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 doesn’t look happy about it, but he’s not particularly surprised. If the kid was really dead set on having a knife on him, there were enough places on the Pole for him to grab or fashion one.

He wasn’t there to confiscate whatever ‘contraband’ he had in his room, despite Lucky’s insistence on comparing the place to prison.

“I assume it’s not because they enjoyed cooking and woodcarving?” he asks. The shiv tipped off that one.

He figures it is better to be careful with the delicate bit of trust that the kid was showing him and let him continue unabated.

"He cooked," is Boba's response. It's not refuting Miguel's guess, but if he wants to believe that's all there is to it, he's free to.

Boba finishes arranging the knives and goes back to the closet. It takes a moment of digging, it's really shoved back in a corner, but he does grab something large and round-ish. He holds it protectively in his arms, covering as much as he can, but the silver and blue paint, and the range-finder sticking out the top, is hard to miss.

He stands in front of the altar. After a moment of hesitation, he places the plastic replica helmet in the center of the higher tier with a reverence that doesn't fit the cheap toy in his hands. It's perfectly framed by the candles he set out earlier. He fusses with it for a moment, wanting it to be displayed as perfectly as possible.

Boba drops his hands to his sides. He doesn't turn around to face Miguel.

"I'll need a lighter," he forces his voice to stay neutral.

The initial reaction melts away as he continues to watch. It was clearly significant enough for the kid to assemble and place it with care, so on the altar it goes.

When the helmet comes out, there's a realization on Miguel's end on who this was for. And with it comes with a strong pang of empathy for the poor kid who couldn't even properly recover the genuine article. He's tempted to ask a few more questions, to idly chat to maybe make the process a little easier, but the careful evenness in Lucky's voice makes him reconsider. Now wasn't the time.

He just fishes for a lighter in his pocket (the lack of suit actually made room for those) and takes out an old, zippo-style one found somewhere from the Pole's tool stocks. He flicks on the flame for him.

"Careful." he says, more of general concern than doubting the kid didn't know his way around fire.

Edited 2023-12-04 03:51 (UTC)

Boba scowls at the warning, but takes the lighter anyway. He carefully lights each candle.

As he does, he speaks quietly.

"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum*," the words are spoken rhythmically, like a prayer.

"Ba'buir* Jaster, ba'vodu* Arla, ba'vodu Myles."

He lights another candle with each name he mutters. There's three left, and he hesitates before putting the flame to the wick.

"Aurra- Aurra Sing," that name comes out less steady than the others. There's clear conflict in his expression, as if he's not sure if he should have said it with the others.

"Zam Wesell." That name is said with more confidence.

"Buir*."

Boba closes the lighter and stares at the display.

(*I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.)
(*Grandfather, aunt/uncle.)
(*Father)

Edited 2023-12-04 03:55 (UTC)

The remembrances. The spirit of it was familiar despite the different language. Like a service of a more somber note. It's not always a happy thing when there's a lot of ghosts to talk to, not if they were all recent. He watches the flickering lights for a while, casting a shadow in a long, gargoyle-like shape against the wall with his lowered posture.

In another time, he might have been inclined to offer more comfort for the kid. But loss and the deepened well of anger had infected that side of him with a sharp frostbite. Still, after a few minutes to absorb the moment, he manages a small squeeze to Boba's shoulder for his attention.

"Do you still want to get more things for them?" he asks, keeping his voice gentle.

Boba mentioned the red and gold, but it was a personal thing, ultimately. Miguel would let him lead on whether or not he'd like to go ahead. He could manage that much for a kid who lost way more than he should have.

"I should have would thought this was your work," Dan says, entering the workroom with some slabs of balsam. "It looked carved by claws."

Dan, by contrast, is quite at home and confident in the work floor with his woodworking tools. His most recent work has been prepping Christmas gifts for people, which at this point has mostly gone into carving intricate keepsake boxes - personal, because they're handmade, but not an imposition on anyone and not anything so personal as to be uncomfortably, forcedly intimate. He's made one for Miguel, but he's made one for almost everyone at the Pole.

He sets the balsam down and starts to set up his own workstation, which is partially a woodworking setup and partially a craft studio for sewing and sketching and whatever other artistic pursuit Dan's decided to throw himself into that day. That he gravitates towards tailoring and woodwork is obvious based on the volume of tools and fabric swatches, but there's a little bit of everything. The yetis let Dan have run of the place and the elves mostly ignore his materials because he's left a decoy out for them, a repurposed cat toy with a ball and a bell that he leaves pieces of candy in for the elves to entertain themselves with.

"Are you planning on painting those?" Dan thinks of the beautiful painted wooden animals in Oaxaca and wonders if that particular artisanal tradition made it to Nueva York. He hopes it did. It's always a shame to see culture squelched to progress, lost to time.

