Not fully sure what to make of this story- I guess it didn't quite land with me, though the artwork is very nice. The story begins in when a young girl, Vijaya, is orphaned when attackers burn down her home village. She sets out into the snow alone and collapses. A mysterious figure sees her, and collects her into his arms. He speaks into the sky that he will trade his immortality for this child's life, and carries her into a hidden sanctuary in the mountains. In this valley the temperature is always warm and the forests and fields are full of elemental spirits. These spirits act as a kind of purifying force in the world, siphoning way fear and pain. Most of this bad energy is produced by humans whose hearts are clouded with illusion, causing them to become out of step with the natural world. The elementals are being overwhelmed by human pollution and greed, and come to the sanctuary to rest. Some of them think that the safety of the sanctuary is threatened by the presence of a human child. A huge amount of my ambivalence about this story was based on the author's decision to set it in a real part of the world, the Himalayas, rather than in a fantasy world. Did he do any research about this region, are the elementals based on actual myths from that area or are they completely made up...? Should my enjoyment of the story be based on the author having thoughtfully portrayed a region rather than just filling a "far away" part of the world with a fictional story? IDK, I don't really have answers, only questions.