GARDEN OF SOULS

The echoes turn into a noise of unintelligible loops that are comforting. Soft obscure structures break through the magical orange mist, hinting at an architecture with their blurry silhouettes. Specs of light swim in the distance whose colors create a safe inscrutable company.     Torm walks the deck coming to a tree with human-sized pods and a pole with a small cage on it. As she comes closer to inspect the cage, a small Faerie emerges and gestures to come closer. The Faerie holds out its hand and when Torm touches it, a strong energy grips her body, triggering a memory of her sister:
……………………
Ext.   catchers peak- day           (philosoophers)

Torm and her sister are on "Catcher’s Peak" talking. Her sister is looking through a telescope at the villages and towns while Torm looks through a pair of golden glasses.

TORM
What exactly are you looking for? What do you hope to find?
Torm asks her sister. She puts down the glasses and makes some markings in a book.

SISTER
I might ask you the same.

TORM
Knowledge. I want to know how the world works.
Torm puts the pair of glasses back up to her eyes.

SISTER
Well, it seems to me the best way to do that is to go into the world. Don't you ever want to travel? Go out and see new things, meet new people? I always think about it.

TORM
Are you getting sick of me already, little sister?

SISTER
Hardly, there's just so much out there I want to see.
Sister looks through the looking glass into Lianka.

SISTER
The Spas of Lianka, with their warm spring waters.

TORM
The water is made warm by giant Lianka worm gas.
Sister puts down the looking glass.

SISTER
What? That's not true.

TORM
I swear it's the truth.

SISTER
Are you telling me that I would be enjoying a blissful bath filled with watery worm farts?

They both start to laugh.

TORM
Gross, huh?

SISTER
Yeah that’s gross... never mind. For the future: sometimes, I just don't want to know.

TORM
Sorry, I'll try better not to ruin your daydreams.

Sister looks again through the looking glass.
She sees Goldlake and North Tolla.

SISTER
I hear the beaches of Goldlake shine golden red in the daytime and firey blue at night. And I would love to visit the honey pools of North Tolla and taste the gooey goodness.

TORM
The beaches are glass deposits left by the digested passings of the sea flies and the pools are regurgitated sugar yak's meal.

Sister puts down the looking glass.

SISTER
Torm! What did I just say?

TORM
Sorry, I just thought you should know what these places have in store for you.”

SISTER
Is there any place that isn't covered in dung, vomit, or farts?

TORM
Yes...

Torm gets up and shares the looking glass with her sister.

TORM
The gardens of trees by Castle Path... the trees bloom everyday and fall everyday. The ancient villages of Ripa Nuonka, where the glass flutes and recorders are made. Or the great Sky Harbors of the Falls, with giant Legacy Ships that fit multiple generations of families. And I hear there are strange animals in the Giant Forest to the north.

Torm sits down and her sister gets up and wanders around the perimeter of Catcher’s Peak, occasionally looking back at her sister.

SISTER
Don't you ever want to go to those places, go beyond our little village and out of these woods? Discover new sounds, new tastes, new ways of thinking?

TORM
But I have so much to discover right here. The things I learn and see in our little inch of dirt offers infinite worlds for me to explore.

Just as Torm finishes her sentence, her sister trips and grabs onto Torm to keep from falling.

SISTER
There is a lot of different dirt in the world. Could you imagine all the knowledge you could gain from talking to the Wisemen?

Sister puts the looking glass down and moves to Torm.

SISTER
Inventors, doctors, professors, and all the other ‘smartie darties’ out in the world. Just think of all the things you could teach them.

Torm has a quick glimpse of interest that makes her smile.

SISTER
I saw that! I saw that smile. The thought of all that raw, juicy knowledge gives you a step forward that you can’t hold back. Don't deny it.

TORM
I don't deny it. Meeting people who can add to my understanding of this world is very tempting. But it's also very dangerous.

SISTER
Ugh, don't do that! Don't throw a wrench into your own machine. Everything is dangerous if you look at it close enough. Sometimes I think it’s better to be sorry than safe! I don't think we are put into this world to stay, so we have to enjoy what it has to offer while we are still here. Not all of us have a talent to see the infinite worlds that exist one inch beneath our feet. Most of us need to travel in order to see as much as you see in a single glance. I think sometimes you forget that, Torm. What are these by the way?

