One day, my friend introduced me to Natsume Yuujinchou, and that was the end of me. NY is an anime that brought me back to why I had started loving anime in the first place; I'd completely forgotten. That same reason was also one of the main inspirations behind my original story, and now that I've remembered it, I feel like I owe NY something. This fic has been broiling around in my head for a while, and I just wrote a short beginning.

Others who have read my previous fics may find a certain pattern behind my writings, especially in terms of theme. What can I say? I like "what-if"s and animals :)

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

He opened his eyes blearily.

Where am I?

The air seemed to be cloaked in a stuffy gray, the clouds casting a shadow over all that lay beneath their dominion. A slight chill stole through him, as a breeze weaved its way through the branches of the naked trees and slid past him. There was no grass to shield him; the ground beneath him was hard and bare. If he curled his fingers, the soft dirt sifted apart easily as down.

He breathed. The cool air rejuvenated him slightly. He blinked.

"-awake!"

"He's awake!"

There were voices. Voices not far off, but he couldn't see whom they belonged to.

"-sama! Thank goodness!"

A sudden cold pressed against his hand, his chest, and he gasped. The sensation fled immediately, but the heat did not return immediately.

Where am I?

He tried to move his lips, but it took all his effort to simply expand and compress his chest, forcing his aching lungs to move.

"Don't move, someone's coming. We just sent someone off to get help."

The assurances fell on his ears, but they sounded like they were filtered through a sea of cotton. Muffled, barely incomprehensible.

He could only lie there. Breathe in, breathe out. He tried to move his leg, and a pain shot through his spine. He grit his teeth, but didn't stop.

"Ah! …P-please stop moving, —-sama! You shouldn't get up!"

Eyes screwed shut, he forced his reluctant limbs to shift, to bend, to support him as he flipped himself around. He sat back onto his haunches. Deep breaths, one, two, and another. It helped ease the spike through his back some.

Again, he opened his eyes. Right below him, his hands stretched before him, clenched in the dirt. They shifted pink to brown, and back to pink again. He screwed his eyes shut and opened them five seconds later. The hands stayed pink.

He was hallucinating.

"—-sama…?"

He looked up. Finally, he saw who the voices belonged to. Standing closest was a small round thing. A tanuki? His round eye rings only emphasized the large eyes on the fairly small head, all scrunched up in worry. His small paws twiddled before his stocky belly as he shifted from one paw to another.

Tanuki. There was something important there, something that he was forgetting.

He remembered what it was when he looked past the raccoon dog. There stood creatures, people, half-human half-monster things of all shapes and sizes. Some were tall, others small. Some had enormous, misshapen heads, others long spindly limbs that curled around their torsos.

Spirits, that's what they were called.

All of the spirits were looking at him intently.

Was he still hallucinating? No, these were real, more real to him than anything except for the pain.

He wasn't a spirit. He was a human. But he could see spirits.

But despite what he remembered, he couldn't grasp the most fundamental thing, the most basic aspect of his identity.

He looked down at the tanuki that still fidgeted before him. The poor thing jumped and practically collapsed upon himself at the attention. Why?

He opened his mouth, and for the first time since he woke up, his voice rolled from his throat in a dry husk.

"Who am I?"