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The Portal Games

Isabella's Promo

All eyes see the world differently, as the common folk well know, and so too do they understand the difference between sight and Sight (and certainly more than in the matter of writing it, as such a habit has fallen a trifle to the wayside). The cities have long-since pretended that the world goes on the same as it always has, but those that have the eyes to see know different.

One so possessed of the eyes - and indeed, the Sight - was a young pangolin named Isabella. A chatty young woman, the pangolin girl learned quite young that her imaginary friends were ever so real. Short, tall, round, lean, dreamy or nightmarish, they were all quite real, and all very interested in the young woman that could see them, speak to them, and above all, understand them, for you see, it is a very rare thing to understand something instead of just knowing it.

And Isabella was very, very good at understanding, though her teachers never believed that. They put their books in front of her, planted her before whiteboard after whiteboard, forced her nose into the computer screens upon which glowed numbers and letters that meant far little to the pangolin than the little dewdrop on the little flower in the schoolyard or the ladybug that buzzed through the windows with the morning gossip. Such things were her life, and the more friendly that she became with the spirits, the more the adults - and the Authority - grew to side against her.

But the Authority had nothing on the spirits, who were finding other very special people like Isabella. The cities, blinded and cut off from the natural world, were like strongholds for the Authority, and within them, people walked about with their blinders on, content to see meaning in letters and numbers and words, their ears growing ever deafer to the real world, to the true world. They kept the spirits at bay, and the Authority built their walls, shoring them up against the spirits that spoke to children, and then to the adults that the children became, and to the children that came next.

The cities became as steel islands, and the rest of the world a sea of power and magic, a sea in which those that could speak to the spirits swam as whales, powerful beings that played and frolicked in ways that were impossible to understand by those that refused to see the spirits. And Isabella, dear Isabella, was a playful spirit indeed.

With the aid of the spirits, the long-tailed pangolin swam through the ground and burrowed through the air. She leaped to the skies, flying on wings of wind with those that lived in the clouds, and slithered with the snakes in all the lively ways they did. She sought out the bears deep in the earth, and slept in the trees and the caves with the bats, even as the spirits among the animals sought her out, teaching her, speaking with her, and in turn, even being healed by her.

For that was the power of a being that truly understood a spirit. Those damaged by the Authority, those injured by the long wear and tear of the world, could be restored by those that knew them, that saw them, that understood them. That knowledge, that pure care and love, could bring a spirit back to what they truly were.

They sought out Isabella, and in turn, Isabella sought them. For, after all, she had the Sight to see, and knew the presence of pain. To know someone was hurt was pain to her, as well, and she sought ever to ease it.

Her journeys took her over land and over sea, floating on the wings of her many friends. Everywhere she went, the happy little pangolin learned more and more about the spirits of the world, and she found herself drawn to those both kind and unkind. The former gave her joy and peace, and the latter, she could gift such things to...well, once the 'unkindness' was done.

After all, even one so soft and joyful as Isabella acknowledged that there are times when an unkindness is necessary, either in truth with another, or in bed with someone else. As she would later admit to a friend, 'Sight is not everything. Touch matters, too, and sometimes, I need something less 'nice.''

Yet, for all that her wanderings brought her to true friends, many friends, and even lovers, Isabella always felt something lacking. Her understanding of the world around her and everything in it was vast, and her kindness, her love, and her healing touch nearly limitless in what it was willing to attempt, but there was something missing. It was a faint thing, a mere whisper of shadow without anything else to explain it, but the longer that she traveled and didn't find it, the more present the shadow became.

It wasn't until a visit to the great Tree of Tenderness, a spirit-infused redwood that towered over an entire forest and granted a sense of ease to those that lived beneath its bows, that she understood what she was missing. It was something that she had avoided for so long, not even thinking about it, and yet, she had never stopped wanting it.

People. She needed people.

At first, she shied from the spirits as they told her what she needed, what would make her feel better. She told them that the spirits were all she needed, that she was happy to be with them, but the pangolin had spent so much time among them that they understood her nearly as well as she understood them. They knew when she was lying, even to herself, and while she was very good at fooling herself in the way that only those that understand too well are capable of doing, they could not be fooled.

"Go there," the spirits - and even the Tree - told her, gesturing to the great lake that bordered the forest. "Go there, and someone will come for you."

"But why?" she asked, her soul weighed down with fear. "Why do I need people?"

"Because you are people, and they will never stop needing each other."

They hugged her, and she hugged them back before she was sent away. It was a tearful goodbye, for the spirits knew not when they would see her again, and more, did not know if she would know them anymore when she returned.

Of course, such a telling of the spirits did not go quite as expected. They intended to send her to the crossroads at the lake where strangers might find her. It was a simple guess that someone would come along eventually, and there would be a chance for her to strike up a friendship.

What they did not predict was the hole in the ground that opened up beneath Isabella's feet, nor the yelp that followed. In a moment, she was gone, taken to a world where she would meet other people, for better or worse.