of music and the number 152. I decided to call her Melody, being that if I called her 152 it would feel like I was reading off a robot's model number. I soon found a website community with other practitioners of magic, and sought help. The unusual circumstances, I had found myself in, were found to be unusual by even the other members of the community. Yet even so they accepted me into their family. And we've had some great times.

         Before long, I was greeted by another entity, who had not intended to stay with me, but only intended to tell me about something that had apparently been stalking me since about a week after I met Melody. I pleaded with the Carpathian Vampire to stick around at least until I investigated what was going on with this 'stalker.' She resisted but conceded when I said that we wouldn't stand a chance on our own if this stalker attacked us. She said her name was Maribelle. We walked outside and went around the side of my parents' house. There we saw a rather large being hiding in between two wide, but short, trees. I noticed that it's massive size was too big for it to be any normal human, so it had be an entity. We spoke to him, and he told us that he'd been following me because of the energy he felt radiating from me. He went on to say that he honestly wanted to stick around with me. Maribelle soon said that, what with all the excitement around here, and the number of sentient beings she could communicate with as well, she would stay with me and the others. This entity was a hybrid entity. He was a red dragon-elf hybrid, and took great pride in his elven half, (I found out that the stereotype that elves are all short is a complete lie) while he simply dealt with his dragon half. He became smaller to about human size. We went inside, and he decided to tell me more about himself, having sufficiently found out about me.

         He went on about his home life, and the neighbors in his village. His family dynamic and its relationships were very strained at best, as fae are generally good creatures and the red dragon, out of the various kinds of dragons, well, good they are not. He came to resent his father, and greatly preferred his mother. He wasn't born under the best terms, as his mother didn't consent to his father, but somehow they were together now and he doesn't like it. Originally named after his father, he disowned his name and calls himself Rhogar. He ran away from his village hoping to get away from his home life. His village had many kinds of fae, and not long before he was born, there was a flock, for lack of a better word, of all different kinds of dragons that had moved in. Most of them were friendly, but some, like his father, weren't quite as kind to the original inhabitants.

         I sat there in our living room, and just looked at them while Melody told them about herself. I never really noticed but they were really blurry. I couldn't tell much about them aside from what they said, what kind of entity they were, and what their gender was. I guess I didn't have to, I just needed to know what they were like, not what they looked like. I saw them for who they were; not what they were.

         In the times that followed, we had some pretty great experiences. Well, some of them were great but they were all pretty funny. There was the time that Melody followed me into the bathroom and the ensuing conversation. I went to sit down, and said to her, "You know I'd like just a little privacy please."

         To which she said, "And I'd like to sit down without sitting on one of my tails, but we all know that's not going to happen."

         So I said the first thing that came to my mind. "You know I don't think it's very fair that you get to see me naked, but I don't get to see you naked." In retrospect, I probably should have dropped it before I said that because I couldn't see her anyway, and also because she didn't take long to respond.

         She replied, "You know what, you're right, it isn't fair," she paused a moment giving me just enough time drop my jaw before continuing with, "deal with it life's not fair."

         And on a related note, there was the another time I was in the bathroom and something happened. I was taking a shower, singing along to one of my favorite songs, Haruka Kanata, one of the openings from the Naruto TV shows. And when I opened my eyes, after shutting them tight for the big finish, I saw Maribelle appear topless right in front of me,(or I thought I did she may have been wearing a skin-colored shirt, but that's not the point,) I was shocked, surprised, and embarrassed all at once. Immediately, I fell backwards, and (in classic anime style) had a nose bleed. She had been used to me offering her some of my blood whenever I bled, so it was only natural for her ask me, "Might I have some of that blood?"

         I, still recovering from shell shock, said, "Fine, but I'm not opening my eyes until you put a shirt on." Long story short, the other forum members had a field day with this story when I told everyone. I'm just glad that nothing like these two stories happened between me and Rhogar.

         Life was fine, and time passed fairly quickly, but not without plenty of good times. We all enjoy our time together, but every good time must come to an end, and all good friendships must be tested.

         A few weeks later, I'd heard about something called geocaching, and decided we'd go find this one geocache in a nearby marsh. I rode my bike down to the nearest entrance, and I stopped to look around. Not seeing a bike rack, I took my bike with me. As I was going down the trail, a few bugs started buzzing around me. I ignored the insects and kept going along the path. Further down the path, more insects began to swarm me. I kept going when one insect landed on my cheek just inside my field of view. On closer inspection, I could tell that they were not insects but tiny demonic fairies. Realizing the gravity of my situation, I brushed the damn fairy off my face, and bolted down the path, fairies landing on me and stabbing me somehow, though I'm not exactly sure with what. Heart pounding, legs on fire, and gears grinding, I'm racing down the path. I neared a clearing, when one miniature demon flew into my eye, and stabbed me with a sharp unbearable pain. I fell down, my bike scraping some skin off my knee. I blinked my eyes repeatedly, while we all started swatting away at the evil fairies around me. I open my eyes and look around. Seeing that the clearing was the end of the path, I noticed a trail that looked like it had been made by local teenagers; probably intending to enact some biblical sin. I picked up my bike, and ran down the rough unsanctioned trail, each of my friends following right behind me.

