It was easy to track her by the foot prints left in the snow. That is how the village would follow her. They waited a full day after she left to follow. Every man, woman, and child would follow the newly-bloomed woman as she made the journey through the wood. They would follow the red drops, the signal that it was time to walk.

The village followed her prints and blood all the way to the edge of the cliff. The last print was cut in half at the cliff's edge. The Shamans called it a sign. They said that it meant she had not fallen. The illuminated woman crossed over into another world. All of the illuminated young men and women had crossed into other worlds before her. The Shamans had said so.

The illuminated woman's mother stood stoically, looking forward. She wouldn't dare peer over the edge of the steep drop. The Shamans would push her if she did. It was disrespectful not to listen to the old men and their wives. Mother was supposed to believe every word they spoke as fact. Mother did know one thing: She knew that there was a reason that the Shamans had the village wait for a day to follow. A day was plenty of time for a body to be covered by the snow that collected at the base of the cliff. The illuminated woman's family would never know if their child had crossed or if she had fallen.

Father held Mother's hand. He too would not peer over. Father would never endanger his son, young daughter, or wife. Should he question the Shamans, the entire family would be pushed over the cliff. Father steeled himself to believe what the Shamans had told them. He would believe that his oldest daughter had crossed over into another world that was far away from the place they dwelled in now. The illuminated Daughter would live happily with many others in a place that accepted her special body.

The Shamans turned everyone away, leading them back to the village and using brooms to brush away the illuminated woman's very existence as they walked back to their warm and cozy dwellings.


-

The Shamans believed that the illuminated children were born to the village as temptations. These children were raised to the age in which boys and girls become men and women. The Shamans feared that these children would use their 'powers' to seduce the opposite sex to become their slaves forever through hypnosis. This meant that the children were trained from an early age to walk a certain path through the forest. This path would always lead them to the cliff. When children were younger and more impressionable, the Shamans put it in their brains that walking over the cliff would not cause the children to fall to their deaths once they were grown up. The children were told that they would walk past the cliff and to a magical place where they could live peacefully.

The Gods of the world had pity for their outcast children, who were not given to the people as a temptation, but as saviors to rid the people of these Occultist Shamans. The distraught Gods of this realm conferred with Gods of other worlds, allowing these children to indeed cross into other realms and live happy lives. The illuminated woman in this most recent account was called Abby. She was given a chance at life in The Endless Forest by the Twin Gods of this realm and by the Gods of her realm.