nightlogs | talking to ghosts

Entry tags:

talking to ghosts

Who: Miggy & You??
What: Miguel stays behind to do dead honoring activities
Where: the Pole to start
When: Late October, Early November (Day of the Dead time)
Warnings/Notes: themes of mourning, though it can be lighthearted also

Miguel would be reluctantly absent during the action around Halloween. A strange enough decision, given his first instinct would be to throw himself into the fray as a distraction.

But as of late, he couldn’t hide that something was eating at him. The gloomy spell over his mood seemed more intense than months prior, burning away his patience and making short tempered remarks and the flashing of fangs more easy to let slip. He'd done okay keeping things somewhat under lock, but it was clear now something was definitely wrong.

And so, after some tense, but persuasive conversation just convincing enough to accept staying behind, Miguel finds himself idle on a quieter and lonelier Pole for a few days.

((prompts incoming - brackets or prose are fine))

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Miguel makes room so he's not looming over the kid while he takes a peep. The marigolds were the main feature, fiery orange save for the faint glow of a bone-white version of the flower. Most were on a ring made of wire. The water, candy, figures and candles were arranged neatly by the center of the circle.

"Back home, you would celebrate these days because your family is supposed to visit you from the afterlife."

Whatever afterlife was waiting was waiting for them all.

"The scent of the flowers lead them back to you, so the story goes. So you leave them things they enjoyed in life."

Despite his encounter off of the Pole, it seemed like Miguel was doing it more for emotional reasons than being a true believer. Still, going through the motions of making things for someone he cared about quite deeply... did alleviate something inside.

"Oh." Does that mean Miguel believes in ghosts? He hovers a hand over the marigolds, wanting to touch but knowing it's probably not okay. He hasn't seen a lot of flowers. Sometimes he gets overwhelmed the sheer amount of color in the worlds outside of Kamino.

"Dead people don't come back," he says with confidence. "They're just dead."

If they did come back, Jango would have already because he always came back.

Boba turns back to Miguel. "Who's it for?"

Edited 2023-11-18 07:01 (UTC)

Loki's not put off by Miguel's bad attitude. He does, however, frown when he just goes back to his crafts.

"You should at least hide your candy while they are distracted."

"I'm keeping it here where I can see it." he says without a beat, and continues his crafting. He has full confidence in his ability to keep elves away with bad vibes alone.

"It is impressive how loud the troll can get."

Branch: truly a creature of strange and annoying qualities. But he supposes he should be grateful. The imp was out there proving himself useful while he stayed behind. So he gets (1) respect point for that.

When Puss walks up to him, Miguel watches with a delayed surprise as he puts his addition to the altar.

"An Egg?"

Strangely enough, he isn't annoyed by the gesture. He could easily imagine Gabriella finding amusement in such a random offering - she typically had a much better attitude about things than he did.

The answer wasn't entirely unexpected. The kid didn't really seem like the type to believe in ghost stories. So he answers the question instead.

"Her name was Gabriella."

The decision to step in for her lent itself to a messy knot of guilt and other feelings left unsaid. Especially with how catastrophically he failed. Still, he looks on with a distant fondness for someone he would could only consider as a daughter.

"I took care of her after she lost her father."

Boba looks away when Miguel says Gabriella was orphaned.

And now she's dead. But her favorite things are here because Miguel remembers them-- remembers her.

He bites his lip.

"I have-- I've never done anything like this," he gestures to the ceremony. "But I do, um, remembrances? In the mornings?"

He and his dad always did them for his dad's family, and Boba's added a few names of his own since then.

"There's no ceremony or anything. But it's-- yeah."

He doesn't know how to talk about this. In prison, he learned to do them silently. No one liked to wake up to him muttering to himself.

:Huh,: she says, disregarding her immediate, contrary response about being expected to go anywhere. Need shifts the hallucination of her presence, as if she's moved to peer over Miguel's other shoulder. :Well, I suppose if it's temporary. I don't remember if we had anything like that when I was still kicking.:

She really doesn't. There are no Twins now, only a variation on Healer and Fighter as one being - all the gods and spirits she used to look to are different now. There were... wards for spirits, she still knows how to keep malevolent ones at bay and to consult with friendly ones, but all that is a very different matter.

Lonely? It had been once. That kind of thing doesn't really bother her anymore, though. Need doesn't want him thinking too hard about this particular topic. :Mind telling me something about this guardian?:

Loki's frown deepens and he crosses his arms. "Well, if you wish to squander the chance, far be it from me to override that. But do not expect my help in distracting them again once my candy runs out and they turn their attention back to yours."

Branch's throat is still hoarse from yesterday's events so he decides to go get some tea.

