• Seated comfortably on the root of the oak tree, Jake listened intently as Nem talked. His slender hands sketched pictures in the air as he talked, and his warm brown eyes lit up with laughter. Pointing out new marvels (at least, new to Jake), Nem seemed so happy in this strange world.

    “How did you come here, Nem?” he asked him suddenly.

    Startled, Nem blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

    “I mean, when did you get here? How long ago was it? What happened to make you forget?” Jake asked eagerly.

    “Well, I was born towards the end of the Roman empire. My mother was of Greek descent, something she was very proud of, so she named me Mnemosyne, after the Greek goddess of memory. We were very poor, with no man to support us since my father left when I was a babe. My mother died when I was fourteen, and I was left on my own.” Here Nem gave a sigh, looking quite drawn.

    Awkwardly Jake patted his shoulder. “Sorry man.”

    Shrugging, Nem gave him a crooked smile. “It’s all right. It was nearly two thousand years ago, anyway. Still....”

    Looking to steer away from the subject of Nem’s mother’s death, Jake asked, “So what happened to you?”

    “I died of starvation. The pain was so unbearable, that I forgot myself in the last minutes of death. And here I found myself, baffled and quite alone except for the glimmers.”

    Jake looked curiously at the faint figures wandering the cool grassy plains. “What exactly are glimmers?”

    “They’re very much like you. They are living people that have forgotten themselves. They are faint because their souls are not here, and the balance they have created in this world is fragile. They can remember at any given moment, which will release their soul back into their living bodies on the Earth.”

    Glowing, an orb appeared by Nem, pulsating as it grew darker. With a faint pop, a baseball fell into Nem’s waiting hand. “Looks like someone forgot their game ball,” he said, tut-tutting as he tossed it from hand to hand. “We have piles of these all over the place,” he told Jake, and tossed it over his shoulder. It narrowly missed a glimmer.