Spritely Fellow Ch. 01

I tried touching it with one of the tendrils and poured a large chunk of my soul into the tip. Then I didn't so much push into the wood so much as rubbed away at it. I kept a constant motion going until the woods energy started to give. It slowly turned into a sort of putty texture and I was finally able to absorb it into my soul and turn it back into my energy. I looked down at my hand as the bark started falling off and my hand returned to a more natural shade of white. My shirt slowly switched from leaves to cloth. My hair returned to its normal awesome color and my feet were able to move again. I stood up and stretched for the first time in a month. Then I did something I wanted to do for a while now. I ran.

Everything went flying past as I sprinted by it all. Breathe in my lungs, earth under my feet, and burning in my muscles. Man that was a good feeling. I ran the whole mile and a half back to school and burst out of the forest into the yard. No one was there. Even the tumbleweeds were taking the summer off here. It made sense but was still disappointing. I had really wanted to run all the way home, but my body seemed insistent that sprinting for the full mile and a half here was not a good idea. I fell on my butt there at the forests edge, gasping for breath. Once I had gotten my breathing under more control than fish outta water I laid down. As soon as I did I heard the voice again, and it was not pleased.

"WOULD YOU STOP AND LISTEN YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BRAT! I HELP YOU GET YOUR BODY BACK AND DON'T EVEN GIVE ME A THANK YOU OR A SMILE, JUST RUNNING OFF THROUGH MY WOODS!" I sat up and looked like someone had just taken a belt to by ass. I had been so focused on the feeling of running that I blotted everything else out. I immediately turned and looked back into the forest before blurting out, "Imsorryforignoringyouandthankyouforhelpingme." The voice got quiet for a while before it started giggling like a schoolgirl.

"Hahaha oh wow hahaha you are so cute when you panic. Hahaha..." she continued laughing for a few minutes as my face turned beet red. Finally she stopped after laughing at me for so long and spoke in a serious tone. "You can't just leave yet. You have to learn how to control this. Stay in the forest for a few years longer." I was with her right up until that last part. "I can't stay here; I have to go back to my family. I'll come back when I can, but I have to go." I said to her in a hesitant voice. I was grateful, however I was also a bit over this tuning into a scary movie where I stay with the forest lady forever and ever and ever. She was silent a while before she spoke up again, " No you aren't ready yet, you need to be trained a bit more or else you might fully lose yourself to the essence of sprites you pull in."

"Then come with me, I can take a small tree or something home and plant it..." And there was the giggling again. I thought it was pretty at the time, but being laughed at by any voice is frustrating. "Stop laughing at me I'm trying to figure this out!" I yelled into the clearing. The laughing stopped a few seconds after, with noticeable sounds of being muffled.

"I am not a tree; I am the sprite of the woods. It is not that simple to move me somewhe-" The voice stopped and I could feel it looking at me. "There is a way for me to leave, and only you can pull it off. Try reaching out with your soul not your senses." I froze immediately after this, the experience of turning into a tree still in my mind. She seemed to sense this and added, "It is not the same as before, you will not be pulling in anything. I just need an energy source to tap into in order to become tangible...able to move around on my own." The last bit was added when I mouthed the word tangible to myself.

"So you will be able to come with me after this?" I asked the woods. The silence after was none too comforting. Then I felt the mental equivalent of a nod. I took a deep breath and focused. I reached into myself before reaching into myself and filled up one of my little tendrils with my soul and held it out towards the trees, careful not to touch any of them. I felt something touch it and start sucking out the energy in it. Then the woods started to react. The wind picked up and carried little pieces of wood, leaves, and flower petals to the space in front of me. They started swirling in a small whirlwind before it started to stick together.

It pieced together a womanly figure with a curved chest piece with petals for the top and a curved piece of bark accentuated the underside of the chest and the curves of the chest and crotch. They didn't seem like clothing but rather reference points for the body to build from. The leaves and petals mixed together to form the skin with the twigs bends out of shape to form a solid structure. Her natural body continued to build until finally the head started to be put together. The petals and leaves in the red spectrum pieced together a head proportionate to a 15 year olds head. The "skin" was smooth and the lips were made out of rose petals bent unnaturally into shape. Petals began to twist and lengthen into hair for the head until she had a pink and yellow mix of shoulder length hair that seemed to disobey gravity. Overall she towered over me at 5'3" and looked like she was a 15 year old painted using bits of nature. She was beautiful. Two petals that served as eyelids moved upwards revealing a rose petal in each eye. She landed on the ground after putting herself together.