He's experimented so far with his new power, realizing how much control he has over it. It seems a little tied to his emotions. He has to feel big. Try to embrace a little confidence. But once he grows, it sticks pretty well and he doesn't have to work hard to sustain it. And his clothes, belongings in his hair, and any items in his hands grow and shrink with him.

Boy, does it make it easier to get around. The world still tilts a little when he walks, the perspective shift is weird and a little disorienting, but he can cover so much more ground.

He just actually needs shoes for once, since weighing more means sharp things underfoot have a greater capacity to actually hurt his feet. The yetis custom made little slip-ons with rubber soles he can keep in his hair to grow and shrink with him as needed. To any humans, they look like barefoot running shoes, the kind where the individual toes are separated out.

(An attempt at a more classic sneaker had just had him tripping over his own feet with how unused to shoes he is.)

He's still getting used to walking in them so he almost trips at Miguel's door when he passes by and sees what's inside. It's the sight of Miguel himself that's so striking. He looks way less tense than usual. More at ease. He's about to do the usual and drop a sarcastic comment but sees the display and thinks better of it.

He missed what Miguel said in the beginning, so even though the translation magic might have translated it, he doesn't know who the altar is for. But it's so strikingly similar to his culture that it's easy to guess what it's for.

Flowers. A gift of some kind. The quiet solemnity as Miguel talks to it. But also the way it sounds like he's walked in on a conversation with a loved one.

("I got this for you, gran'ma. We can - we can still do it together," as he'd spread puzzle pieces out with tiny, dull grey hands.

It didn't feel the same as when he'd done puzzles with her. There was no joy, there would never again be that sense of security, the world would no longer sense the way it did as her hands guided his in snapping together the very last piece each time, where it fit perfectly.

They were a family of seven now reduced to one, his mother lost to a collapse in the escape tunnels just after he hatched, before he had a chance to know her, his brothers scattered to the four winds, and now his grandma snatched away from him.

But there'd still been a small comfort in imagining purple hands pressing the pieces into place with his, as he knelt there alone in their empty pod, refusing to abandon it until others in the village forced him to go with a foster family. When he was finished, he'd wiped the tears off the pieces with his hand and carried the finished puzzle on a macrame'd placemat and put it on the little table with all the flowers and gifts other people in the village had brought.

"You can keep this one," he'd hiccuped out. "If you can't do them with me you should have one of your own.")

In this moment, Miguel is not some irritating, controlling giant jerk. For one, he's way less huge and intimidating when Branch is this size. Closer to just... a person. A really tall person. Not a mountain of jerkface, not someone that cues as hostile in Branch's brain partly from the size that is combined with his attitude.

But also he's a man with connections to others - or at least who had connections to others.

He's a person that remembers someone's favorite candy and wanted them to have it.

Branch decides the best thing to do is give him his privacy. He's not really the person to offer kindness here.

But he's not used to his current size. At his normal size he's capable of traveling in total silence. It doesn't occur to him how easy it is to make noise, especially in an ancient wooden building like this. He steps back past the center part of the hallway to a part that isn't walked on as much and there's a very loud and noticeable creak from a loose board. Almost comically loud.

He winces. There's no way Miguel didn't hear that and it'll be obviously he was hovering in his doorway.

Edited 2023-11-20 07:37 (UTC)

"Yeah," Stacia agrees, "I don't know a lot of people who eat wood for fun."

And yes, she has noticed that verb tense. She hums under her breath as she decides how she wants to respond to it.

"That time of year, huh?" she asks rhetorically. "You want to talk about it?" She cocks her head, watching for his reaction to the question. "I can go first, if that would help."

"Ceremony may be a little too rigid." he adds, correcting himself. "It's done a little differently depending on the person."

Miguel was also unused to doing these sorts of things. Processing emotions wasn't really a thing when the option to run away was there - be it through work or something else. But he listens to Boba intently, and feels the urge to want to help him.

"Do you want to try making something for them?" he asks, continuing the thought. Maybe it'll be a little less somber when it's two of them sharing, instead of one.

Heh, Miguel didn't immediately smash it. Puss had considered that possibility, but now it felt like they were out of the weeds.

"A reminder of my brother. We grew up in the same orphanage."

Puss sits next to Miguel. His unusual anatomy means kneeling is out of the question, so he crosses his legs.

"I have not had a fixed address in some time, so I have left these the graveyards of a great many towns over the years. He always had such big dreams...I like to think the travel pleases him."

He turns his attention to the picture of Miguel's daughter (he assumes). Well, that certainly explains a few things about him.

"Perhaps the North Pole will please her as well."

