ofeventualities | closed to long_live_the

The campfire crackled through the otherwise silent night, smoke rising from the piled woods where Jade sat cross-legged on the ground, with a pipe of peaceweed in hand. The Powder Desert was usually hot during the daytime in a way she was usually accustomed to, but the nights were particularly chilly that the warmth of the flames was necessary. On the other side of the camp, the mysterious apparition stands, silent and unmoving, as though waiting for something.

"You're an odd one, aren't you?" Jade asks the specter, drawing a breath from her pipe.

No answer, of course. The dead don't talk, not even to the Phasmalists who summon them.

It's a shame, really. Jade would have liked to have known where this girl came from. With her shock of pink hair and horns on her head, she's certainly unlike anybody Jade has ever encountered, or even read about in books. Perhaps she's a soul from a much earlier Cycle, or another Eventality altogether. Perhaps she'll never know for as long as these apparitions remain as nothing more than shadows of their former selves.

After a moment of silence, Jade imagines an answer in her head that maybe the girl would have said... and laughs to herself as though the ghost had just told an amusing anecdote.

"Yeah, I can imagine."

Purple smoke draws from her exhale as Jade lowers the pipe from her lips, not looking away from the unmoving spirit.

"Still. Wish I could at least see your name." The only thing that came to mind when she cradled the lost soul she had found in the old lighthouse near Duneville was some kind of tree. Jade had encountered a few like that before, whose names were muddled to her, so she kind of had to come up with names of her own for them instead.

For this one, for now, all she can think of is 'Tree'. Which is probably horseshit, but it's all Jade has to go off on. Could she have at least thought of something more creative? Maybe. But she's haggard, exhausted, and a bit too battered from her recent fights to be creative at the moment.

Moments pass until she decides to turn in for the night. As she starts to put her pipe away, Jade suddenly picks up the sound of something crawling in the darkness. She freezes, catching the shape of a giant Desert Spider approaching the camp.

Some of her gear goes sprawling in Jade's swift scrambling to her feet, arms out and backing away from the sight of the creature's too many eyes moving quickly towards her with its too many legs.

"NOPE," Jade firmly tells it... Before realizing that she's been backing towards the desert cliff. Her foot shuffles towards the edge, before the rest of her goes sailing over the edge.

Well, this is certainly going to be one of the most stupid ways to die... Scared by a fucking spider.

The ghost stared into the warm flames she could no longer feel, and said nothing. She couldn't feel the chill of the cold, either. She didn't have to look behind her to know there'd be no shadow there, though her body seemed otherwise whole, if transparent.

But Kaede also didn't feel that pain anymore. The wretched pain that came from her power snapping back on her body, tearing flesh from bone and nerve...and the worse one, the one that knew her misery had been for nothing, for she had never belonged in the world to begin with. She couldn't...she couldn't even remember if she'd been of any use at the end. It had all faded to white.

And then Kaede drifted. A wisp of cloud on the wind, feeling little and seeing less, yet knowing she was still in motion, like someone who'd been on a train too long. It wasn't until she felt something cradling her like a child might peer at a stone that the world bled through again, the colors almost blinding. The buildings were strange. The light was odd. But she felt no pain, and...grounded, instead of aimlessly floating away.

The scarred face of this woman was the first thing she properly saw here, and it was her presence she kept returning to when she drifted out of that trinket the woman wore. And...the moment Kaede heard her voice, the moment she felt she existed. She was present, even if she had no shadow. Even though she chose not to answer when the scarred woman (Jade...was her name?) spoke to her, she didn't seem very bothered. So she didn't feel the need to drift away again.

Specter that she was, Kaede still had the vision to see something moving in the corner of her eye. She could hear it as it drew close, too-large, skittering legs as they scuttled over sand.

The ghost didn't hesitate. She struck, vectors crashing against the creature like a hand against a much smaller spider, smashing it against the sand. And then the tether that seemed to be attached to that trinket pulled her to the edge, where a vector lanced down to grab Jade's ankle. The grasp was cold and tight as a vise, and held fast.

