[color=8493ca]“I’m telling my parents either way. They already know about all this stuff so I’ve got nothing to hide; I’m not going to lie to them.”[/color]

Stepping up next Sora picked up one of the few remaining talismans and held it in front of him, not really looking at it at all as he thought over everything he had just heard. It seemed that the supernatural world was a lot larger than he knew; even knowing that everything he had seen all these years was real, he only ever thought about the supernatural in terms of the little lights he would see in the forest at night, or the dancing dragon he saw flying over a placid lake, or the old smoke spirit who had someone made its way to being part of his family tree.

But the supernatural world was larger and more dangerous than that. He knew that sometimes monsters attacked people, he’d read about demons and ogre and about trickster foxes and malevolent spirits. His parents had warned him not to wander too far into the forest and night and never to follow one of the lights no matter how enticing they looked. But 1 in 1000 was already a number far higher than anything he expected; 1 in 3 was terrifying to think about. Turning over the talisman Sora read the short blurb on the back.

Enenra are the personification of smoke, born from the fires lit by farmers to dispose of the remains of their harvest, they manifest as faces in the wisps of smoke that rise up into the air. Thought to have some relation to Lord Enma, the judge of the dead, it is believed that Enenra may actually be the spirits of the dead rising along with the smoke to the afterlife, or perhaps acting as guides for the departed.

It was nothing that he hadn’t heard before; you don’t just tell a child he is descended from a Yokai and not expect him to read everything he can about them. Sora also wasn’t sure if the accuracy of their psychic was a good or a bad thing for him. For now he supposed it meant whoever had made this talisman for him at least knew what they were doing.

Placing the paper on his chest Sora didn’t feel anything at first. No strange tingling, no rush of power, no burning pain in his souls. He didn’t feel anything. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything at all. It was like his body didn’t exist anymore, not quite numb but somehow senseless in a way that was hard to describe. Airy and insubstantial, like a sudden breeze would carry him away and he was surprised that he hadn’t already floated off. As suddenly as it had begun the feeling subsided and he could feel his body again, though it now felt somehow heavy and restrictive in its solid presence.

Letting out a deep sigh the air in front of Sora was quickly filled with a cloud of thin smoke, wispy tendrils floating up in front of his face and already beginning to disappear. He waved a hand in front of his face to dispel the cloud, wondering at the fact that the room now smelt like the familiar fragrance of burning wood.

[color=8493ca]“I guess that makes sense.”[/color]