"No. I didn't plan on it." he says curtly, making brief eye contact out of the corner of his eye.

Miguel hadn't really made plans at all. The beginning of November got closer and closer and he found himself confronting the hole in his chest he had desperately been avoiding. And it had filed off what little cordiality he had. Dan will have to forgive him for that.

His adjoining set-up wasn't much of one. He found an empty table to slouch at, gathered whatever unused scrap material was sitting around, and got to work. Physically, and at attempting to whittle away the malaise leaving him so relentlessly ill-tempered. It had been a good way to busy his hands on something in a less destructive and angry way.

"I was thinking about someone." he admits.

Although simple, the carving in his fingertips had details from remembering a specific animal he had seen, rather than going more abstract. It had a basic indication of slender claws and the general shape of a turtle you would see in a freshwater pond. He carefully makes a deep line to carve in the overhang of shell over neck.

Dan isn't bothered by the curtness at all. After all, he's the one interrupting.

"It's the right time of year for that, ain't it? The ghosts always start coming out around the Equinox and then they just keep coming." Because after the Equinox is all the celebrations of the dead, and after that are the winter holidays. The finals months of the year are rife with reminders of loss and bereavement.

He gets out his rulers and chalk and starts to mark up one of the planks of balsam wood in front of him. Where Miguel's left ill-tempered, Dan's finding his zen in the ratios and angles and planning for another puzzle box. He thinks about the time of year. He thinks about what Miguel just said.

"Me too, honestly. There were a few years I was celebrating Day of the Dead with someone." Because that was something Ellie liked to do; that was part of the culture she brought into his life, alongside so many other things. "I ain't sure how to approach now that I'm solo."

He may be married, but compared to his tight, us-against-the-world, only-have-each-other bond with Ellie, he feels so alone in some respects.

The question gets an affirmative grumble to it. Yes, the time of the year certainly factored into it. Very astute of him. Vigorous scraping sounds fill the silence between Dan's statements, being lost in the physical motion of making the shape. It was somewhat successful at soothing him.

The carving is gingerly set down next to a few others at varying states of finish. Like frantic drawings in a sketchbook, trying to purely expel energy. Miguel's bad posture over the table manages to make himself look smaller than usual.

"I didn't have to think about it when I was busy." he admits. How depressing is it to celebrate a holiday with just you and the ghosts? No dinner, no awkward family gatherings, just a table of empty chairs and you.

He'd rather get slammed through a hundred walls by whatever Vulture variant was making a mess out somewhere they shouldn't. Maybe he should go do that instead of clawing wood.

"I guess if you were feeling masochistic, you'd start building the altar right around now."

Edited 2023-12-04 19:52 (UTC)

"That's the beauty of busyness." Dan swaps out his set of tools for another upon deciding that the angles he wants to work with are more delicate than his original plans. He does an exploratory test scratching at the wood, mouth curled to the side in thought.

He bites his tongue on not the kind of masochism I'm into, because he and Miguel don't know each other closely enough for innuendo and it would clash with the underlying topic of conversation. "Reckon people would ask about an altar if they saw it, and I'm not keen to have twenty conversations a day about it."

It's hard enough to talk about Ellie even in only oblique references. He's sure Miguel can read between the lines.

"The problem there is that you're way too polite."

He doesn't mind an offputting reputation, because it means less people want to idle chat at him. That's perfectly fine with him. Bite some figurative heads, avoid future annoyances. Anger was an easy shield.

But it wouldn't do much for the quiet reflection part of the holiday, would it? If he was just pissed off the entire time, it would feel wrong to try and make something for Gabriella like that. So Miguel drums his fingers idly on the work bench, listening to the scritch-scratch of Dan making marks on wood, letting the calming sound draw up wandering thoughts.

"Maybe a small one in the bedroom."

He had a flair for the dramatic sometimes, but that felt more right to him.

Dan laughs. "I'll let my mama know she raised me right."

As if his mother is still part of his life and not one of those ghosts haunting the holidays. He's silent a moment, considering Miguel's suggestion. He compares his balsam plank to a sketch he made of his idea for the puzzle box, then redraws part of his sketch.

"Maybe. Bunny's not around often enough to mind if I bogart the armoire for an ofrenda. I just don't got much to put on it." No photos, no keepsakes. Just flowers and sugar and other offerings that Dan knows in his heart Ellie isn't actually receiving because she isn't still here, not really, not in any capacity. "Reckon I could make something right now for it, though."

He raises an eyebrow and watches Miguel, considering if he thinks that's what Miguel is doing right now with his carved turtles and other members of his wooden menagerie.

"Well, you won't be alone." he says drearily. "The dimension collapsed, and there wasn't time to grab anything."

