Light consumed her, and then, in an instant, it was gone, and replaced with clear blue sky. But something felt… not quite right. Miora looked down, and felt herself drop.

…

When she next awoke, it was on something soft. Like cushions. Her eyes opened to a large open room, walls made up of windows and an open sky. An old man in a long white coat stood with his back turned, facing the window. His reflection revealed a heavily wrinkled face, eyes closed in thought.

"It has been a long time, child. You are much changed."

Miora had no way to respond to this, and just nodded.

"Captain Ukitake kindly brought you back here following a fainting spell. You feel better I trust."

Again, Miora nodded. He seemed to be able to tell her movements even with his back turned, and her eyes closed.

"I will leave you in the care of our maid, I have business to attend to."

Miora made to stand, but a sudden falling sensation sent her back into the sofa without her actually leaving it. She went to ask where, and the old man knew this, and knew exactly what she was going to ask. She was going to ask if she could come with him, because she was eager to find out exactly who she was, who he was, and what on earth was going on. He pre-empted all of this, because he'd envisioned this meeting ever since deciding it would be time for her to return back home, back to her family. So even as she was only forming the 'w' with her lips, he saved her the trouble and motioned for her to return to being seated. "You have had rather a shock, Miora. You must stay and rest, and when I return I will be prepared to answer your questions."

Miora did as she was told, and listened as the old man shuffled away with incredibly quiet footsteps. Leaving after him was a man with whitish purple hair and a very ornate mustache, but the fact that she'd only noticed him as her uncle's shadow indicated to her that his moustache was probably ironic to his personality. The floor was spinning as she thought this, and Miora made every effort to breathe deeply and steadily while focusing solely on one of the rings in the wooden floor boards, but it only grew and shrank with her breath, and my goodness, it wasn't helping. Without knowing what was happening, hands, or claws, held onto her shoulders and forced her back onto the cushions with absolutely no intention of making this comfortable, and every intention of getting the girl to rest, or at the very least look like she was resting while her uncle was away. "Captain Yamamoto has ordered that I make sure you rest.". The maid, a matronly figure with greying hair and a frame that only teased some of the strength she had in her, moved Miora as though she were still blacked out and her limbs were mere dead weight. Then, when the subject was in the desired corpse position, she stood and overlooked her, meeting Miora's wide deer like eyes.

Eventually, fear turned into frustration, and it turned very quickly, and Miora felt her blood boil as this woman waited for her to fall asleep as though waiting for a pot to boil. By this time, Miora was feeling better, and the last thing she wanted to do was sleep. But, she was still weak, and the maid would probably overpower her at her best. So, she made like she was as exhausted as the maid wished her to be, and made her eyes flutter with drowsiness.

"I'll be asleep soon, thank you."

"Hmm."

Even with her eyes closed, Miora could feel eyes on her, and with the best control she could muster, she eaked open her eyelids. "I'll sleep, I promise." She threw in a yawn for good measure. "You can leave me now, thank you."

The woman gave her a measured look, and scanned the room cautiously and quickly. Then, deciding that she had no other purpose here, having been dismissed by her apparent mistress, she nodded and left. "I'll be right outside this door, my lady." she whispered, but it sounded so much more like a warning.

The door clicked softly, and Miora opened her eyes slowly to see if she were truly alone. The room was now cast in shadow, the curtains having been drawn shut for her comfort without her even noticing. Nonetheless, now that she was feeling better, her legs wanted to move, and she wanted to see the new world she was in. Before she collapsed, it struck her only as impossible what she did see. As she and Ukitake left the doors they'd entered in one world, the next opened up to her as sky, clouds, and pure air between her feet and the buildings below. She couldn't fathom how they could be standing there, or how high they were, but it felt just like standing on the street or your bedroom floor, without the sensation of a solid foundation beneath you. Then, the corners of her vision seemed to haze out of existence, and the world was both silent and black.

This world, she just had to see. And thankfully, the maid was more trusting that Miora thought. One of the veranda doors had been left open for the air to circulate in the room, and she couldn't help but notice how fresh and clean it felt in her lungs. She entered the little garden, which had a patio and a huge tree in the centre, and cut across to open what was presumably the back gate. A couple of alley ways that reminded her of home, only with fewer people and very neat buildings, and she was out in the open, and people in black kimonos were everywhere. She stopped the first person she could and asked, "Excuse me, could you point me to… where Yamamoto holds the captain's meetings please?"

The man scoffed. "You're quite familiar with him as it sounds. Just over there." He pointed to a very ornate building with huge double doors. Outside stood a gathering of men and women with white robes distinguishing them from everyone else, and their outer appearances varying from completely average to totally bizarre. Before she could focus too much on the large wolf and the only slightly smaller man with spikes for hair, she spotted Ukitake, and made to go over. But he turned at the motion of his friend in the pink robe, and Miora had a flash of recognition. She knew she had loved his bold disregard for the uniform before. The white haired man smiled warmly, as he always did, and cut the distance between them. "I'm glad to see you are better, my lady. How are you feeling?"

"Better, thank you. I'm sorry I gave you a fright back… up there."