"Y̸o̶u̵ ̴s̷h̴o̵u̶l̵d̴ ̷l̵o̶o̴k̶ ̴b̴e̶f̴o̷r̸e̷ ̴y̸o̷u̷ ̴t̷a̷l̶k̶," the specter said, looking down the cliff. Her voice, quiet contralto growl as it was, echoed slightly as if several voices were speaking at the same time.

For a moment, Jade wonders if she's she's gone insane again -- as if she was ever 'sane' in the first place. Sure, the voices she used to hear aren't quite the same ever since her near death experience off the ship, but did that ever mean that she was truly better?

Another beat passes. Jade realizes she's hanging upside down off a desert cliff. That ends up taking priority over her questionable sanity.

"Sound advice," Jade responds aloud, looking at the pressure around her ankle. Her long braid dangles in the air over her head.

Telekinesis...? She'd seen Mentalism strong enough to lift an entire person. But... No, this feels like something else, much like everything Jade has felt about the strange horned apparition she found.

"Uhm."

She starts to say something, but loses her train of thought. What's she supposed to ask? 'Let go of me'? That'll certainly send her down a one-way trip to her death.

"...H-help?"

Nailed it.

The specter didn't budge until Jade said something—but when she did, Kaede didn't hesitate this time either. The vector around the scarred woman's ankle lifted like an inexorable cable and winch, pulling her over the cliff and dropping her unceremoniously on the sand. Not from a great height, but not very gently either.

Again, the ghost went silent, staring over at Jade like she was waiting for instruction once more.

Jade feels herself flung to the ground with an "oof!" before it occurs to her that she's no longer suspended in mid-air.

Slowly collecting herself up off the ground, she glances between the spider, and then back to the specter. It's not unusual for apparitions to attack hostiles on their own, but that was definitely the first that one of them might have extended an effort to actually save her ass like... that.

"Did... Did you say something...?" Jade asks, slowly climbing to her feet. She feels stupid, having talked to ghosts all this time, and never expecting them to actually talk back.

Kaede's head tilted a little, her horns exaggerating the gesture somewhat. For a moment, she considered not answering. Or simply answering "no". This woman carried on like Kaede had been speaking this whole time, even when she hadn't been. Though Jade did answer her when she'd been hanging over the cliff. Could always see if that happened twice, Kaede supposed. But her vectors stayed de-manifested and quiet for now.

"D̷i̸d̷ ̶I̵ ̷s̵t̴u̴t̸t̸e̴r̸?̴" she finally said, voice as echoey as before.

Whatever Jade was expecting, an actual response was not it. She flinches back, almost slipping down over the cliff again before she catches herself this time.

"Oh, shit."

More questions just swim about in her head, as she tries to make sense of this situation. Does this have something to do with the way this particular soul seems so... unique compared to the others Jade has picked up?

After a moment, mortification sinks in. "For how long...?"

How long has she just been having one-sided conversations with this spirit, not realizing that she was actually paying attention?

The ghost snorted as Jade almost toppled right back off the cliff, though there was no breath accompanying it. There were plenty of times she had simply stared off at strange horizons and unfamiliar stars. There were also plenty of things she'd been privy to that probably weren't for mixed company.

"S̵i̵n̶c̵e̷ ̸I̴.̸.̶.̷" the ghost trailed off a moment, gaze flicking away. "W̸o̴k̷e̶ ̸u̸p̷ ̶h̸e̶r̸e̸.̴" It hadn't really been waking up, was it?

How funny. She'd been so desperate to leave, and yet those little echoes of what things had been were what Kaede clung to first.

Shock and horror turns to intrigue at the apparition's answer.

"...Really?"

Well, there's still some horror -- she must have seemed pretty silly, talking to someone all this time and they just chose not to talk back.

Not wanting to test her luck near the cliff, Jade shuffles towards her campfire area. She sits down, getting ready to grab her pipe and bag of peaceweed.

She really needs another smoke after this.

"And... you're real, right? You're not just in my head...?" Jade pauses, realizing how that probably sounds as she simply focuses on preparing her pipe. "Never mind. That's a stupid question."

