The raindrops fell, liquid ice onto her already-chilled face. Winds thrashed. The moor was dark, deadly, some might have said. The rain could have given her pneumonia, the ‘chill of the physical heart’ that had already claimed so many lives before. But it didn't matter to her. Those lives had been worth something, different to the shell that she had become. The chill could dot nothing to touch her. She walked onwards, alone, her mission so close to completion, yet, too, dripping loosely from her fingers like the rain that tipped from trees.

Just a mile further to move herself. There was no way that, after everything, she’d let them all down now. And so, she pressed on, despite the torrents against her.

What remainder of a shiver spiralled down her spine, but she barely felt it. Lighting lashed down, breaking the twig on the horizon, the Elyssia Tree ahead, and painted a deep crack across her path. What objections they were! But, still, it did not matter to her; no rain could halt her, and no death would stop her mission; for she was already dead.

~

It had started that Sunday, the very feeling, the knowing about being dead, in the way that a new sensation occurred that an average sixteen-year-old would no ever feel if the circumtances were clear. Awareness became pin-sharp. An absence of true despair. That's what the motions had become.

There was the watching- just as there had always been- and so Jynn had never questioned her existence. She was different from those who hungered, craving substance, and those who thrust themselves into the paths of love. She was known not be glanced at very often, but Jynn had lived that way her entire life.

Little did she know that her body was buried, the mutated zygote stuffed into a cardboard chamber, cold, and her heart had never begun to beat. There she walked the land, watching the other humans and marvelling at their ways, that girl without a soul.

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Author guidance for This story

On her sixteenth birthday, Jynn is given the realisation that she is one of a few 'seen ghosts': a visible body moving through life, interacting with few, but without the capabilities of any fully human being.
Enlisted to complete a prophecy-fulfilling mission, due to her 'immortal' properties, Jynn must face up to that which lies ahead for someone who is stuck in limbo, whilst uncovering what happened in her past for her to deserve such 'punishment' of not life or death.

~
Though I didn't have it in mind when I began the piece, I imagine the setting to be that of an African plain, despite being set in alternate universe.

Jynn:
dark-skinned, short, black hair, deep brown-black eyes, long figure; Masoii tribe child.

Ensoulment was the, originally Ancient Greek, belief that humans are not born with a soul, but given one, often during pregnancy. Therefore, abortion before the soul was given was acceptable, since it was not killing a living human being.
Aristotle stated that the human soul entered the forming body at 40 days (male embryos) or 90 days (female embryos).
Nowadays, the Church generally does not uphold the view of ensoulment, saying that 'soul' occurs in humans from the moment of conception.

"The one who will be a man is one already"

updated Jan 11 by SumnerzAngel