The world had been a glorious, sparkling place of life, light, and wonder. Eternal life was laid out before the Spirits in grandeur, with never a need to worry over how many beautiful sunsets or moonrises were left in one's lifetime. Nature ebbed and flowed along with the Spirits, for they were the emissaries of nature itself.
In exchange for life eternal, the Spirits could bend the waves and chill the breezes. They could change the colors of the leaves and make flowers bloom in a million different shades of pink and blue. The Spirits kept the balance by changing the seasons and moving the stars across the sky. The set fires ablaze when the ground ached for new beginnings, and planted the seeds of new trees in destruction's wake.
Thousands of years passed, and the world was always at peace. The Spirits were always at peace.
There was no such thing as time for the Spirits, they never felt the dragging of life or the passing of the years. Every day was simply another day to wake up and continue the circle of nature. The Spirits played amongst the trees when their work was done, and formed families and friendships under the silvery embrace of the moon.
The Spirits grew in number, and therefore nature's work was split between them into smaller and smaller slivers of influence and responsibility. Langa remembered when all had been simple and new. He knew that Spirits didn't dwell on the past, but the time before had always clung to his shoulders. It whispered in his ear and sifted its fingers through his hair, never leaving him at peace.
Perhaps it was because he was different. Yeah, that's what Langa had always thought.
As the Spirits multiplied, the forests and glens got chaotic. There were too many Spirits roaming the trees, it was far too crowded. Langa couldn't even find peace in the crevices between the rocks or the secluded lagoons hidden behind the waterfalls.
Time passed and the population grew. So naturally, conflict arose.
With so many Spirits having to agree on the proper way to run such simple things, tension arose between the Spirits. Rather than there being one Spirit for water, the leaves, the winds, the skies, and so on, there were dozens, hundreds apiece.
Factions split as the populace came to spats over shifting the seasons too quickly, or pouring the rains for too long and flooding the banks of the rivers. There was always something that one faction couldn't agree upon, and naturally the other factions took sides.
The fighting exhausted Langa. He hated to see his people at war like this, but at the same time he simply didn't understand why it was such a big deal. Nature would remain even if the Spirits weren't there to ripple the water or place dew on the leaves. Every day was the same thing, didn't they see that?
Why did it matter if spring came a day late one season when there were an infinite number of seasons to come?
Langa was a Water Spirit. He hadn't been the first, but ever since he could remember he'd awoken in the morning and soften the ground. He'd place dewdrops along spiderwebs, and when the air got a little too dry he'd call upon the rains to refresh and renew. In the colder seasons, he'd blanket the land in snow and ice, crafting hundreds of little ice cycles and freezing the ponds solid.
Soon, though, there were so many Water Spirits that there was nothing left for Langa to do. There were so many others who would wake up so much earlier than him. They'd take his activities right from under his nose. He hadn't minded at first. It was alright if he didn't have to tend to each and every blade of grass.
But he'd really felt it when his facation's population had grown so large that he hadn't gotten a chance to make even a single ice cycle in the winter months. It continued like that for decades, and the faction did nothing but grow and grow.
The others told Langa that he was being dramatic, that he'd been overseeing far too much for millennia, and that he should be grateful for this break in the game. But Langa wasn't like they were, he needed something to do. If he couldn't tend to nature… then what was the point of his existence?
Everybody else seemed to have something they were passionate about. Langa had been passionate about calling the rains and the snows, but that had been taken from him when younger Spirits had come to walk the earth. He supposed that he could make some friends… but whenever he tried to he'd just be dragged into the politics of the faction-on-faction and in-faction conflicts.
It was just…
Empty.
When the war had first started, Adam had asked Langa to join the frontal assault. He'd been asked to fight for his faction. Langa was one of the older generations of Spirits, he should join his kin on the front lines. If he did, he'd be able to call upon the rains once again. The Water Faction was going to flood the earth. They were going to take control and place themselves at the top.
But… Langa didn't want that.
The Water Faction had no business giving the other factions orders. They knew nothing about growing grasses, carving canyons, or keeping the magma hot.
And besides… Langa loved calling the rains, but he wouldn't love it if he was doing so to bring about the destruction of the very world he'd spent so long upholding. He didn't want to return to his beloved art if the point would be destruction rather than creation.
That day, rather than joining in on the war, Langa finally grew tired of this world.