"It's not usually a topic of discussion." he says flatly.

At best, it was a cautionary tale to not repeat his mistakes. That's all. And he was adept enough ignoring the lingering ache in chest to repeat it a dozen times over and pretend that meant he was fine. His feelings on the matter were never part of the equation.

He grabs another hunk of wood, considering what it might be turned into. Maybe considering if he should talk about it more, after all.

Boba thinks about it for a moment. They all came here because of belief or whatever, so maybe if he focuses...

"Yeah. Okay," Boba nods. He looks back at all the things set out for Gabriella, then back at Miguel.

"What do I do?"

"Maybe not most of the year," Stacia allows, because this is a delicate topic and she's not stupid enough to look at Miguel making cute things and not assume that they're for someone who died far too young. "But this close to Día de los Muertos?" She smiles, letting herself feel a little sad herself. "I've even got some good funny anecdotes, like the time one of my friends decided to fight a meth lab with his face."

“I don’t see how that’s related, but you can tell your story if you want.” he remarks, and that was about as welcoming and nice as Miguel was going to be at the moment. It appears he is not particularly feeling the humorous or celebratory side of the holiday.

He begins to carve lines on the wood, the talons making their song of muted scraping noises. The regular motion was easy for him to focus on.

"Mostly it's related in that he's dead now," she says. "Not from the meth lab, he survived that. He was murdered. But the meth lab story is funnier."

She lifts her chin from her hands and folds her arms on the table, leaning forward a bit.

"So my buddy, Bares -- it's a nickname, long story, not relevant -- Bares was on a run through the woods on his own one day and he came across this nasty, smelly shack. It was pretty obvious what it was from his description after the fact, but he didn't recognize it as anything but a nasty eyesore; and he was already in a bad mood, so he decided to wreck the place."

She's fudging a lot of details: Bares-His-Fangs had been born a wolf, which is why he hadn't been able to recognize what the lab was; and he'd been of the opinion that any human things in the woods needed to get wrecked to keep the humans from further encroaching on potential wolf territory. But she's not looking to get into Garou sociopolitical stuff, just bond with Miguel a little.

"Anyway, he goes barreling in without a second thought and sets about making a mess and breaking things. Naturally, it explodes and sends him flying into the trees. He came limping back an hour later, singed and smelling absolutely disgusting, and I teased him for an hour while I helped him get patched up."

She reaches up and presses her fingertips to the edges of her eyes so that the dampness there doesn't build up and run the risk of streaking her makeup.

"Anyway, I promised-slash-threatened him that I was going to tell that story to everyone, so here we are. If you're gonna pick a fight with a meth lab, don't do it with your face."

Gwen arrives back a little later than most of those who went off to handle the witch problem. But then she'd left sooner, too; by the time the witches were an issue she was already tangled in the familiar task of defeating one of her very own villains who'd been pulled in to cause havoc. Doc Ock had certainly delivered that, him and that... creepy, super-powered octopus that he was bonded to (seriously, why did she have to get the weird Doc Ock... she never thought she'd be so jealous of people who only had to fight mechanical tentacles).

Harder fight than it used to be, took longer than she would have liked, and Gwen wishes the weird sucker marks from the attempts to crush her would fade quicker, but it's dealt with now. He's gone again, and she's back at the pole. She even had the foresight to leave herself a sweater and comfy pants to pull on over her suit on her way to the bedrooms.

She starts with every intention of heading right back to her own room to crash for the next twelve hours, but she has to pass Miguel's space to get there and...

She can't help but stop, when she catches sight of him in front of that altar. As if suddenly rooted to the floor beneath those faithful chucks she still wears like they're part of a battle uniform, not just a pair of shoes stolen from a friend.

Her lips press together, her eyes squeeze closed, she breathes deeply, and says: "...sent good ol' Octavius home with his tentacles between his legs again. So that's one more problem off everyone's plate."

—as if making a report like any other report she's made before. A mask of familiarity. Structure. Easy to dismiss her from, if he'd rather she not intrude. For all that there's still those threads of tension, she knows a personal moment when she sees one and isn't going to just barge right into it.

"Well..."

He scratches his head in a way that was more awkward than his usual deliberate manner, pondering where to begin. The kid's universe was very different from his own.

"You start by gathering things that they would like. Anything you remember that they enjoyed. It could be food or a game, maybe an animal."

Miguel felt a little eureka moment when he found the milk chocolate soccer balls. Combining two favorites in one! Mostly, though, it was a task that was very bittersweet.

"I have more flower petals and candles if you want to use them."

