Ceremony — Supernatural Thailand 11

While he was alive, he had diligently practiced non-attachment as recommended in the holy texts, transcending worldly illusions, reaching for something beyond. He never married and had no family, so his existence had been simple.

Monotonous even.

But then one stormy evening, Fate suddenly noticed her carelessness and deciding to make things somewhat more interesting, aimed a lightning whip at the chain of metal amulets dangling from his neck as he ran for shelter in the blinding monsoon rain, separating his spirit from the body.

That was a long time ago and the spirit had been wandering ever since, avoiding the sly snares set up by the many witch doctors wanting to add to their collection and further their reputation.

But lately something, a seed of a memory, had lodged itself in the spirit’s vaporous heart, infecting it with a deep desire to once more experience life’s burdens, dreams and tragedies, to feel again a human’s colorful palette of emotions, the world’s delicious distractions.

It missed the constant frustrations of attachment, the limited boundaries of solidity, the blissful disregard for the now.

It longed for the drama of existence.

And so making a decision, the spirit floated down to a village in the middle of a…