The mortal had been falling for hours, like a star lazily drifting out from a black hole. From the interior face of the Outer Surface, Niff looked up and to the center of his universe; all around him he could see the large, translucent sphere that made up the Outer Surface and encapsulated the swirling masses of the Central Realms. It was barely discernible, except for the places you could see light reflecting from the Central Realm. Grand entrances like this were a race for the Ghesit, since mortals from across the veil would fall with great speed and smack the Outer Surface with a resounding impact; like the signal to a great race, howls and cries made from the sheer speed of Ghesit as they approached could be heard echoing from across the strange, dark place devoid of matter. Only the first to arrive would ever stake that claim, and thus secure a tenure in the Central Realm. Niff had been waiting at that spot, ostensibly by chance, from the start of this particular descent, and found himself confused at the utter lack of other Ghesit coming to entreat the mortal. Niff was not particularly cunning as Ghesit went, nor was he the most powerful, nor the smartest. In fact, the only quality that really spoke to Niff’s character was tenacity; though he had met with many enemies in his time and lost, though he had been subjugated to the will of more powerful foes, and even through strange events no other Ghesit had experienced, he had endured and managed to keep the Core of his Essence. On the Outer Surface, the Ghesit were a brutal and violent crowd. Losses were usually met with your Essence being sucked right out of your being; even so, there presently wasn’t enough left of Niff to even make a tempting snack.

Niff had made many enemies in the last cycle, though he remembered very little of that time; his memory, like most Ghesit, was spotty and erratic, and depended largely on how much of him was left. Most Ghesit of Niff’s current caliber acted solely on instinct, and for this reason he drifted along the face of the dark realm erratically, surveying his empty surroundings with caution and incredulity. Despite the clear desire to remain unnoticed, Niff still couldn’t help his impatience; between long bouts of his highly developed technique for reconnaissance, (spinning rapidly in place) he would look up to the falling mortal and shake violently, making the slightest of peals as he vibrated, urging it to hurry. Fortunately, no competitors were within sight all around, or his antics would have revealed him and forced a retreat.

The mortal was close enough now for Niff to understand better that this was not a typical visitor; though he didn’t really have anything like higher thought, Ghesit were foremost creatures of insight, and he could feel that something wasn’t quite right. Aside from the slow pace with which it fell, there was an odd, familiar shape around the thing. It was a sphere not unlike the Outer Surface, translucent and perfectly round. Inside there was definitely a mortal, but no form could be seen. Niff only knew because of the innate magnetism that living beings stirred up from within all Ghesit, yet even that sensation was muted and weak compared to others Niff had felt before. This did nothing to deter him from staying, of course; a chance to journey to the center realms was well worth waiting for. Still, the sphere unnerved him; it could be described to a human as a familiar itch he couldn’t scratch without help.

Long hours passed as the descent continued, and Niff seemed to be stuck in some loop as he spun, pealed, and spun more. Finally, the sphere drifted within his grasp. As he stretched to touch it, anger and frustration took him; usually, upon contact with a mortal a Ghesit would simply vanish. Instead, when he touched the sphere it simply bounced upwards again, as if it were not at all pulled by the gravity of the Outer Surface. The interior of the sphere was cloudy and grey, and swirled with vapors that condensed and expanded, exploring the boundaries of the tiny prison. Niff saw this, and it inspired him to search the outside for any cracks or entry points. Spreading himself as thinly as he could muster, he stretched his body of pale light to engulf the sphere entirely, making sure his Core rested on the very top. Upon completely encasing the sphere, something odd happened; though he couldn’t find any way to get to the mortal inside, he found that he was moving without thinking to. The movement was sporadic and aimless, and mostly consisted of slow rotational force. Niff felt this was a good sign, and resigned himself to waiting in this state, stretched thin across the globe he couldn’t enter.

The girl inside had been falling for what truly felt like years to her mortal soul. She’d tried several times to recall who she was, or what she was doing in that sublime darkness, but her endless chain of disjointed thoughts always returned to the sensation of falling, falling so quickly she couldn’t think. There was no sensation of wind rushing by her, no tell-tale echo of sound below to guide her sense of depth as she fell, and yet the sensation of gravity, of descending well beyond where she should be able to fall, was intense. Although she could not remember much at all, the trip was so long and empty that she eventually occupied nearly all of her time think-humming; that is, she could not make noise, or at least none she could hear, but in her thoughts she would sing to counteract the sheer emptiness of her existence. There was a tune she could remember better than anything else, and she’d spent what amounted to several months just remembering the full measure. Once she’d remembered it fully it was enough of a foothold for her sanity that she would think-hum it any time she wasn’t actively trying to remember other details about her existence. Time passed this way for the poor child, until one day, as she was humming that same tune to herself, she stopped falling and abruptly became disoriented; her being kept falling and piling over itself, but she knew her long travel had ended and she was no longer being pulled down by that inescapable force. The after-feeling of falling stayed with her like waves on skin after a day of sea bathing.

Skin?

Sea bathing?

As soon as she recalled those thoughts they escaped her, and even the knowledge of having remembered it disappeared nearly instantly. Her relief at having finally landed wherever she’d been going was the most feeling she’d experienced for a long time, until it was replaced with a manic notion that she was supposed to keep falling, and that stopping her descent only heralded the complete lack of sensation altogether. Panicking a bit about that thought, she wanted desperately to move, to go, anything to avoid losing the last sense she had, that of falling. She tried desperately to move, to reach, to grab, and it all felt familiar to her. She remembered a long-lost sensation of water coursing down her back...

