Ori and the Outlander

Chapter 5: Her memories

AN: The chapter's cover picture is the concept art from the game.

Aaron stirred awoke, he felt something squirming on his chest. He looked down to see Ori squirming a bit.

'Oh no, Ori must be having a nightmare' he figures.

Uncertain to what to do, he decides to pet Ori on her head to provide comfort somehow, but as soon as he did, a gentle glow emits on her head as it then travels up his hand, the glow then slowly travels up his arm. He can even see the glowing light in his veins as it travels up his shoulder.

'I'm not liking this, what is it doing?'

The light finally reaches his head as Pain erupts from his mind as he quickly passes out...

He then woke up...or at least...he THINK he did...as you got up to find himself in the forest somewhere in Nibel, and Ori is nowhere to be found. A loud boom emits through the forest as lightning strikes from the sky as rain pours down to the forest.

Aaron then realizes that the forest looks healthy and alive, just like from the vision he saw from Sein!

'Am I in another vision perhaps?' he thought, as he looks at himself to find his body all ghost-like again.

'Yeah...definitely a vision...but what for?' he wondered.

His vision then gets blurs as it then focuses on the spirit tree. He notices that the spirit tree has some glowing white leaves growing on its branches, the same kind of glow he would see from Ori. One leaf, however, is shaking from the strong winds of the storm as it falls off the branch, carried away into the forests of Nibel.

His vision blurs as he is taken to a different scenario, a furry purple humanoid creature with a white circular face, sitting by the edge of the cliff. On closer examination, Aaron deduced that this creature is female,

'She could lose some weight though...' he thought. 'Or is that natural for her kind?'

She seemed to be looking down into the forest from the cliff, seemly down and as in deep thought. The glowing leaf from before then flew over her head as she watches in surprise as the winds carried it past her. Interested, the humanoid creature got up and went after the glowing leaf. The creature was about to bump into Aaron, but she instead simply went through him as though he weren't there.

'Oh yeah...this is a vision or dream of a sort, none of this is really happening right now' he remembers.

He then followed along with this huge purple creature as she trends through the forest with her attention focused on the leaf. The leaf then floats gently on the root of a tree, but as the creature approaches it, a flash occurred, and the leaf takes shape. As the flash dies down a very familiar figure rests where the leaf was.

'No way...is that...?'

And indeed, it is, the lone figure is Ori herself, the glowing leaf from the spirit tree was her all along. The purple creature slowly approaches Ori as she gently picks her up in amazement. The creature smiles in glee as she hugged Ori close to her, as a mother would to her child.

The creature then carries Ori deeper into the forest heading towards her home. The world changes before Aaron as he sees the creature... building a nest made of dried grass as she lays Ori onto it. The cave seems to contain a few wooden baskets, a small garden to grow food with a hole in the ceiling to provide sunlight, and a few lanterns made of vines with a magical-like flame, emitting from them.

Time passes till morning as the creature watches Ori from her nest as she notices Ori stir, waking up. She huddles towards her as Ori's eyes open up to see her. Ori looked at her in wonder and spoke.