Temple Sprites

Anh Hai rebalanced his focus on reality and regained control of his body for a moment.

It was enough for him to make a few signs in the air, drawing powerful images on fixed air molecules.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he threw the colored onion-skin paper upwards, through the powerful images he had just prepared in space.

The multitudes of pink, yellow, green, blue, white, orange, and purple leaves fluttered back down to the floor, bearing different brushstrokes of those powerful commands he had just drawn.

Anh Hai picked up the fan, flicked his wrist once, unfurling the silk fabric in all its bright carmine glory. He passed the fan over the room, causing a small dust devil to swirl around, gathering energy from the air and surrounding objects.

The scattered onion-skin papers were sucked into its whirlwind vortex and became compressed into one single sheaf of jet black paper.

The paper crumpled under the stress of his stare and shrank into a dull black lump the size of a golf ball. It hovered over the top of the twirling vortex, spinning in the opposite direction of its host whirlwind.

Anh Hai uttered a single command, striking the air between himself and Ray Street with a mental finger, casting the black ball into Ray's body.

For a moment, there was a deep silence.

Then, amidst a sudden shaking of the very fabric of space between them, there was a deep rumble. The rumble turned into a deafening roar as the ordered universe decayed into a single point of chaos from which all manners of insanity issued forth.

From that chaos point, a flash of white light flared and touched Ray Street's head.

In an instant, Ray Street dissolved into a thick dark purple-black smoke.

One more flick of Anh Hai's fingers and the purple black smoke that was once Ray Street was sucked in through the nostrils of the bronze tiger.

The tiger's eyes blinked once and then glazed over. Ray Street's soul was now within the tiger statue, looking out through the tiger's garnet eyes.

Once again, deep dark silence permeated the room as the air molecules and dust motes regained their sense of normalcy and resumed their chaotic swirling within the well-governed reality of 3D.

Searching in his mind's eye, Anh Hai spread his molecules upward, slipping through the spaces in between the wood, brick, and mortar of his home.

Upon reaching the atmosphere, he merged into the air and looked down upon the rooftop of his house. The roof shimmered with the shock of having been penetrated by a massive force similar to a body emerging from the water's surface.

Anh Hai surveyed the neighborhood with its small rectangular patches of lawn and square red rooftops of houses around him. Then he shifted his gaze into the distant blue mountain ridge to the northeast.

That way lead to Hacienda Mountain.

☯︎☯︎☯︎

Blake and Luis hung around and watched as Adam was taken into one of the inner rooms.

As the short nun wearing the black sari with the yellow sash walked past, she spoke into the air between them.

"We will take care of the man. It will take a bit more effort but the second spirit will exit in due time."

Blake stared at her. She was not looking at him but they were hovering on the lanai and there was no one around but the nun and themselves.

"You can shut your jaw. She's talking to us." Luis muttered.

"I didn't think she could see us." Blake shook his head.

"She can't, but she's cultivated her internal energies enough so that she can feel us. It's the same with that nasty Overlord Anh Hai. He can feel our presence too."

The nun turned to walk away, but then she turned back to face them.

"You are welcome to stay for a meal if you wish. It is plain fare, but you will not starve." Then she turned and walked through the double doors leading into the inner sanctum.

"Hungry?" Luis nudged.

"Didn't I just feed you?"

"Yeah, but free temple food, man. It's pretty good actually, even though I'm not a vegetarian."

Blake was about to respond when he saw a pair of eyes popping out from behind one of the round red columns holding up the lanai.

He blinked once and it was gone.

"I think I saw something behind that—" The eyes came back.

"It's back!"

Luis glanced over to the spot where Blake was pointing at.

"Oh, it's just a sprite."

Blake reached out a hand in greeting. The sprite smiled and pulled back behind the column.

"What's a sprite?"

Luis shrugged. "It's not exactly a sprite, but that's a good enough word for it. It's souls of little babies that die in infancy. They don't know they're supposed to leave so they hang around the temple where the nuns and monks keep them safe."

Blake nodded, smiling at the sprite. It poked its head out and blinked at him.

This time, it moved away from the column and he could see that it was truly just a tiny thing with mostly eyes, a small button nose and a little slit for a mouth. It had a wisp of pink hair on top of its round head and a tiny body with small hands and legs.

Blake laughed and reached out again. This time the little sprite lighted on his hand. It felt like the fluttering of a fragile butterfly.

"What's your name?" He asked in as gentle a voice as he could.

"They don't have names, man." Luis laughed. "Some of them haven't even been born yet."

"Then I guess it wouldn't hurt if I gave it a name." He looked at the little sprite with the pink tuft of hair on its head. "I'm going to call you Flower because you're really pretty."

The sprite smiled.

Suddenly, several other sprites popped out from behind the bamboo bushes, from the rafter, from the rocks, and from the lotus blooms.

"Wow. There are a lot of them!" He looked around, counting at least seven or eight. They all looked similar to Flower, with various colored wisps of hair on their heads.

Since Flower was now happily sitting on Blake's shoulder, a few of the more adventurous sprites began hovering near him. Blake laughed as he noticed that some of the sprites were boys.

He hadn't realized it when he first saw Flower but once the boys came out to play, he could see the difference in their physical anatomy.

"Come on. I can smell the temple food from here. There should be a spirit offering table in the outer courtyard where we can get some free ghoul food."

Blake nodded and followed Luis to the round archway that separated the inner courtyard from the outer courtyard. As he moved through, he noticed the little sprites following along.

Luis turned back and chuckled.

"Man, you look like a dude with little flies hovering all around your head."

Blake laughed.

"It's okay. Let's go feed them."