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Prologue

When our universe was formed, it was one of the first membrane universes to do so, and as such pretty much had a free hand to develop as it did so.

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Youtube video

Much later as humanity developed, in the spaces between the undulating membrane universes another one formed, but this one was influenced in ways unfathomable, by our universe. Even time in that universe was accelerated and ran at a different rate to ours. Humanity in our universe by this time had a collective unconscious and as these membrane universes can be as close to each other as a few centimetres and somehow our collective unconscious influenced what beings would be there.

Some of these being who lived in that universe developed awareness of our existence, and the link through the thoughts of humanity allowed some to cross to and forth. But when the first crossings started, the mismatch between the rates that time flowed in each universe, were also synchronised by means unknown, and from then we and they moved in a lockstep. As time passed on our world and theirs, the clouds that formed their world, patterned on our thoughts, fantasies and fears dispersed, and soon this universe, dubbed by the inhabitants as the Mystical Realms became a universe, almost like ours, with beings on a planet, much like ours, orbiting a binary star system with four moons. As our world was governed by science and technology, so theirs was governed by myth and magic, with every fantasy creature man had devised in his dark imaginings given form.

It was only a matter of time, before the two worlds clashed, and sagas were told of those clashes. Eventually the forces of law and order, the trolls, big mean humanoid creatures, and those secret government forces in our world joined forces to help minimise interference in each other’s affairs, and for the most part they were successful.

However, the genie was out of the bottle, if you pardon the expression and various beings had been to and fro between their world and ours. Some of them appeared like normal humans with special powers but it was our collective unconsciousness that had given form to abstract values both malign and beneficent and had brought about their existence. The ancients revered these beings as deities, and some of them got drunk on this adulation and did nothing to dissuade their worshipers of the errors of their ways.

But then as mankind developed, he learned the ways of science and engineering and cast off the ancient gods they had worshiped, and these beings based on abstract values were defined as major spirits of vice and virtue. Most of them having seen mankind grow-up, had accepted that they had to take on new names. Only one refused to accept this and tried to hold on to the position of an ancient god, but he was eventually imprisoned by the trolls.

These major spirits then roamed between their world and ours, and when in ours, in human form had relations with unsuspecting people and from these relations children were born, mostly to the humans, although there was one case where twins were born to a major spirit of virtue. Either way, the children of these unions were half-breeds and were afforded the designation of minor spirits of vice or virtue, although the spirits of virtue were more successful in their breeding with humans, so minor spirits of vice were incredibly rare.

Most of the minor spirits lived here in our world with their human parents, if they were still around, sometimes with names that in an ancient tongue mean the virtue that they represent, and most had no idea that they were not fully human. They had empathic abilities related to their virtue, but they had no human soul. It is said, that if a spirit of virtue, or indeed a minor spirit of vice were offered the choice of being mortal and fully human, or remaining as a minor spirit, their human part will always win out. Minor Spirits have one common hearts desire, to be rid of their minor spirit status, to obtain their human soul and be fully human.

When the trolls discovered this, and to reduce interference with the world of mortals, they employed the elves, the workers of magic to fashion special talismans of permanence that would, if a minor spirit held one and indicated the desire to be human then it would remove their power and grant them their human soul, making them forever a normal human mortal, with the talisman being consumed by this process. With greater co-operation between the trolls and those from the secret government agencies in our world, they worked together to track down the minor spirits to assist them become human, and so removing them as a potential problem to all sides

One such minor spirit went by the human name of Rebecca Sands, her first name in the ancient tongue of Hebrew meant kindness, and so she was the Spirit of Kindness, the result of a mortal female and the major Spirit of Friendship. Alas her father was murdered by a major spirit of vice in the Mystical Realms. It was at the hands of a government agency that she took the opportunity offered her to become fully human.

Once the deed was done, and this spirit of virtue had become plain Rebecca Sands, because of certain tragic circumstances in her short life, she had just turned eleven and her mother had recently died, she was sent to start a new life with her uncle and his family, who were very decent and loving and eager to give Rebecca a new home. To some who would have followed the human side of her existence it would seem like a “happy ever after” resolution, but as every one knows, “Happy ever after” needs work and sometimes it can be a long and fraught journey.

And so, this former minor spirit of virtue was about to embark on a long journey, and not just the one on a transatlantic flight from her native home in England to the United States of America, but hopefully a journey to love, happiness and acceptance leaving behind a life of, fear and sadness, with a touch of guilt. However, things were not going to be as simple as Rebecca would have hoped…