It's not as bad as it used to be, but sometimes she still struggles being able to tell what's real and what isn't. If this is just another conversation she's hallucinating, that would t surprise her, either.

Kaede glanced at her hand; she could see the fire crackling right through it. She started to answer--but Jade beat her to it. So instead, she just shrugged, drawn a bit closer to the fire herself by the trinket's tether.

"P̷r̷e̵t̵t̸y̶ ̶s̶u̸r̷e̴ ̵I̴'̸m̷ ̶j̶u̸s̵t̵ ̸d̵e̴a̴d̵.̷"

...did she think Kaede had been answering her? There had been times she noticed Jade start or stare at something the ghost couldn't see. But nothing the scarred woman said annoyed her enough to say something about before.

That response is something that Jade would have thought up as well. She snorts, stuffing her pipe with a fresh batch of peaceweed before striking it with a flint. She could use magic to light up, but... she's avoided any kinds of flame magic since the first time she accidentally set her hands on fire, had a panic attack, and passed out.

"Hm. That makes two of us. Probably."

'Probably' isn't the most comfortable thought. Earlier that day, she and this apparition had stumbled upon a traveler calling Jade a monster, screaming that she 'has no flesh'.

Of course, said traveler was sick with the Red Madness, face covered in the blood and gore of the human corpses he was devouring. But it didn't change the fact that Jade heard similar things before that made her doubt her own existence.

Jade seems pensive, staring into space until the realization dawns on her in horror as she thinks about the other apparitions she's ever summoned:

"Fuck. What if the others have just been listening to me talk this entire time...?"

She remembered that. For a long few moments, Kaede assumed that jackal was howling about her. Because of course she was a monster, and a fleshless shade on top of that. She couldn't smell the blood smeared on his face but it still barely fazed her, desensitized and numbed years and years ago. His words cut more.

And yet they'd left him, crumpled on the wayside. It could have been anything, really, that made him collapse like that. The sickness, the blood, a little touch to an artery in his heart...

Kaede was a monster, after all. Just a dead one.

"D̸o̸n̴'̴t̷ ̵k̷n̴o̵w̶.," she said simply, though without the bemused air of before. "D̷o̷ ̵g̸h̸o̶s̴t̷s̵ ̴u̶s̸u̸a̵l̸l̴y̸ ̴r̴e̴m̸e̶m̷b̶e̶r̵ ̸t̸h̴e̴y̷ ̷c̸a̶n̸'̷t̶ ̷t̷a̷l̵k̸ ̸h̵e̶r̵e̸?̸"

It was strange how easy many of her foes go down with this particular spirit around. Jade didn't question it much at first. After all, most kinds of magic didn't require words, and she'd known spells capable of necrotizing someone's organs from within.

But she didn't sense magic from this apparition at all -- not in the same way she sensed it from Denna and even Zar'Ah. And it's not like she can ask either of them for advice, because...

"No," Jade retorts, exhaling rings of purple smoke. "They're usually just... echoes of who they once were, so they're not particularly communicative. There are exceptions, but..."

Judging from her tone, Jade truly wishes this wasn't the case. She'd like nothing more than to give the dead some peace.

"There's a... connection that I feel, between myself and them. But I'm unable to speak with them the same way we are right now."

Kaede didn't say much for awhile, only listening. But something seemed to go out of her shoulders at the end, and she sighed to herself, a useless gesture for something without lungs.

"G̸u̶e̴s̶s̷ ̴I̷'̵m̷ ̷a̶l̶w̴a̷y̸s̷ ̸g̷o̵i̶n̸g̴ ̸t̷o̷ ̵b̵e̶ ̷w̶e̵i̷r̸d̸,̷ ̸h̷u̷h̷.̶"

Despite her no longer having a body and nerve endings to feel with, her horns still seemed to sit heavier on her head, a crown of bones that marked her strangeness.

The momentary quiet isn't unwelcome, as it gives Jade some time to put her thoughts together. Not to mention burn through more of her pipe, the peaceweed calming her nerves on top of reducing her Fever's symptoms.

When she hears the apparition speak again, she's mostly smoking dregs from her pipe. Jade sighs, reaching into her bag and rummaging through its contents.

