12

Only a couple of weeks later Mali managed to open her eyes into the gray fog and be horrified by what she saw: around her in the twilight, many translucent jelly-like forms slowly scurried around, from those reminiscent of the faces of people with pieces of the body to animal images. The shaggy old women, heads of dogs and different animals, nasty insects with torn wings and something else unidentified. 

Some had eyes wide as fish, glaring at her and also protruding teeth.

"How scary!" Was her first thought.

But these things did not touch her at all, but dangled around like balloons in slow chaotic movement, and this calmed Mali a little. 

The colorlessness and grayness of even ugly forms have almost ceased to terrify. She just had to get used to it.

"A-ah... what is this?" She whispered to herself, looking at her hands.

They were gaseous and moved their fingers as if they were alive.

From shock, Mali woke up with her heart pounding with fear.

"This is the world of spirits? What a horror! How can I be there among this swarming mass of ghosts? And I look the same there?"

The next time, she coped with the ugliness of the inhabitants of the spirit world and was able to get out of bed without looking back at her abandoned body and walk to the mirror on the table. Her foggy image was reflected and calmed the girl.

"Phew... I'm not scary here at all, I'm even cute."

She carefully moved to the sides, feeling her weightlessness, and said the name - Ingris. At that same moment, she seemed to be drawn into the mirror and everything flashed around her, as if her head was spinning. 

His image appeared before her view: horned and here he looked beautiful, half-naked with a muscular slender figure, long lilac hair, but his eyes were closed, and his ghostly body of an ideal shape was suspended in the air among the green vines growing upward and covering the sky. Thin multi-colored streams of energy passed through his arms and legs, as if he was saturated with them.

Mali called her brother's name, hoping for an instant transfer to him, but this did not happen, and the image of Ingris faded out...

She woke up in her numb body when the roosters crowed.

"I was only there for a couple of minutes, but in fact the night had already passed."

The next time, she was able to get to those black bushes in the forest and even walk through them, the sharp thorns of which did not touch her misty ghostly body in a long nightie.

The gray fog parted, revealing before her eyes a crystalline spring with running water with a mesmerizing murmur.

The red leaves of the maple slowly spread to the sides and the emerging figure of a young man with long brown hair came out to her with his hand outstretched.

"Kiri!" Her cry sounded muffled and its echo was reflected and crumbled into the thinnest sparks of tunes.

It was difficult to recognize him as a brother: he seemed to have grown up and his face looked more mature. Transparent greenish eyes, a broad-shouldered figure in a long gray robe... Everything around seemed to be painted in muted pastel colors.

"Mali!" answered the tall ghost. "You... found me!"

"Kiri... You look different in the spirit world..."

"You too... I won't remember that you came, unfortunately."

"And I'll remember," Mali said confidently, stretching out her ghostly hands to him.

"Ingris won't like you being here."

"What will he do to me?" His sister chuckled.

"I think he'll get angry... He'll take me to another place. He is not just a forest fae, but a super being, he chose me as a partner for long. Unfortunately, he is stubborn and does not give up to win me... Tell the parents that everything is fine with me, I am alive and I miss them."

"You... won't come back?"

"I would like... but this is impossible in the near future. Someday we will meet again... Go away... before you are discovered, otherwise he would imprison you here…"

Mali was abruptly dragged through the sliding, unsteady space back into her body.

"Kiri..."

Hot tears flowed down her cheeks...