He held up a hand and laughed. "You had rather a scare, I should have prepared you. Ah," he said suddenly, and the doors behind him began opening. "The meeting is about to start. I hope to see you soon, my lady. We have a lot of catching up to do!"

Miora only smiled as he left, and watched as the others filed in in an orderly manner. That was when she noticed a man standing there, apparently watching the exchange between Ukitake and herself. He seemed frozen to the spot, and for a moment, so was she. He had long black hair, and a cold, handsome face. Cold, because the only thing that seemed to portray any kind of emotion were his eyes, wide open to reveal the whites. Ukitake passed by, and, while the exchange was too far away to be heard, Miora could see that they were talking about her. Her pulse beat like a drum, and her stomach began to plummet and spin and rise and do every kind of somersault it could dream up, and Ukitake, with a gentle hand on the man's shoulder, urged him through the doors, and out of sight.

He must know her. He must. She felt that he did, and she felt that she knew him, too.

...

Miora returned to the palace unnoticed, but only got as far as the garden before she decided that the last thing she wanted was to be indoors again, pretending to be asleep for the sake of that woman as she stood guard. She probably knew she was gone, anyway. So she walked around for a little while, and tried as she might, she never saw the same thing twice. Every turning revealed a new set of buildings, and for a little while she hid to watch a squadron training exercise. It all seemed so familiar, and yet it was so completely foreign to her life on earth. Yesterday, she had a full time office job, an apartment she'd only recently managed to get her mother to stop paying part of the rent on, and a plant that was more than likely dead for sure now. She'd never have thought she'd been taken out of this life, and even if some part of her knew it, she more than never would have thought she'd be taken back to it by a white haired man who could fly. As she wandered, until her feet felt sore, she tried to drive home the facts. That she was a lady, that her uncle was in charge of all these people. That she, like the white haired man, could fly. But, try as she might, she couldn't get herself to feel the full force of shock. She was somewhere between the dreamlike conviction that whatever was happening was normal, and in the real world expectation that, despite the fact that she'd never in her life hallucinated (not that she knew of, anyway) she was having an hallucination now, and therefore what was the point in panicking? It would only make her look abnormal.

As the sun began to set, she once again forced herself to return home, or what was now her old new home, but once again, she talked herself out of it. The moon was just as vivid as the sun as it took over from the latter's duties, and now was the time to see this world in a different light. A new, haunting beauty took over, and when she took a shortcut through some high bushes, she found herself suddenly overlooking a vast open space, with thick luscious grass and a huge lake in the centre. Around the parameter were trees of all kinds, and Miora breathed in the air to check it was still the same, that she was still in the same place. Somehow, this breath convinced her that not only was this still the Soul Society, but that it was indeed real, and no matter who she was, this world was as real as the cool air in her lungs.

With mindful steps Miora began walking down towards the lake, and then began walking around it, examining every tree with the idea that they were old friends, and that perhaps they'd grown a lot since she was last here. Somewhere around the quarter way mark her eye was caught by a huge cherry blossom tree on the opposing side, and for a long moment of questionable duration she stood staring at it. It was beautiful, and she knew she'd seen it and loved it before now, and that this felt all so very familiar. Tears sprung to her eyes then, and an energy filled her suddenly to rush towards it. Until...until she spotted a figure walking towards it on the same side, coming to an eventual stop a few metres away. It was too far away to tell, so she carried on her journey until she we're on the other side, and though she had an idea, a hunch, on who it might be, she had to be sure.

The man she'd seen at the captains meeting stood exactly where she'd last seen him when she gained on the tree, staring up at it as though the leaves and flowers contained all of the answers to all of his questions. As she got closer, and she was eventually closer to the tree than he was, he lowered his eyes to look at her, and again, they grew wide. Only marginally this time. He looked ethereal in his white robe, and Miora could see a grace and pride in the way he carried himself that was unique to him.

She tried to speak, but her head was swimming. The feeling in her stomach was back, dulled down but definitely present, waiting to strike. They stood, and stared at each other for a while, until Miora felt it appropriate to break the silence. He seemed to be waiting for her to do so, anyway.

"I- I didn't mean to disturb you," she managed, deciding it was the right amount of ambiguous, polite and informal. His eyes, cast in shadow, revealed only the shape of them as they shrank to a more normal size, and he closed them, and nodded once. "You do no such thing."

She smiled and laughed self consciously. "It's a beautiful tree. She must have grown since I was last here."

He nodded again. "Very much."

Miora was quickly running out of things to say, and she noticed he was being incredibly safe and short in his responses.

"Do I…. Do we, I mean…" she began finally, deciding once and for all to be decisive and take the plunge, when she met his eyes again with her own and noticed how they'd changed again. All of a sudden, they alone, as though separate from the rest of his marble face, were filled with a sadness she'd never thought would be so detectable without the input from the rest of his features. He took a step into the light that had pooled between them, and looked straight at her. She looked straight at him, and recognition dawned on her. She did know him, but not in the way he perhaps expected her to know him.

When she didn't respond, he sighed barely audibly, closed his eyes, and vanished from sight.

Those eyes were still frozen on her eyelids as she closed them. His face… she knew him.

She knew those eyes as she knew the back of her hand. They'd haunted her dreams every night since she could remember.