He wanted no part in the battles, and decided that it was about time he took a break from this exhausting consciousness for a while. Shadow just about wrung his neck, but Cherry didn't blame him. Langa didn't care about this war. He'd sleep for a little while. Perhaps when he awoke, his people would finally have grown tired of all this senseless violence…
An empty blanket of solitude.
For a Spirit born of nature itself, the empty embrace of slumber was the only reprieve from the constant business of existing as an eternal being. Spirit's did not require sleep, and if they ever so chose to partake, it was unknown when they'd wake up. If ever.
Sleeping for a Spirit was taking a break from the physical plane. One's body would be absorbed back into nature's bosom, only to awake at the unconscious whim of the Spirit who'd deigned to relinquish their eternal life for the darkness of that which was before.
Langa's father had been the first Water Spirit, the original.
He'd fallen asleep.
And he'd never woken up.
Perhaps Langa had expected this to become of him as well. Perhaps, he'd been prepared for it. Perhaps… he'd wanted that.
However, oddly enough, the breath of nature's essence hummed back to life within him. From the depths of nature, the depths of the earth, the Water Spirit Langa reemerged from his self-imposed slumber.
He arose from the ground in the exact place he'd first laid down when he chose this path. At first nothing more than a patch of grass spontaneously growing into the shape of a man. Water droplets bubbled up onto the blades, and as the sunlight reflected off their shimmering bodies the grass's color stained into something else. Something blue, something aqueous.
Langa exhaled, and as he did, his physical form reemerged, lying peacefully on his back, in the middle of a forest paved with ethereal green grass and tree trunks that sparkled silver in the midday sun. After the peaceful embrace of his slumber, Langa found himself taken aback, for the world he was drawn into was strangely chaotic compared to what he'd grown accustomed to over his millenia of time on this world.
"Holy crap, it's a sign from the heavens!"
Langa blinked in confusion as a shrill voice echoed through the formerly peaceful forest. His eyes had been opened for not a second, when the sashaying view of the leaves overhead was blocked out by a face and a wild mass of untamed hair.
"Get up, hurry! Hurry!" squealed a boy who couldn't have been older than eighteen.
Langa blinked again, not understanding–
"There you are, dammit!" screamed another voice, this one so hostile and sharp that Langa startled. He'd just awoken from slumber, and it was safe to say that Langa's bearings were effectively… shook.
The strange boy with the wild hair grabbed Langa by the shoulders, shoved him into a sitting position, and then proceeded to hide behind him. "There he is! You have to protect me!" he whimpered dramatically, clinging to Langa's shoulders with trembling fingers.
Langa frowned, acting quickly. The owner of that shrill voice was coming, and they were most definitely dangerous. Fighting through the clinging fog of his sleep, Langa shot to his feet, tugging the boy up along with him. Standing in a defensive position before the stranger, Langa braced himself for a fight. He'd fallen asleep to escape the war, but for some reason Langa felt like this boy was defenseless and he couldn't just let him be slaughtered by–
"There you are!" roared the enemy, and from the silvery trunks burst a… twelve year old child?
Langa blinked once again, his defensive position slackening.
The new boy hurtled towards them with a wicked grin on his face, but the moment his eyes landed on Langa his eyes blew wide and he scrambled to a halt. He slid to a stop a couple of feet before Langa, bent over in a crouch.
He had wispy black hair, and was dressed in some sort of bright green tunic with a hood and… triangle shapes on top? There was a blue piece of fabric hanging behind him down from his waistband, and his striped sleeves were too long for his arms, drooping down over his wrists.
He was a Spirit.
"What?" the boy breathed, gawking at Langa. "Who the hell are you?"
"He's my guardian angel!" exclaimed the older male who was hiding behind Langa. He gestured wildly from over the Water Spirit's shoulders, and was clearly very weary of the young Spirit before them.
The young Spirit's eyes - a vibrant green - narrowed, and then rolled dramatically. He straightened from his crouch and leaned on one leg, the blue strip of fabric swished behind him. "Angels don't exist, dumb-ass," he snapped. "And I wasn't talking to you!" Sharp green eyes snapped to Langa's, "You, who are you? Why are you trespassing on my territory?!"
Langa gazed back at this young Spirit in confusion. Langa didn't know who he was, but shouldn't this younger Spirit know who Langa was? He wasn't an original Spirit, but he was still from one of the first generations born. Everyone knew his name.
