Flow: Side Story

Flow - A New Beggining

I realised, at some point, that I was alive even though my eyes were already open.

I could not remember when I opened them, or for how long there were open. My first thought when I 'awoke' was but one thing: why am I alive?

Or perhaps I was not.

I turned to look around me and wondered if I was in some sort of afterlife. I was suspended on seeming emptiness, but around me lay masses of colour, innumerable shades of purple, that filled the entire space around me, stretching out into infinity. I realised then that it was the same space as whenever I met the White Tiger, my guardian god.

Then the memories came back. Like a weightless tsunami crashing over me, everything came back.

My first wish with the White Tiger. Yulbi's death. My anima training. My battles with the Black Turtle's contractee. My friends dying. My failure to change destiny during my second wish. Harin's sacrifice. My third and final wish. And, of course, the price that came with it. Should have came with it.

I felt like I stopped breathing, yet in this space, breath was not necessary. The memories settled back into me like a missing puzzle piece fixed back into place and I found myself back to my first question: why am I alive?

As if on cue, a familiar sensation washed over my senses, a light tingle that ran across my skin. Colour swirled and coalesced until the White Tiger appeared before me in an unmistakeable yet nebulous form of colour and light with a pair of piercing feline eyes looking at me.

"I'm sure you're wondering why you still exist," the White Tiger spoke.

Though 'speaking' was inaccurate. It manifested as a voice in my head, as if coming from all directions while in that space. A voice neither feminine nor masculine, neither aggressive nor friendly. If there was any word to describe it, it would be simply: ethereal.

"Yes," I responded, "I know what the price was. Why am I still here?"

"My contractor," the White Tiger enunciated, like it was measuring its own words, "even I have never before been in such a situation. By right, your existence was forfeit once your third wish was granted. Indeed, there's but only one way you could continue to exist. However, while I may be the guardian of time, I don't have the ability to foresee possible futures like the Blue Dragon. I could not have known this would happen."

The White Tiger paused and closed its eyes. Even though it was a tiger's face, one that could not produce the same gamut of facial expressions like us humans, its mien of concentration looked as if it was weighing the world in that moment.

Then it opened its eyes again. Pale blue eyes bored straight through me as it declared, "Your life was saved by the child of the Red Phoenix."

I was sure I would have collapsed in that moment if I could. I simply felt too stunned to even mount any response while the White Tiger continued, "The child you helped before you fought the contractee of the Black Turtle, was the child of the Red Phoenix, mere days prior to awakening."

I suddenly remembered the small kid who fell down by the lighthouse, who I helped with my anima so that he could return safely home. While I knew that it was there where Black Turtle's contractee would have obtained the Phoenix, I had no idea that that was the kid. The child of the collector's older sister who died. I had no idea what to call it, luck or mere coincidence.

But regardless….

"How?", I asked, my voice barely a whisper, "I thought there was no way for me to return?"

"If it was a wish made to any other god, even any of the other three horrid beasts, it would've been impossible. But the Red Phoenix is the guardian of life...and of rebirth. It is the only god who could grant such a wish to reverse the normally irreversible, and bring back an existence which had vanished entirely."