And then she saw. It was confusing at first, because she wasn’t really looking at anything; the world around her was dark, and void of anything nearby for as far as she could see, but she COULD see. There were stars below her, and as she turned upward... as she turned upward she realized she was moving! Above her she could see millions of lights, swirling away from a central point of concentrated light. The overwhelming sensation of sight reduced her internal thoughts to gibbering, maniacal pleasure; if the girl could have sobbed, she would have been sobbing with crazed happiness. She looked down at herself, realizing that she hadn’t taken stock of her body. As she turned to look down, her curiosity was rewarded with a disconcerting observation; below and around her were swirling clouds of grey, but nothing else. A bit of experimentation with movement proved her suspicions to be true; she could direct the vapors, and though she could press them against some invisible barrier, she could not experience tactile sensation. Still overjoyed just to have her sight, she looked again at her desolate environment, and noticed the thin sheen of light that created an orb around her. Attempting to touch it yielded no tangible results, but she felt somehow that it was the reason she could now see, as if she had simply been in total darkness and it was now providing light. She wanted to thank it so much, and as she thought on it the small bubble began to rise upwards, shocking her. It didn’t get very far as a result, and drifted back to the floor of the great open space within seconds.

Niff, who had been furiously trying to lift the orb with sheer willpower, was at first delighted with their ascent only to feel all of the nuanced shades of frustration upon their descent. His emotional capacity outweighed his cognitive skills by a wide margin, and as they descended her broke his hold on the sphere, no longer encapsulating it, so that he could strike it wth his body and vent his frustration.

Everything went dark again, and the young lady screamed in her mind,

’No! No! Come Back! Please Come Back!’

Time had again begun to pass slowly inside the orb with the breaking of contact with Niff, and any sensations she’d begun to reclaim were quickly being forgotten again. Although Niff only took a few moments to attack the orb, weeks went by in the girl’s mind. She willed herself to see, to not forget seeing, to remember that swirling light, all to no avail. It wasn’t until Niff again encapsulated the orb, once he had calmed down enough to try again, that her sense of time and sight returned. When it did the girl experienced the same maddening euphoria, and when she had recovered she resolved to communicate with the light. Focusing all of her efforts on controlling the clouds of smoke inside the orb, she pulled herself down as low as she could, then bounded across the tiny interior to smack the opposite side, the one facing the swirling lights. Again they bounded upwards only to descend, but this time Niff felt the collision from the inside as a very slight vibration against his Core. The mortal was trapped, he realized, and he immediately threw what can only be called a controlled tantrum; he squeaked and chirruped, rubbing himself across the orbs’ surface to make piteous noises of longing.

The girl inside heard the noises; there was no air inside her prison, and she had no mouth to make noise with herself, but as Niff dragged himself across the outer surface the small vibrations traveled along the smoke that touched the barrier. She felt-heard the squeaks of friction and could tell the light wanted to reach her but couldn’t. She didn’t know how she knew, but it was a sensation she couldn’t refute. She focused, pooled herself at the top of the orb where her vision was clearest and tried to communicate with thoughts, asking ’Where are we? What am I supposed to do? Can you hear me at all?’ To all of this there was no response; it was clear that communication would be an effort.

-

Back at the campsite, Aamon inspected his daughter’s body. It lay inert in the river for nearly eight hours before he decided he could move her; one had to be careful when moving a person inside an Awakening, if you did it too soon they could recoil into consciousness and the whole process would be for naught. He would only have a single chance for this to work, and Aamon was not above taking extraordinary measures to ensure his success. Still, they would need cover, and Aamon wanted to get her dry and warm. Once he was satisfied Maggie was deep within the ritual, he gently lifted her onto their cart and traveled downstream. He too came across the embankment, and, smelling the smoke, realized it must have been the home Maggie had talked about. A twinge of guilt struck him hard, but he grimaced and put the thoughts plaguing him from his mind. He needed shelter, and this was as good a place to rest as any.

When Aamon opened the door he was, in fact, impressed. The coals of the fire were still warm, and after he’d dragged in their bed-mat and placed Maggie’s body on it, he rekindled the fire. Looking around he couldn’t help but think of the little girl that had given the small room new life. Unable to control his emotions any longer, Aamon wept; what he had done to her was wrong on a fundamental level, and he knew it deeply. Never again would he see or hear from his Maggie, for he recognized the voice that had cried out when he’d locked Maggie’s soul beyond the veil; the tie had been made correctly, and that meant the switch was complete. Aamon was overjoyed, and Aamon was grieving; his love had been entwined deeply with this spell of sacrifice, and his heartache was genuine. He knew all those years ago when he set out his plans that he would have to genuinely imbue his love into the little girl for the spell to succeed, and he had truly given his heart over to parenting and caring for her. Now he could make his grief into fuel for his workings, and he needed to work quickly; there was no telling when she would wake up, and for that occasion he would need to have a spell ready. Aamon again regained his composure and began his work.

-

It had been weeks since the girl in the orb had fallen to the outer surface, and in that time she and Niff had made little progress.