"What, do you not know how to speak?" the young Spirit snapped. The boy hiding behind Langa winced at his acidic tone.
The Water Spirit swallowed, and then answered: "My name is Langa." He waited for it to click… but it didn't.
The young Spirit's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're new. But that doesn't make any sense. Spirit's don't just pop up out of nowhere."
"He popped out of nowhere to save me! He was summoned by my desperation!" cried out the boy behind Langa.
The young Spirit snarled, "Shut the hell up, Reki! I'm not talking to you, get the fuck out!"
Langa's brow furrowed. Reki? I don't recognize his name either.
The boy, Reki, squealed, and then sprinted off. Langa watched in shock as he disappeared through the trees, "Wait–"
"-Don't bother, he's just a stupid human," the young Spirit retorted, discouraging Langa's half-hearted attempt to keep Reki from running off.
Langa's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Human? What's a human?"
The young Spirit gawked at Langa. "The hell– Wait. I understand." His green eyes calmed, his expression turning grim. "You were sleeping."
"Yeah… I was," Langa murmured quizzically. The fog clinging to his mind had finally cleared up, and the Water Spirit took this opportunity to take in his surroundings. Come to think of it… he didn't recognize this forest at all. It didn't make sense… Langa knew the entire world by the back of his hand.
Yet, here, the trees were uniform, the grass barely two inches tall. The ground was smooth and free of obstructions or underbrush. The green vegetation was so bright that it almost hurt Langa's eyes. Come to think of it, why were the tree trunks silver? Everything looked like it was made out of crystals, but it was undoubtedly the same nature that Langa had left behind… only different.
He turned his eyes up to the leaves, which he found to be a pale pink. The sky overhead was the clearest of blues, not a cloud in sight. Everything was so… pristine.
"Tell me," Langa asked the young Spirit, "Has the fighting ended?"
Those wild green eyes grew wide as saucers. "Holy shit. You're from the Age of Chaos?!"
"Age of… what's going on?" Langa asked. "How long was I sleeping?"
"Like, fuck, an entire eternity! There's an entire new age of existence!" the young Spirit cried out, his voice echoing through the trees.
Langa cocked his head to one side. "A new Age? If I'm not mistaken, the last Age was the time before the Spirits. Is this really… the entire world I once knew has been completely replaced," Langa mused, glancing around in curiosity.
The young Spirit was still gawking at him. "How are you so calm?! You've been asleep for longer than I've been alive! Were you born before or after the Great War?"
Langa sighed. It really had been only yesterday when Adam had approached him and asked him to join the frontal assault… and now all of that was just… gone. "I was born to the fifth generation after the first. My father was the first Water Spirit. My mother was from the third generation."
The young Spirit stared at Langa for a little while, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's just… completely insane. You're, like, older than this universe. I can't believe you were able to awaken to this world, how were you able to reconnect if the world you left was rewritten?"
"I'm not sure," Langa admitted. "I just sort of… woke up. And he was there."
"Reki?" the younger male groaned.
"Yeah," Langa confirmed.
"I feel bad for you, if the first thing you saw after returning was his ugly mug."
Langa blinked, confused. "I didn't find him visually displeasing."
The young Spirit snorted. "Just my luck, I've been stuck with some geezer." He groaned dramatically, stretching his arms over his head and turning on his heel. Langa watched as he retreated back the way he'd come.
The green eyed Spirit paused, and turned to look over his shoulder. "What are you doing? Come on! I've gotta show you around! The world changed a whole hell of a lot while you were sleeping your ass off."
Langa's eyes widened, he felt his chest flutter a bit in excitement. He hadn't felt an emotion like that since hundreds of years before he'd decided to sleep. "Okay." Langa hurried to the young Spirit's side. Together, the two of them walked through the trees, each on a mirror image of the next. The breeze was warm and sweet, and there were these strange (but pleasant) high pitched echoes dancing along in the atmosphere.
"I'm Miya, by the way," Langa's new companion said.
"It's nice to meet you," the Water Spirit responded.
"Come on, Langa, you've got a lot to catch up on," Miya sighed.
Langa found himself smiling. Waking up to a completely new Age was jarring to say the least, but he had to admit that he liked this new world. It was completely different and new, and he couldn't wait to see how much had changed since he'd fallen into his slumber.
The world he'd left behind was completely gone… and honestly? Langa thought that was for the best.