Sister takes possession of a pair of “star glasses” from Torm’s hand and tries them on.

TORM
They are glasses I made to allow me to see the stars in the daytime. I forget what?
Sister enjoys the view through the star glasses

SISTER
Oh, wow!

TORM
What do I forget?

Her sister gives Torm a soft look.

SISTER
That you are unique in this world, Torm.

Sister holds up the glasses to make Torm aware of them.

SISTER
You are meant for things so much bigger than our little village has to offer. Help the rest of the world see the lights above the skies.

……………………

Torm comes out of the memory light-headed and falls to her knees. The strong energy that triggered the memory fades away and she takes a moment to recover. She looks for the Faerie, but finds only a reflection communicating with the corner of her eye. She picks herself up and follows the reflection to her bag and sees her glasses.

(Echoing in Torm's mind)Lights in the skies...
Torm takes her glasses out of her bag and slowly holds them up to her eyes and with one simple glance, a secret world is revealed to her. A world of light in a garden of souls filled with crowned spirits in flowing cloth, large beautiful animals made of glowing translucent skin and ornate iron. Beautiful pathways, bridges, decks, and stonework lined with lanterns and rock lights. Glitterfalls slowly dance downward from high rock columns into steams of gold. Hypnotizing plants, magical flowers of trance and ancient trees thriving on a meal of light. A supernatural agriculture hugging the architecture of heaven illuminating the energy of life, a place where even ideas have souls.    Torm lets down the glasses and finds that she doesn't need them anymore. The world is now visible to her naked eye. The Faerie reappears and reveals a new pathway. Torm picks up her bag and makes way to her four-winged guide. As Torm follws the Faerie on the path, she is surrounded by soft voices, whispers and calming noises that create a warm tingling feeling in the back of her head. Torm had read about a phenomenon known as ASMR, but never understood it until that   perfectly peaceful moment where she felt soft pins and warm tingles in her skin. And after a little while walking in this beautiful atmosphere, Torm becomes aware of another strange but wonderful thing about this Garden of Souls: she isn't hungry or thirsty. Somehow this place brings peace to her body as well as her mind.    Soon her Faerie guide disappears into the waters of a tree fountain. Torm stops and looks at the small pool of water at the base of the tree. Stems of water grow out of the pool and form into flowers whose petals silently explode into tiny wispy jellyfish that swim around her with deliberate elegance and mystical charm. In the middle of their mid-air dance, a reflection of Torm's mother inserts itself into her view from a tree knot water mirror.

MOTHER
Tooooorm...

her mother's voice calls out. Torm quickly turns around seeking the voice she hadn't heard since she was a child, but only finds the little Faerie gesturing to a new link in the path. Torm quickly makes feet on the new pathway,   hoping to find her mother.

TORM
Mother! Mother…where are you?

Torm calls out desperately but finds only the sound of thin air as a response. Torm's pursuit loses tempo, falling to a slow questioning drip when she sees a light at the end of the path.    Golden red leaves fall all around her with a perfect placement of randomness as she walks down the treewalled deck isle. Large human-sized pods with ornate glass hang from the trees, not a natural decorative fruit but a capsule constructed for a very real use. The clarity and resolution of the light becomes more recognizable as she draws closer to the center at the end of the path.
The obscure light grows into an ornately patterned, translucent Child of Light. Unsure what to do, Torm stops and holds perfectly still. The beautiful spirit child is facing the center with her back to Torm. The floor of the deck is blanketed with an intricate carving extruding upward of which you might find decorating the ceiling above a ballroom chandelier. Several evenly spaced regal wooden rods hold crystals like candlesticks a few feet above a crystal grid laid out on the floor. An ancient urn lay at the base of the centered main tree whose trunk houses glass spheres framed like windows.                 The Child of Light arranges some of the stones on a candlestick podium. Small spirits wisp out of the crystals forming a frequency pattern as they make their way into the urn. The energy keeps flowing, but the pattern changes as the Child of Light tunes the crystals. The spheres in the tree start glowing and the pods light from within. Small embers fall from the branches and grow into beautiful flowers as they make contact with the floor. Torm sees souls forming in the pods beautifully: Softly colored spirits with flowers growing out of their backs. As they reach full size, the grid and spirits dim away in unison. Torm relaxes and goes in half curious, half in awe, moving closer for a better look. She sees a variety of stone side by side on a podium. She looks around like a guilty child checking if the coast is clear and then picks up a rectangular stone. The detail on the stone is impressive, deep carvings on the stones too precise to be done by earthly hands. Torm's flesh turns to energy and she finds herself standing in a court of light where a child of light bestows gifts to a line of spirits from a throne of marble. One by one, the spirits receive their gifts and then float away into thin air. Soon, the Child of Light focuses her attentions on Torm. She spoke directly to Torm's mind in a spirit language that she somehow understood:

CHILD OF LIGHT
Brabbi Drem Fa Nakten. (Welcome Torm.)

TORM
What is this place?
Torm thought to herself and was surprised when the Child of Light answered:

CHILD OF LIGHT
Yojya mo 'Evenoight' gramtep u sil. Ta narukma eroli te zer drem. Ta hokum bara de kal dra son o mal. Li forn neut con fora. Lihi kean fey sor mi ut let mayoon sortlem eef orn fea. (This is 'Evenoight', a Garden of Souls. You will find peace from the shadows here. You have a strong heart to have come through the Forest of Doubt. Your love is strong for your sister. We would like to help you on your mission of love. As long as you lovee her you can never lose her.

The Child of Light raises her arms and two crowned spirits manifest themselves at Torm's sides. And with a whisper from the “CHILD OF LIGHT”, Torm is a passenger on a crystal-powered   iron transport of souls. High above the large garden valley, it passes other crystal-powered ships as it makes its way to an unknown harbor. As Torm watched its gears of metal and light turn she realized that a soul is placed into every machine by its function and that every time she used one of the machines she had built, she was seeing it live. Soon she could see a mountainside glowing with lights and a dock in the horizon, hanging high from a canyon wall. As the transport pulls to the dock, her “two-ghost entourage” usher her to a pier and then vanish upwards into thin air.
The ship starts to dissolve, so Torm quickly jumps to the dock before she is left without a place to stand. Her glowing skin returns to its normal state when her feet touch the wood of the dock.
A long, wooden-decked path covered in light bulbs and fenced with trees leads up the mountainside. Having no other direction that doesn't involve climbing steep rocks or jumping great depths, she takes the path as her only logical option. The light bulbs increase in number as they climb to the top. She feels the glow of their light in pockets of soft wind as she makes her way up the trail. She notes the countless variety of shapes the bulbs possess: some are simple spheres, others in the shape of cubes stacked like candy sticks and many with shapes too complex to describe. Some bulbs are held up in small wooden blocks, some are attached to sockets that grow out of the tree branches, and others clustered like cattails. She comes to an open area of a deck covered with bulbs in every direction. Examining them closer, she notices that some of the filaments are in the shape of people, some are in the shape of animals, some in flowers, great sea ships, and everything else you can imagine. Her curiosity began to ask questions she couldn't answer such as:

TORM
Why are they shaped like this? What powers the lights? and What is their use?
Then suddenly she sees a bulb grow: Weaving threads of glowing orange form a net from a socket stem cooling into rainbow clear glass, shaped like a balloon. The filament grows into the shape of a woman, whose body shines bright like a hot charge of iron. But Torm's attention is stolen away by an unlit bulb whose filament is in the shape of her mother. Torm quickly but gently takes possession of the cold, cracked bulb and wraps it in a cloth. She immediately thinks about her father. She starts looking for him through all the bulbs. She concludes that if her mother was an unlit bulb, there is a good chance her father is also. She runs up the trail looking at every unlit bulb. She knows that if he is lit, she would have to start all over, but it would be better to eliminate the unlit ones first to confirm it. The thought crossed her mind that the unlit bulbs might mean a status of death but since the bulb was only cracked that maybe a chance to bring the bulb to life was possible if it could be repaired.
As her search grows closer to the top of the trail, she hears a giant sound coming from over its peak. She follows the sound to the top and is led to an overlook deck where her knees shake at the sight of a massive constellation harbor, anchored to the tops of the valley mountains. She can feel the sound of its enormous iron axles turning the gears of hundreds of large metal planet models as they orbit holographic, map-patterned suns.   A mountain of sand on the valley floor feeds giant molten tanks of glass. The celestial lava pours into “rodways” and pipes that lead to an unending library of bulbs on the canyon terraces whose shelves index the light of every soul ever made. She shakes the shakes out of her knees and presses on the search for her father’s bulb. She makes her way down the canyon trail and returns to her method of seeking unlit bulbs. As she descends the wooden-decked trails, bulbs grow in all around her. Torm looks for some kind of order to the bulbs, some kind of system of organization in this library of heaven.
TORM
But how do you alphabetize a soul before it has a name?
she thought to herself. Soon the aleatory became deliberate when she discovered a familiar ratio in their growth patterns: It was the Harmonic Series. Something she knew well from her love of music. Torm gently taps the nearest bulb and listens to its tone. It gives off a frequency of 342.076Hz. Torm’s perfect pitch was so sensitive that she could detect the slightest frequency change up to 1,000th of a cent. She taps her mother's bulb and finds a tone at 440.011Hz. She sang the note and the sympathy tones of the bulbs that corresponded enhanced in brightness. With this simple system she calculates that her father's bulb will be eleven decks down and eleven bulbs in from her current location. She counts the rows carefully, not wanting to make an error in her equation. When she arrives at the location she finds an unlit bulb with a cold silverly filament in the shape of her father. Its surface has a crack like her mother's bulb. She carefully takes possession of it. When she holds the bulb up to her mother's, a dim spark of light starts to glow in both of them. Torm's heart beats faster and the awe takes her breath away. This small glow sunsparked Torm's hope. She had to find a way to repair the glass. Torm knows she can't steal the glass from a growing bulb because that might be stealing someone's soul. Torm observed that when excess glass falls from some of the brighter bulbs, it returns to being sand when it hits the ground.
TORM
(to herself)If I can catch it before it hits the ground, then I can use it to fix my parent's glass.
She follows the pattern of growth and waits for a bulb to grow. She warms the glass of her parent's bulbs in her hands so the heat of the falling glass doesn't make their cold surfaces crack more. But when Torm tries to catch the falling molten glass with her parent's bulbs it just slides off. She tries this a dozen more times with a dozen different bulbs but gets the same futile results. Every soul has its own type of glass and only glass made for her parents would repair their surface. Torm looks up to the constellation harbor and deduces that is her only chance of repairing the bulbs.
After some tome, she has made her way through the maze of trails to the main pier of the harbor. The height makes her a bit stiff and nervous. She takes a breath and then takes a step onto the soulglass pier. She follows the long walk to the center where a soul in the shape of a sea captain is tending a large ship wheel that controls the operation of the harbor machine. In his eyes lay the coordinates of the universe and more directions than god.   Behind him, streams of soul energy pour from the tips of a spherical iron cage and are weaved with molten threads of sand creating “soulglass”. She felt a mixture of intrusion and selfishness to ask for any help from this captain since he was responsible for so many souls.
TORM
(to herself) Who am I to prevent the wheels of creation for the mending of two little bulbs?
She always felt that the world didn't depend on her existence and that it would go on just fine without her. This wasn't a thought of self-pity but rather a virtue of honest modesty, understanding that she was lucky to have the world more than the world was lucky to have her.   But in this moment of love for her parents and a need to have just a little part of them back in her life led her to momentarily abandon her honest modesty and ask for a selfish favor. The spirit wasn't bothered or even inconvenienced by her presence, quite the opposite. He knew Torm's purpose for being there at that moment and that exact time. Before she could say a word, two socket rods in a base of molten sand positioned themselves in front of her. Torm put the bulbs into the sockets and the cracks were mended and her parents figures glowed brightly. Torm took the bulbs out but they turned to sand in her hands, leaving her holding a golden framed compass. Torm took one step and the entire harbor shattered and a flash of light stole her conscious mind.