Miguel's experience of the whole thing was mostly: having his peace and quiet interrupted by scurrying footsteps in the hallway. He decides to ignore this at first (their sleeping quarters were all packed enough to rarely make it completely silent).

Then, the footsteps stopping at his door, leaving him guessing who the hell was hovering outside. It was a little too heavy to be Puss or an elf (the total lack of jingling also nixed this) yet too small to be any of the human-sized individuals running around. All trains of thought that were taking away from the original purpose of him setting things up here, in private and away from distractions.

And then comes the SQUEAK of wood that may as well have been blasted right next to his ear with the way his shoulders jerk and talons flick out. The peaceful moment earlier? Very firmly blown out like a candlelight.

"Do you need something?" he snaps back over his shoulder. He... dislikes that this is his immediate reaction while trying to celebrate someone much kinder than he was. But all he wanted was one night without something stupid happening at his doorstep, damnit.

The narrow glare widens somewhat when he realizes he's looking at Branch, only several hundred times larger. This ridiculous new development does nothing to cool down the burning irritation in his chest. But it doesn't seem to escalate things either, so maybe something can be salvaged..

And out come the talons. He loves those things. Totally proportionate response to someone being in the hallway. (Never mind that if their positions were reversed Branch would be pissy, too.)

The problem here is they're both bristlers. They bristle with anger easily and that means they're especially good at bristling at each other in a self-perpetuating porcupinian cycle.

But Branch isn't heartless. And while he's not always good at its he's learned to sometimes push through his own catankerousness to something softer on the other side. He has Poppy and his friends to thank for that.

Miguel is mourning someone. He didn't catch sight of a photo but he sees candy and that - is it a spouse's favorite set of sweets? A grandparents?

...is it a child's?

Miguel has reason to bristle. Branch puts his prickles away first.

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to pry. It's just my people do memorials like that." He nods towards it. "Or, well, we did. We did it a lot more when we didn't have a body to bury in a normal funeral. Fortunately, that doesn't happen anymore. Some people kept them up for a long time."

He wonders if he should volunteer anything, wonders if showing throat will lead to it getting bit. He does it anyway.

Clearly, Miguel feels vulnerable, so he evens the score by showing vulnerability. So Miguel's not the only one feeling exposed.

"Back home, I have one for my grandma."

They were for the ones where there was no body.

She didn't die of old age.

Boba has to think about it. Jango Fett didn't really like things. He liked bounty hunting, he liked his pet eel, his ship, watching Get'shuk games...

He liked Zam and Boba.

"What color of flowers do you have?" he definitely needs red; gold and green would be good too. Blue, like his helmet.

Boba stole a figure from the workshop. He keeps it under his pillow. That would be good to use.

He wishes he had his dad's WESTARs, or one of the ship models he would give to Boba after he had been off-planet for a long time. One of their fishing spears, or the rollerfish spine he put up on the wall. It had been Boba's first catch on his own. He said he was proud.

"And do you have any spicy candy? Really spicy?"

Edited 2023-12-01 04:50 (UTC)

By the time Gwen rolls around, Miguel seems to be mostly waiting for sleep to take him as he sits at the corner of the mattress, watching the remaining candle lights. The candles were all reduced to stumps of varying heights, wax melted in a spreading curtain of little dribbles caught in brass bases. He was hunched over, arms resting tiredly on his knees.

His relationship with rest had always been a troubled one, but he had a much easier time of hiding it from other Spiders when he was on his home turf. Out here, it was a bit more neutral ground, and he couldn't hide behind several levels of access doors and elevators that can be locked on a whim.

So, with a reaction thats a little more sluggish than his usual snap to the nearest object of attention, he finds Gwen there. He was too much of a workaholic to ignore a report.

"You're back."

One eye gets the sleep rubbed out of it, and he returns to the stiff-backed leader he always tried to project to the others. Though, still one sitting on his mattress.

"And he didn't give you too much trouble...? Any injuries?"

A quick look over seemed all right. No blood.

"There may be chili candy in some of the bags. It's a type of pepper, if you have those in your world."

Yes, he vaguely remembers ruffling around through some in the mixed grab bags. Gabri had more of a sweet tooth than a craving for spicy things, so they were left aside. The food he kept in his quarters (hiding them like Loki suggested seemed to be enough to keep curious elves at bay) but some of the wire and other things he left in the workshop. They may require a trip at some point.

He gets up to open the locked drawer of the main dresser and take out what was left of the candy haul. The plastic bags are set on a small wooden table for Boba to look through.

"Here's one." he adds, picking out a sample candy of the Spicy Mango variety.

"As for the flowers, the marigolds come in mostly warmer colors. The other types are more purple and white."

Edited 2023-12-01 05:44 (UTC)

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