"Yes, well... that's not necessarily a bad thing." Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "I'd hate to be what constitutes as 'normal' around these parts."

Jade herself is far from normal, devoid of the same piety and prudish behavior many people in this country and her homeland share.

Pulling out a book from her bag, Jade leans back, looking at Kaede from over the campfire. Her attention falls keenly on those horns on her head.

"Whereabouts are you from, anyways? I'm not the most well-traveled, but I've never seen anyone who looks like you before." Is that a rude thing to ask? Because it's something Jade had been wondering ever since she first bound this apparition to her.

The specter made a quiet huff, though she did glance over when Jade's movement caught her peripheral vision.

"K̷a̸m̵a̴k̵u̸r̵a̵.̶ ̶ ̷D̷o̸n̶'̷t̷ ̴t̶h̸i̸n̶k̶ ̴y̴o̶u̷ ̸c̵a̸n̶ ̷g̶e̴t̴ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̵f̴r̶o̶m̸ ̶h̶e̵r̸e̵.," the ghost said, unperturbed by the question.

At first, Kaede had assumed the strange stars were simply a fact of the afterlife, gleaming bright above purple smoke. But...it was odd. There were more things that seemed alive than dead. Things she couldn't touch, flowers that grew, the endless cycle of day and night continuing like a clock still in motion. The ghost was the only thing that was stopped at the hour. Everything else in the world carried on without her.

"Ka-ma-kur-a." Jade sounds out each syllable as if it would help her better understand, but it's pointless in the end -- she's never heard of such a place before.

Still feeling the effects of her Fever, Jade dumps out the contents of her pipe and replaces the dregs with a new batch of petals.

"And does... everyone have horns in this Kamakura?"

This time she does snort. "N̴o̴t̴ ̷a̴t̵ ̵a̴l̸l̶.̴ ̶ ̷J̷u̴s̴t̵ ̷m̸e̷,̵ ̴a̴n̶d̵.̴.̶.̴a̴ ̷f̷e̶w̴ ̴o̷t̷h̴e̷r̸s̷.̶," the ghost said, pausing at the end enough that the echoes nearly stopped before she continued.

"W̶e̵'̴r̸e̴ ̷d̸i̸c̷l̷o̸n̶i̸u̶s̷.̸ ̸ ̵E̷v̵e̵r̷y̵o̶n̷e̸ ̴e̷l̷s̵e̶ ̶i̴s̴ ̷h̵u̴m̵a̵n̵.̷ ̵ ̸A̶n̵d̸ ̴n̷o̵ ̶o̵n̵e̸ ̵g̵e̷t̴s̷ ̷a̷l̸o̷n̶g̷.̶" The last part was almost a morose mutter than clear words, even more echoey and melancholy than the last. It wasn't entirely true; her other self could coexist with others just fine. Her other self was...happy, without effort. And then there was Kaede, the monster who clawed through the mirror's glass. Who only found fleeting happiness in time to make its absence twist the knife that much more.

The picture painted in Jade's head isn't entirely that of another world. She's still trying to wrap her head around just who and what this mysterious soul she'd stumbled upon really is.

"Tales as old as time," Jade scoffs, purple smoke pluming from her mouth and nostrils. "You'd probably feel right at home here, and in the worst way. Seems like everybody's always at each other's throats."

Considering how often thieves and cutthroats have attempted to ambush Jade, be it on the roads or off the beaten path, it probably goes without saying.

She sighs, taking another drag from her pipe. "Heck. I left my home to escape war, only to bring it here. That's what it feels like, at least."

No matter where she goes, bad shit follows suit.

Edited 2023-09-23 00:48 (UTC)

Though she had no breath to do so, the ghost still seemed to sigh herself; a quiet, tired noise. "T̴h̴a̷t̶'̵s̶ ̴h̵o̴w̵ ̸i̴t̸ ̵a̶l̶w̸a̸y̸s̴ ̵g̵o̷e̵s̵,̵ ̷i̸s̷n̴'̶t̴ ̷i̶t̴.̵"

Kaede glanced away from the trailing smoke, again at the strange horizon that now was the only one she could see.

