//------------------------------//
// The Beginning 
// Story: Spirit of the Sacred Forest 
// by Princess OtakuGeek 
//------------------------------//

I suppose if I'm going to start a story, I should start with a little bit about myself and my previous life. I was a major geek. Video games, comics, movies, TV shows, anime\manga, fantasy, sci-fi, you name it. I loved being a geek and being a part of geek culture. I wasn't really the fit in type of person and while that led to being bullied a lot in my childhood, when I grew up it didn't matter. And as you can imagine, I attended a lot of conventions. At first as an attendee, then as a vendor.

See I'd always been pretty small for my age as a result of being born almost a whole month premature (though thankfully, I didn't end up with any sort of health issues). Even though I wasn't much for sports and such, I was still an athletic person and very good with my hands and creating things. When I got older, I started making things to sell online or at a convention. Gradually, some of my friends and family got into it and I made some new friends and before I knew, we were making and selling cool things at conventions or online, creating our own business.

We attended any convention we could either close to home or out of state. It was a pretty cool thing we had going. And that's how my story started. We had a stand at a video game convention so we brought primarily our video game merchandise. The day started out normal, we came, set up our stand and began selling. And like any other Con goer, I came in costume. This time, I came as Ori from Ori and the Blind Forest. See, I'd loved the game and had enjoyed every minute of it. The story, the gameplay, the visuals, everything! And Ori was just my favorite character in the game. He was just so cute and awesome at the same time, like Toothless or Stitch.

Anyways, I had gone all out for my costume, even putting in colored contacts so my eyes would look like Ori's eyes. I wasn't confident that many people would get my costume since I never really hear anybody talking about it, but at this point in my life, it didn't matter if people got it right off the bat. If they did, then kudos to them. If not and they were asking, then I could tell them about one of the most beautiful games ever made. Anyways, at some point when business was slow, I decided I wanted to look around at the other tables and see what they had. So I left the table in the capable hands of my best friend\cousin and went looking around.

As a result of being a vendor for as long as we have, there are a number of vendors that I knew. Now I can't positively say I knew everyone, but there were still some I knew and were friends with. As I was going around saying hi and checking out people's wares, I came across a vendor I didn't immediately recognize. While I tended to avoid horror games, I still knew enough to recognize the Merchant from Resident Evil. Not as immediately as Pyramid Head, but moving on. Anyways, his costume was incredibly well done that I couldn't help but stop and admire the detail.

Shortly afterward, I recognized the guy. I remember seeing him at a couple of cons I'd attended where a few attendees had disappeared. The guy sold costume props that were really well done and I couldn't help but admire how realistic they were. Unfortunately, none of his wares had interested me before plus with how much work and detail had been put into these, they just had to be out of my price range. So I hadn't bought anything from him. Until now.

Sitting right there on his table was this beautiful, white crystal orb that looked like Sein. I just had to have it. So without an ounce of hesitation, I strode right over to his booth. When he saw me moving towards him, he smiled. Or at least I think he smiled, hard to say for sure if he was smiling since his face was covered, but his eyes were definitely smiling.

"Welcome to my table friend." He greeted once I drew near. "Is there anything here that's caught your eye this year?"

In the past, I shook my head at his familiar greeting, but this time I nodded. "How much for this?" I asked as I picked up the Sein orb and noticed with delight that there was a switch to presumably turn it on.

I swear that guy's grin widened tenfold. "Normally, this particular piece would be more expensive, but considering how long you've been eyeing my merchandise, I'm willing to give you a discount."

"Deal." Was my instant reply. I handed over the money and went on my merry way none the wiser. For a while, nothing happened. I showed my Sein light to my cousin and she thought it was awesome, we sat and sold some more of our stuff, the usual. Nothing big. A few hours later in the afternoon, after I'd washed my hands following lunch, I started to feel unsteady and it just got worse as I went to the point where it felt like I was walking on a water bed on a super fast merry go round.

Then the merry go round suddenly vanished and I found myself falling. By this point, everything was a murky blur and when I tried to call out or reach for something, my voice didn't come out right and my hand found nothing. Darkness crowded my vision and before I passed out, I saw a bright light like a lamp or a flashlight.

Then, nothing.