Fun fact: you will be exposed to more radiation living 50 miles from a coal power plant than you would living 50 miles from a nuclear power plant

Even as I fought for each breath, I could feel myself fading. I could now barely feel my hand being clutched by my sister. Machines beeped as her eyes filled with tears. I gathered all of my strength to say my last words.

“You’ll be ok.”

And with that, everything faded to black.

To my surprise, in what felt like only a few seconds, I opened my eyes to bright sunlight. Looking around, I found myself in a field on the edge of a forest. The grass was tall… no… I was small.

“Hello?” I called out.

The grass rustled beside me as a young man emerged. His skin was a strange green and he wore clothes weaved out of grass. He was about 3 feet tall, still much taller than me.

“Ah, a newcomer.” He said. “Welcome to the Otherworld.”

“Otherworld?” I questioned.

“Yes. When you die in the physical world, you come to the Otherworld. Then, when you die in the Otherworld, you return to the physical world.” He explained as though he had been asked a thousand times.

“I am Fatrius, spirit of this forest. And you seem to be a dryad of this little sapling here.” He said, gently brushing against the leaf of a tree sapling next to me that I had not noticed until then.

“Why am I so small?” I asked.

He smiled and looked down at the sapling. “Just like this little tree here, you begin your second life small. You will continue to grow with it until your time in the Otherworld is up.”

And he was right. As the years passed, I grew taller and taller until I could see over the tall grass. I still missed my sister and often wondered how she was doing.

That was when I saw it. A house, in the distance. Confused, I called for Fatrius.

“Why is there a house? I didn’t think there were humans in this world.” I asked.

Fatrius climbed to one of my branches and looked into the distance.

“I see only a field.” He said, confused.

I pointed to the house. “It’s right there! Someone just walked out of the door!”

Fatrius shook his head and turned to me. “I do not think what you are seeing is in the Otherworld. Tell me, what were you thinking about when you saw it?”

“I was thinking about my sister.” I said, remembering the time I had with her. The more I thought about her, the clearer the house seemed to become.

“Ah, that explains it.” Fatrius said turning away from the field. “Sometimes when you have a strong enough bond with someone in the physical world, you can view them by focusing on that connection.”

He instructed me on how to strengthen that connection. After some practice, I was able to clearly see her. Living in the house with her were a man and a child. My brother in law and my niece. Through this connection, I watched them grow up.