"A̶ ̷l̶i̵v̴i̴n̷g̶ ̵n̶i̷g̸h̷t̶m̴a̴r̴e̸ ̷y̸o̴u̷'̷l̶l̷ ̴n̵e̸v̷e̵r̸ ̷l̷e̶a̸v̵e̸ ̸b̸e̴h̵i̷n̷d̴.̴" A pause, and the specter snorted a dry and mirthless rattle. "G̶u̷e̸s̷s̴ ̷n̷o̵t̵ ̴s̵o̵ ̵m̸u̸c̶h̵ ̶t̷h̵e̷ ̷l̷i̸v̴i̶n̸g̶ ̸p̴a̵r̶t̴.̶"

"Can't say it isn't always deserved," Jade scoffs. "I certainly shouldn't even be here."

Both literally and metaphorically. She should have been dead at the bottom of the Red Sea, lungs filled with saltwater.

She closes her eyes and smokes, trying not to imagine her own rotting corpse.

"But, well... Maybe there's something I can do about what ails you. Somehow."

Jade isn't one to believe things happen for a reason, but the fact that Kaede is the first communicative ghost has to mean something, right?

"L̴i̴k̷e̵ ̷w̵h̷a̸t̸?̷ ̶ ̵I̴'̸m̶ ̶a̶l̵r̴e̵a̵d̸y̷ ̴d̷e̵a̸d̵.̵" Kaede's thoughts, as usual, were bitter ones. What was the point of fixing something that had already been cast aside? She didn't belong in the world she'd been born in. So she left. Wasn't that enough? What was therapy, anyway?

"M̸o̶r̴e̴ ̸t̷r̷a̴n̶q̷u̸i̴l̴ ̴t̸h̷a̸n̴ ̸I̷ ̶t̷h̷o̸u̴g̷h̸t̷ ̶d̴e̴a̴t̷h̷ ̵w̵o̸u̶l̷d̶ ̷b̴e̸,̷ ̸a̸t̴ ̴l̸e̸a̷s̷t̴.̵" Noticeably fewer flames, somewhat less screaming. Still hostility, but far less than any depiction of hell she'd heard of.

"Tranquil is probably not the word I'd use, but okay..."

True, it's arguably better than being dead. Or is it? When you're frequently attacked by brigands, undead, as well as crazed red-eyed people and rabid animals, a moment of peace is a rare blessing.

Kind of like right now, really. Despite the initial eight-legged scare, she's actually having a nice chat over a campfire. There's gotta be something to say about that, right?

"Don't you wanna... I dunno. Move on or something? Find peace, or whatever it is that dead people do?" At least that's the impression Jade always got.

There's no eternal fires, demons ducking her in boiling water constantly, or screaming that had gone on so long no one cared to listen to it anymore. Just moments of fighting and death and bloody violence like she'd known when alive. No--that she'd numbed herself to.

But this sort of thing she hadn't grown numb to at all.

Kaede didn't answer immediately. Or meet Jade's gaze. But unlike the disengaged air she'd worn before, the ghost seemed to shift on feet that no longer touched solid ground, and tense up her shoulders.

"W̸͎̊h̷̻̄y̴͈̆?̷͕̇" Was all the ghost said, for awhile. The specter's voice was much more distorted than it was just moments ago.

"I̵ ̵d̵o̸n̷'̸t̵ ̷d̷e̸s̴e̵r̸v̵e̶ ̷t̶h̸a̸t̵ ̸p̴e̴a̸c̶e̴.̷"

Eternal damnation is the kind of thing that theists believe in. Jade never bought into that stuff, and even now with her skills in Phasmalism, she still doesn't, if only because she never thought of this as an 'afterlife' for the souls. It's just another state of being -- a piece of remain that's unable to pass on.

"Y'know, I don't think it's about whether someone's deserving of it or not. No one should be stuck in this existence. Something like that... would just drive about anyone insane, I think."

Even if this spirit proved to be helpful in a variety of ways, Jade would never want to keep using her if it kept her in this reality.

Jade shrugs. "And besides... I'm no saint, either."

closed to long_live_the_queen.

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