10-29-2021, 07:47 PM
E
lliana had never known there could be an ache in the fog. It covers her body like lead and presses down on every inch of this new, fragile body. Septimus once told her stories of a town that crushed those they believed to be witches. She hopes not, if only because this weight would be enough to kill her. They writher like snakes when the head is cut off. With the same sort of emptiness that a serpent without a head portrays. The rolls of their body, the slithering motion their steps nearly take on. Elliana spots dark portions growing in her vision, like shadows swallowing her whole. She sucks in the air with a sharp inhale, she does not recall ever exhaling it. The shadow girl walks towards them, her heart no longer in her chest, but it swims up her throat and she thinks she is choking on it, can only breathe between beats. Beat, breathe, beat, breathe, beat, breathe, beat. One of them reaches out to her. The little girl jumps to the side with all the grace of fighter Nicnevin taught her.
They are dead.
They are dead.
And she cannot look at their faces between she is so terrified she will see the one she wants most. Gods could James be with them? Could her baby brother have really become this monstrosity? Has she just been pretending all this time that his soul sits at sea, content on a pirate ship of his own making?
In those unfamiliar hands she grabs two stones as if that were enough to defend herself. A wooden sword in war amongst those with iron. She clutches them tightly, like a priest with a cross. She tries to avoid looking at them, glancing down and throwing her arms to push them away when they come too close. They reach and they grab and they snarl. She thinks this is it, she thinks I am dead, she thinks they will kill me. And one reaches to kiss the point of her elbow. “Stop it,” she says with gritted teeth and shaking knees. “Where is he?” Because she thinks they know, they have to know. Those blue eyes open wider, wider still as they look around the ghosts.
“He isn't here,” she says, and her eyes are glassy. Her heart finally settling.
At the end of it all, the dead are still dead, as they are supposed to be. As they should be.
So Elliana strikes those stones together.
And from the stones there is a spark.
And from the spark there is a fire.
And she buries the dead not in dirt, but flames.
And it is only then, with smoke on her skin and eyes glowing like blue fire, that she walks on and comes to stand before Jack. “Are you the one we have been trying to find?” And despite herself, despite herself and everything else, there is just the quirk of the smile that appears and fades like a ghost passing over.
some are ghosts before they are dead.