I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. She was beautiful. She looked down at me and spoke in that voice that still remained clear even when spoken out loud. "I will need a constant stream of energy to maintain this form. I will have to put something on your body in order to maintain this stream. Where do you want this mark?" I was still just staring dumbly at her and subconsciously pointed over my shoulder at my back. "Very well, hold still this should not hurt." Around this point I realized what she said as she stepped behind me and would have said something, but then I felt her soft hand on my back and was again hit by that staring stupidly thing. It was a really soft touch and when she traced down my back I didn't say anything. Then I felt an energy pressing into my back. My soul felt like something was being put onto it. Like the wood from earlier only more alive and moving. It felt like a constantly changing small sapling was pushed into my soul, and acted as a small straw as it branched shallowly into me.

"Perhaps a non-physical form would be better." I heard a rustling of leaves behind me and turned around and saw a small pile of leaves and petals where she was standing. A small three inch tall version of her was floating at eye height. She floated over to my shoulder and sort of faded away. I felt around my shoulder for her until she said, "I'm still here I just switched to just energy. Similar to what you did with the trees." I relaxed once I heard her voice and checked on my soul. I found her sitting on the soul-sapling in a makeshift hammock. "This whole thing was tiring and I will sleep now."

"Wait what is your name?" I called out before she turned in. She yawned and replied, "I never had a name just as these woods never had a name, but if you want to call me something call me Cassandra. A girl once went in these woods by that name and carved it into one of the trees so I suppose it is my name to take if I want." I tried out Cassandra a few times to get a taste for the name. I decided I liked it and, as Cassandra was asleep, I started heading home.

While I walked home I thought about what happened. Not so much the events, but what I had found out. I now was able to do what I called soulreaching. I realize looking back that the name sounds like a dating sites motto, but I was young and it grew on me. I could soulreach to my surroundings and tell what was around me and it was as intuitive as walking or breathing. I could also feel the energy within the things around me. I didn't try grabbing or touching any of it as I had enough near tree experiences for the day, but I could feel them. I could also feel where the soulreach came from and when I used my extrasight (originally called soulgaze but I changed that for the sake of diversity) I could see my soul. I could keep my eyes closed but still see the energies around me, although it did tap my soul and since it originated from within my eyes I couldn't see behind me.

When I looked at myself in a puddle and used the extrasight, my soul looked like a dull red and yellow streaked orb that was taller than it was wide. I could soulreach inside and feel that it was fluid and able to be molded. The more I tapped it, the brighter it became and the smaller it shrunk. On the back of it I saw a small little balcony was cut molded into it with Cassandra's sapling on it. It had grown the short time it was there and looked like a miniature oak tree with roots tracing the balcony. On my almost 4ft frame, my soul rose to at least five feet, and encompassed my body.

I turned off my extrasight and just looked at myself. My favorite red shirt that I wore for the last day of school was torn and covered in dirt. My jeans had been completely shredded from the knees down and my shoes were gone save for the very tops of them which acted like an anklet. My skin had taken back its lightly tan color and my fire hair was surprisingly clean. It was then that I noticed my eyes had changed. Before I had my father's brown eyes, but now they were a dark red color. When I looked closer I saw a faint yellow glow from my pupil that was only visible in the dark. The light slowly faded but the red remained. I used my extrasight again and layered it over my normal sight and saw the glow become a light filling my pupil. The red slowly expanded and became a brighter shade until only the very edges of my eye remained white. Turning my extrasight back off and waiting for the effects to recede, I continued to head back home.

I had about 5 soulreach tendrils out and my soul brightened to about the light of a glow stick. I noticed that when I walked near the grass when it was like this, the blades followed me as if they were feeding off the light. While it was really cool to look at it was time to stop experimenting for now. I stopped feeding the tendrils and started to jog to get home faster. It was still going to take about 20 minutes and night was coming on fast. Everyone was in their homes relaxing and so didn't notice the boy running down the streets.

It was dark when I finally made it home. I used the key hidden in the dirt of one of the flowers to get in. I could see from the state of the living room that my parents were home, but the lights were all off and I really wanted to sleep. I snuck into my room upstairs and stripped down to my underwear before crawling under the covers. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. What awaited me were some...strange dreams.