I was greeted by the view of the strangest kind. All around me, the plants had twisted. It was a beautiful form of devastation as their forms merged and diverged, pulled up into a whirlpool of nature. Flowers of different sorts grew out of clefts in the bark, ranging from delicate to blooms that looked to be large enough to engulf me whole.

  Looking down, I could see I was sitting in what was now a hollow in the rock, a smooth spheroid carved out of the solid stone, fading into dirt that was alive with the tiniest of leaves and stems. Further out, the trees started. Their trunks twisted up and stretched out into the sky, forming leafless pointed tips that looked oddly like the flames of my inner candle before I’d converted it into something more… profound.

  Whatever I’d experienced had indelibly shaped both the world around me and myself.

  My form felt lighter than before, and I seemed to glide across the cradle I had created for myself. Floating up and out, I realized there was nothing keeping me from doing so, so I passed directly though the wooden walls. The forest beyond seemed even richer than before. The vitality I’d pulled in had increased the local density, and nature had quickly adapted to this bounty.

  I explored the fringes of this area, before discovering a stream along one side. The form I was in had no tangibility, but it seemed as though I could influence the water in some way. I cupped my hands, taking up the water and marveling at it. Crystal clear, it looked like a gem in my hand. I had never seen water that could be kept in any amount without looking dirty. Even the rain seemed tainted as it fell from the sky. This stream further enforced just how out of my element I was in this world.

  A torrent of guilt surged over me, suffocating my spirit. I believed that my tainted existence had lowered the world around me somehow. My gaze drifted back to the spire of nature formed in the center and the guilt deepened. I felt like an intruder, a thief who had taken what wasn’t mine.

  Staring at the sky, the beautiful view blurred with tears, a river of sorrow overflowing before trailing down my face. I hadn’t wanted to be here, but here I was anyway. Through my own incompetence, I’d left a stain on the world, an insult to injury. I looked down at my feet through a vale of tears, watching them fall. Tiny, delicate flowers sprung to life where they landed, feeling more like a evidence of my transgression than a beautiful happenstance. There was so much life in me right now that just even the smallest fragment of it could alter the course of this world, make changes I couldn’t take back.

  I wiped my eyes on my forearm as I thought about home. Gran always had good advice, and she once told me that the best way to pay someone back was to pay it forward. Take the goodwill you’d been given and pass it on to the next person in need.

  Gran was right - all I had to do was figure out how to pay back the goodwill the world had given me. I didn’t have a damn clue how to do that, but I figured if I bumbled around enough, eventually I would figure something out.

  I was nothing if not persistent. That and I had a good solid cry, so I was now both refreshed and motivated. Odd how that seemed to work.

  Just as I thought that, something pulled at me. My form drifted a few meters to the left, like the wind had blown me sideways. That was odd, as I was pretty sure there wasn’t any wind right now. It felt different than the tugs I’d felt before. Those came from within me - this seemed to be something ambient, specific to this new place I’d found myself in.

  So I followed it.

  It led me out of the clearing, into a dense underbrush. Not that the density bothered me much, being intangible and all - I would just clip right through the vines and other plants that stood in my path. Kind of handy, that.

  Some part of me wouldn’t mind keeping this ability, but the other part of me knew that if I was intangible, I couldn’t get hugs from Gran, and that would be a tragedy.

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  As I progressed through the understory, the route I was being nudged along gradually transitioned from “plants gone wild” to “plants having an extra day” and then eventually “office plants, paperwork edition” - where all the plants were relegated to corners and nooks and there was a distinct trail down a path between the trees.

  The further I progressed, the more definite the signs of civilization were. I eventually came to a fork in the trail with an actual sign and was startled to recognize the symbols as being quite similar to those on the medallion István and I had discussed prior to my little rift misadventure. Was this world where that came from?

  While the sign wasn’t helpful, the same inner magnetism that had led me this far was more than enough to continue to guide me on my way. I went down the leftish fork and it started to descend, leading me deeper into one of the many valleys in this rich overgrowth.

  I’d say I’d have to watch my step, but honestly it didn’t feel like this form of mine was even capable of slipping and falling, or really interacting in any way.

  So I skipped down some pretty treacherous crags in the side of the hill while the trail continued off to my side. Eventually I got stupid with it and just leaped off the hill, whereupon I discovered that gravity still seemed to work, just not as strong and when I hit the ground I felt nothing. So cool, skydiving with no parachute was - if I could find means for flight, which didn’t seem likely.

  That odd suction or whatnot was definitely more pointy at the bottom of the cliff than it had been farther up, only now I could feel that it came in slow waves. The waves didn’t feel particularly congruent coming in slower, more powerful pulses, and then in quicker, broken up ones that had very little effect.

  I walked down the valley floor next to a stream, the pathway and I no longer at odds since there wasn’t any fun ways to avoid it anymore. I briefly tried to walk into the stone wall, but it was kind of terrifying to go directly into the stone where I couldn’t see anything, so I stuck to the open air.

  The burbling brook that accompanied me had fish in it, which was fascinating, since in my old world I’d never actually seen a live one. All the waterways near us were contaminated to the point where you couldn’t see past the surface, and they ran in a very sluggish fashion. The crystal clear rill next to me, however, had schools of the tiniest fish you could imagine in them. My intangibility meant I could essentially grab at them, but I couldn’t really get ahold of one and while they got spooked, it didn’t seem like they really knew what they were running from. I imagined it to be more of a bad vibe than anything.

  Eventually the stream next to me widened out in the the entrance to a pond after pouring over a little waterfall that was about waist height to me. On the far side I could see some sort of stone structure that rose above the land. Inside I could hear some sort of chanting, the sounds of many voices rising and falling.

  Once I heard that, I realized that the tugs I was feeling matched the tempo of the chant. The chant itself gave a sort of zen vibe. It was very mellow. If voices were breezes this would be a lazy late summer one, all chilled out. I walked out across the pond, where my form seemed to be torn between going directly over the water and sinking into it. Eventually I felt something that was probably the bottom, but the whole not-tangible thing was still new to me so I couldn’t say for certain I hadn’t just found a new equilibrium.

  About halfway across, the voices suddenly rose in a crescendo, reaching the equivalent of a brisk fall breeze, going off my previous metaphor. Still not shouts, but far more energetic than prior. There was a huge tug on my “inner magnet” and I went flying forward, passing through the stone outer wall.

  My vision went black even as I felt myself coming to rest, and then I felt a kind of compression, as though the air suddenly weighed a ton and had a very vested interest in letting me know about it. It was a uniform push from every side that didn’t hurt so much as it was very disconcerting.

  I felt the mental equivalent of a loud pop and then the pressure went away, and my vision cleared. Looking around, I quickly realized that there were people all around me. I was looking at the tops of their heads as they pressed their faces to the floor, genuflecting on their knees.

  I thought,

  Almost at the same time I was having a little ego trip, I realized something was off. I was looking at the tops of their heads, yes, but I was doing it from the level of the head. Meaning I was very low to the ground for some reason. I still felt like I was standing, so I tried to take a step forward and I

  What the heck was going on? I tried looking down at myself but didn’t really see anything - which wasn’t too unusual considering I’d spend a significant amount of time as Ghost Char today. But it really felt like there should be there.

  I tried holding a hand out and was greeted by magnificent, dark, luxurious… feathers.

  Jaminations made in the comments early on*I take the whole "reader driven narrative" part of this very seriously and would never try to undermine it that way. There will be more dystopian world (and hugs from Gran) in the future. Promise!