         We burst out the other side of the thick forested wall, having shaken a fair amount of our thimble-sized assailants off our trail. We didn't stop to take a breather just yet, as we still had a few little demons chasing us and on our tails, literally in Melody's case. We kept going, everything we passed blurring into the next. Our hearts pounded like my school's marching band's percussion section, wind running savagely through our hair and/or fur, Rhogar's wings kicking up a flurry of fallen leaves, causing a shroud of red, orange, and yellow, to surround us. The gears of my bike grinding profusely, and Melody bounded meters at a time along side me, while Maribelle hovered underneath the leaves Rhogar had kicked up taking advantage of the available shade. What seemed like seconds passed before my surroundings came into focus once again, though I was still dizzy. I set off down a gravel pathway to take a shortcut to my house. I took a sharp turn on the gravel and drifted unexpectedly. The whole thing fell, I knew that this could seriously damage my already injured knee. I braced for impact, expecting pain to shoot through my leg at any moment. I opened my eyes, seeing that I had somehow caught myself before hitting the ground, but not only had I caught myself I also caught my bike. I don't think I can take all the credit, I had some help from Melody who was fast enough to guide my arms and legs in to position. I stood up wobbling slightly and rode home.

         I awoke the next day, with a sty in my upper eyelid. It progressively got worse, and worse, until it got to the point where I could no longer see out my eye. I asked Maribelle, who was surprisingly good at healing magic, "Do you think you could do something about my eye?"

         "I can will, but it might take a little while, maybe a day or two," was the only comfort she could offer, but comfort was all I needed.

         "Hey, come on," Melody began, such a kind soul, "don't worry about it I'll be here the whole time, I mean I haven't left your side since we met, and no one knows me the way you know me, why should I leave now?" She may not have known it but that one bit of logic was everything I needed to keep going, that day and every day after it.

         "You know," Rhogar chimed, "we haven't been apart since we met either and I always do my best to protect you." And when Rhogar said that, I felt I had everything I wanted.

         "Thanks, you guys," I said , my hard exterior barely containing the lugubriousness behind those words. I later went to sleep fully confident in my friends' abilities.

         I awoke the next day, my eye worse than before, when I called to Maribelle, "Where are you? I thought you said you try fixing my eye."

         To my absolute dismay, Maribelle spoke, "I'm right in front of you." Looking toward the sound, I realized that I was looking straight at her, I just couldn't see her. I couldn't see her... I couldn't see Melody... I couldn't see Rhogar... I couldn't see my spirits at all.

         Time passed and before long I realized that, even though I could no longer see them, though details were fuzzy at best beforehand, I could feel their presence, similar to an extended sense of touch. Now my eye had healed, but I hadn't regained my spiritual vision. Thinking about what was going on and how much I was worrying about how my friends felt, I went to sleep, and then I dream. I dream the longest dream I had ever dreamed.

         I look around in my dream, I see many beings but they're much too blurry to really make out clearly. I look down at myself, but I am not me. I look at where I am and see great buildings, built tall, stable and in a Gothic style void of gargoyles. But no building here was just a building, each building was overrun with some aspect of magic. Whoever I was was floating upwards into the sky, giving me a vantage point to examine the city. I look far and wide, some buildings had lava flowing out and down their sides, glowing red against the dark black that most of these buildings were. Some of these buildings were so lush, almost forested, that they practically had grass siding, and if not grass then ivy climbed tenaciously up these towers, almost visibly inching up the walls. Yet other towers flowed with water down their sides, pounding like a waterfall when it hit the ground, and gushing, almost geyser-like from their intricately patterned spherical or conical roofs. And still more towers were different, glimmering in golden glow, radiating brilliantly as the sun shone on their polished walls, seemingly untarnished by any flaw. More towers were still different, exuding an aura of filth, and the stench of death, while the beings there seemed quite lively, despite the shadows that enveloped these towers, making them almost as blurry as the beings around it. There were more buildings than these, though any others, that I could see, were some combination of the five. Something happens then I see nothing. But I feel like I'm moving fast, faster than ever before.

         What felt like days passed before, I began to slow down, seemingly hours more before I could see again. I first notice that I'm nowhere near where I first saw in this dream. I see forests, mountains, grassland, marshes, lakes, rivers, and islands in them. I, or at least whoever I was started to float down. Now closer to the ground, I could see those beings again, less blurry this time, but I still couldn't make out any details on how the beings looked. Maybe it was because I was still too far away, but before I got any closer, I stopped and turned to my left. There I saw the biggest tree I had ever laid eyes on, standing well beyond two or three times the height of the Sears Tower.(or is it the Willis Tower, oh screw I don't care if they did change its name I'm still calling it the Sears Tower) I looked at the massive plant in awe, water flowed off its top most branches, pooling in lake-sized basins at the base of many of the tree's branches, if they could be called that being that they were bigger than any other tree that I thought existed.

         "On the Great Tree's branch," spoke a being floating along side me, blurry as all the other beings that I had seen in my dream before."Where groves and grasses green grow," the being spoke his and became clear as day. The being was me, my mop-headed, uncombed hair, my face and its every freckle, even just the way I stand, my feet pointing away from one another and forming a right angle with the other. I closed my eyes and the other me spoke again, "That's where you'll find me." I opened my eyes and I was once again myself floating where the other me had. I looked to where I had been moments ago and saw a spry young Elven woman whose wisdom looked as though it was far beyond her years seemed to be. This elf wouldn't tell me her name but her beauty spoke for itself. She had white hair with crimson streaks of red, a lean body, a little shorter than myself, and her face was beautiful. The elf wouldn't speak again no matter what I said, instead she reached out to me closed my eyes and put her palm on my forehead. I just drifted, my consciousness seemingly between planes of existence, but returning to my own.

Chapter 1 end.