Her eyes swam with confusion, lost in a golden haze of strange symbols and unfamiliar sights, while her nose stung from even stranger smells, her sense of being had been displaced and her mind raced to cling to memories from where she had just been expelled.


My soul. Her consciousness reached for her chest, and her body moved to accommodate once familiar movements, but her now furred knee graced only soft fur where once had been, had ALWAYS been her soul stone.


While her body suddenly ached with a grieving sense of loss, it was also swept away upon her eyes nestling upon a golden symbol floating above her, replaced only with confusion at her innate understanding that what she gazed upon was her, her in her entirety, much like her coloured gem that had nestled upon her chest. It was the ever present reflection of herself, her indication, her name, her being.


My soul? But why, why had it shifted? Was she dead? Her head swam as she tried to remember, tried to understand what was happening, no, she could not die, her body would simply be reclaimed by the mother, the moon, to dot the skies as stars in her loving embrace until she was yet again ready to grace the gifted plane of Astraea with her kin as a fallen star under the watch of her father the sun.

Astraea. Oh by the three, their mothers rage had warped the realm, punishing her kins -her fathers favoured- for their arrogance.

Fire, she remembered fire, warmth as the juveniles and even elders of the fathers favoured wrecked havoc upon the three's elements.

Nerea; their once clear and pure waters polluted with ash and debris.
Ciel; their guiding winds clouded with smoke and haze.
And Aurelia; the most suffering of all for the fathers favoured antics, their earth burnt, sullied, defiled with flames, cinders and embers. Speeding through her ancient trees, and young blooms, and grass filled meadows.


Astraea, mother of the three, and body of their realm took great offence to the disrespect of her children's domains. She had offered her body as a foundation the two celestial lovers children to grow and thrive alongside her own three, and the fathers favoured had taken this kindness and squandered it.


She remembered watching in the form of her mothers favoured, a form of hooves and manes, her services had been for Ciel and even her forms wings could not escape the ash as she fled in horror.
Her horror further amplified as she watched her once serene siblings of fathers favoured turn their mouths upon each others flesh, tearing and howling with an unwilling hunger as she felt Atraea's rage ripple across her own form, knocking her from the embrace of her idols winds.


She watched as her siblings were forced to consume their own, forced to partake in a new predatory nature. This was their punishment for their hubris, and as the sun began to set, almost poetically expressing their fathers disappointment in them, a dark moon rose- even their mothers light would not comfort them tonight.
Only the endless gaze of their siblings dotting and twinkling lights, observing a punishment they too will undoubtedly bear should their stars fall upon the realm once more, or for the first time and they take the form of their father.


As she plummeted towards the earth, she had expected to rejoin her siblings in the night sky, or awaken back upon the realm, her pearlescent indigo soul-stone on display for all to see to signify her rebirth in a new form. But she did not.
Where she expected to see the glow of her brothers and sisters, she saw only the glowing golden hue of her souls symbol reflected back at her, slowly swaying and pulsating to each breath her current form took.


Where she was, she knew not entirely, but her instincts comforted her some knowledge that she was in another realm, another realm where the gods watched over their children.
Another realm where ones soul was shown above them, not on their brow nor their chest. Not in colours, but in unique shapes.

"My soul." She breathed in relief staring at her pictogram, as she finally relinquished her grasp on the majority of her clinging memories. Too tired to resist the sudden leaping of realms her spirit had taken, too tired to ignore the tug of exhaustion of her new-born form, too tired to understand this plane.

Too tired, she could fight it no longer, her eyes fell closed as she fell back upon the earth, her eyes reflecting her souls image in her mind like dancing wisps.

---

Hurdur, character inspiration from a world I've been building for a while now and my desire to attempt to re-experience the forest again after my constant back and forth depature.
I've been making an effort to play the forest with out looking back on things, hints & cues, or even looking at pictograms on the map and simply experiencing in the moment on a new account, chasing that nostalgia and couldn't resist rambling about the idea when it sprang to my mind at .... 4am 'cause why not. Now I sleeps, much like lil' wisp.