Disclaimer: I don't own YYH, but I'm slowly getting over it. Fanfiction helps.
A slow, sullen red sun peeked over the mountainous horizon. A young girl with hair as flame red as the sunrise watched its slow climb into the sky. Uncurling from the cramped position she had slept in, she slowly stood up, wincing from the cramps fifteen hours in the same position had given her. Standing on the tips of her toes and wrapping her hands around a branch high above her head got rid of the worst of the cramps, but a few stubborn ones remained in her neck and shoulders. Rotating her head slowly, from side to side, she thought idly,
'Next time I'm sleeping in a tree, I'm gonna find one with bigger branches.'
Peeking down past her toes as they rested on the sturdy branch she had spent her night on, her thoughts turned to the hard task of getting out of a tree that had been much easier getting into.
'Hmmmm. Do I want to do this the slow and hard way, or the painful and easy way?'
A sudden gust made the decision for her, as it caused several springy branches to whip her in the back. Giving a surprised yelp, the girl none-too-gracefully fell out of the tree, falling ten feet to a ground that was blessedly covered in springy leaves. She landed with a thump and rolled several feet before the rock pile she had used to get into the tree the night before brought her to a sudden stop. Laying still for a few seconds and moaning a bit, she experimentally moved everything while simultaneously trying to restart her heart. After making sure nothing was broken, she painfully climbed to her feet.
'Forget coffee, falling out of a tree will wake you up much faster.'
Sighing and rubbing her back, the girl took a moment to try and remember from which way she had come last night. 'Let's see... if I was traveling with the sun to my back last night, and assuming the sun sets West here, then I'd have to travel towards the sun this morning to continue going East.'
She knew that West and East were only relative terms, but she needed something to base her inner compass on. Of course, there was always the possibility that this place's sun followed a corkscrew path instead of the usual 'set on one side of the horizon, rise on the other', but she preferred to not think about this.
'Right, into the rising sun!'
She set off at a slow march that she could keep up for hours on end without rest, even with a sore back. A large part of her days were spent simply walking from place to place, but in her opinion there was no other way to explore properly, and exploring was what she was payed to do. As she walked, she reviewed the events of the previous night that had led to her staying in a tree.
She had gotten into this world easily enough, but staying in it proved to be the hard part. Less than an hour's walk had brought her to a small village that blended so well into the surounding forest, she didn't notice it until nearly all of the village's inhabitants had noticed her. Unfortunantly for the poor girl, these particular people were not friendly natives. They quickly drove her out of their village and comensed to chasing her for what felt like hours but was probably only thirty minuets or so. Luckily she was in great shape (from all the exploring she did in relation to her job) so she was able to elude the natives until she was far enough away from them to seek a hiding place. Quickly climbing a convienent rock pile and leaping into the tree she had winded up spending the night in, she managed to lose her persuers. Not daring to come out of the tree again, she had setled into a position that -at the time- had seemed pretty comfortable. Staying out of sight in the tree's branches, she had plenty of time to study the language of the native peoples, as they were constantly passing underneath her tree in vain attemps to find her. They whispered to each other in voices that spoke something that sounded like a language from her home world known as Spanish, but it had a twist of something that sounded a bit Greek. Listening carefully to the people and taking mental notes, she used her skills as an accomplished liguist to obtain a vague idea of what they were talking about. It turned out that they apparently thought she was something akin to what they called a 'deasemn', an evil spirit of trickery that had been troubling them. All this was based on the assumption that they were speaking something derived from a bizare mix of Greek and Spanish. But a lifetime of deciphering languages as part of her job gave her confidence that her translation was correct.
Now, walking in what was hopefully the opposite direction of the village, she briefly wondered what the original 'deasemn' was. She knew for a fact that it wasn't a fellow explorer, as the Coordinance Office of the World Determination and Exploration Company (whom she worked for), wouldn't give her a world that had already been documented and explored. It could possibly be a fictional spirit, or a local myth. Some cultures liked to blame their misfortunes and downfalls on spiritual scapegoats instead of themselves. Yes, that was probably it, a little fictional scapegoat. Nothing to worry about.
She walked through the woods, not needing to fight her way through brush because there was none. All that could be seen were the straight, solid trunks of trees that resembled pines in their structure, but maples in their leaves. Patches of sunlight filtered through the gently waving branches, dappling the ground in spots that could almost be made into pictures, if you cared to study them long enough. Every now and then, she'd find herself at the crest of a gently sloping hill, allowing her to see over the tall trees and into the mountain-filled distance. Oddly, the peaks of these mountains were not snow-capped. The day was pleasantly warm, with an odd cool breeze finding its way through the trunks of the old trees.
She walked for a good time, on into the afternoon, and finally into the evening. When night found its way through the sky, the girl was incredibly hungry.
'Well, I've been here enough hours now, and I guess I've seen enough of this place to write my report. I must remember to advise against casual touring...'
Coming to a stop, she sighed and squared her shoulders. Calling deep down into herself, she summoned the 'power', for lack of a better term, that allowed her to cross worlds. This skill was, of course, mandatory for all those in her line of work, as was the talent to decipher the languages of those in the worlds they visited.
She brought her hands together and concentrate fiercely on where she desired to go (her office in Spirit World), her concentration helped by the thought of getting some warm food. Moving suddenly and with purpose, she dipped her hands into what she and those like her called 'the Ether', and pulled at the very strands of the fabric of the universe. Twisting them expertly into a circular portal, she prepared for the hard part that was manifesting her creation of ether and strand. Grasping the edges of her portal, she tugged it out of the Ether and into the material plain.
Materializing in front of her, a shimmering blue vortex appeared. Smiling to herself, the girl stepped through the portal and into her office, and not stopping a beat, turned back around and shoved her portal back into the Ether, where she then disentangled it.
Two seconds later the door to her office burst open and a young man with the same flame-red hair as the girl stuck his head in.
"Hey, welcome back!"
"Hi Finn. Took you awhile to get here this time." She teased him.
Finn stuck his tongue out at her and stepped into the office.
"So how was it?"
"Ng. I don't recommend it for the tourist industry."
Finn raised his eyebrows. "Hostiles, huh? Were they human?"
She shrugged. "As far as I can tell. They looked a little like Latin Americans."
Finn grinned and teasingly said, "They think you're a demon again?"
She brightened a little. "No, this time they thought I was a spirit of mischief. Finally, I little variety."
Finn laughed. "Well that's what you get for going around with your hair on fire."
She made a face. "You're not gonna let me forget that incident anytime soon, huh?"
Finn snickered. "At least we knew they were friendly when they tried to put you out."
"By pushing me into a lake! When I can't swim!"
"Well, they didn't know that! And besides, if you just had the good sense to dye your hair like me..."
She snorted. "Please! You know I can't stand make-up, let alone hair dye!"
"You'll sing a different tune when you get grey hair!"
"Little do you know, I plan to die young." Raising her nose into the air, Evvy strutted out the door and down the hall, leaving her younger brother laughing in her office.
Well, that's chapter 1. Please, share your thoughts on it.