His voice remains even only because he's had to explain this particular fuck-up of his a dozen times over. It is a performance well-practiced at this point, though he allows himself a vacant stare at the work bench. It felt worse when he didn't have second part of the speech. The part that made it seem less pointless and completely avoidable.

"Whatever can be made now will have to do."

Miguel really wasn't the type to stumble through things. He was rigid and well-prepared and reliable. Most of the time. Right now, an action to latch on to was exactly what he wanted. So of the bunch, he picks the a vaguely bird-shaped piece of wood in a loose cage of talons and mulls over it. This one will be next.

Stacia laughs.

"Well yes, a fight with a bunch of volatile chemicals is a bad idea," she agrees. "But let's just say that I know a lot of people who are all about the Bad Decision Train. One of many reasons that I am a beloved member of my community is that I am willing to unleash a torrent of sarcastic common sense at just about anyone, regardless of how big they are or how pissed off they happen to be."

For another long moment she says nothing, fiddling with a tugged thread on her sweater and staring at it like it's the most interesting thing in the world. Of course she remembers. The thing that ties her tongue is the complicated nature of having this conversation with Miguel.

But the anniversary wasn't all that long ago, by this world's calendar. And she learned quickly that talking about Peter with any other Peter was far too uncomfortable, so who else is there? None of her friends are here.

There's a sliver in there somewhere that cares. She might've been in prison, if there wasn't.

God, she hopes she won't regret this.

"Um." God get it together, Stacy. She clears her throat and stands a little straighter against the door frame, but otherwise doesn't move. "He always loved his photography. He took photos of everything. I was going to get him some more uh, retro-y equipment to match my retro audio collection, eventually, but— yeah."

She never did get chance to finish saving up for his birthday, before everything went wrong.

"And he liked these... fiddly, super detailed build kits. Figurines, or little— science projects. And uh—" she almost laughs, shakes her head, "May's wheatcakes."

Not unlike most other Peters, overall; an inherent strangeness that's unavoidable, with so many versions of the same man out in the multiverse. It's never not going to be weird. It's never not going to haunt her to have been surrounded by versions of her best friend that were all older than he ever got to be.

"He actually had this— fondness for lizards, which is just..." her voice cracks in a way that sounds torn between a grim laugh and crying, but neither happen. She just breathes. "...he. Was a nerd. And he was the best."

Well, it's not like the thought of an afterlife was so strange when an entire multiverse was out there. But Miguel finds it a bit overly optimistic to really imagine them meeting like that. That's not how things tended to work.

"Hm. Thank you."

He sets the box on the wooden surface at the bottom of the altar. He figures doing the puzzle at some point in the night would be good. Maybe when he was alone with his thoughts and needed an activity for his hands. He then reassumes his place watching the candles, looking away.

"Seeing one of you would be quite the surprise." he says, steady but comfortless. "She'd be enamored."

"I'm going to have to ask how a sword-ghost hugs someone." he asks, the burning question for the mysterious presence in the room. "Not that it's the strangest concept out there, but I don't deal as much with magic."

He wasn't much of the 'receive the gentle embrace of an angel' type of guy without the questions. He doesn't receive any regular, flesh-and-blood hugs that much without the questions. Mulling around enough in isolation left him too used to the cold, it seems, even if he was starved for warmth.

The contradictions of the living!

Miguel walked away but he's also still talking to him so Branch figures the nearly impossible just happened and that he's temporarily allowed in.

For the better really. He wants to briefly pay his respects.

"Yeah, I guess that's apparently the whole reason I'm here. Human kids seem to like my world."

He looks up at the ofrenda, initially fidgeting his fingers, but ultimately clasping his hands in front of him in a polite sign of respect.

"What was her name?"

Dan doesn't even pause in his sketching, because he was expecting something like this to come to the surface eventually. People generally don't become workaholics just for the love of their projects. They do it when their home lives have become intolerable or unsurvivable.

"Anything I can do to help you make what you want, you let me know. I know my way around woodworking tools." He figures Miguel already knows that, based on Dan's work station and all the well-made projects. That isn't as far as Dan's willing to go to offer some comfort to Miguel, but it's as far as he thinks Miguel would be receptive to. "Ain't no going home to my dimension either."

Dan and Bunny reworked the timeline, which meant that the deaths that defined Dan's youth didn't happen, but Dan will never see that, never get to go home, never get to be with those loved ones again. The fact that they lived is academic; the visceral memory is of how they died, and that can't be erased just by knowing it was undone. The way their deaths morphed Dan's brain forever, stamped the bloodshed and the gravedigging in like a penny-press, that can't be changed.

But it means that Dan only has to think of one person to make an ofrenda to and not a whole family.

:That's going to take a perfunctory lecture on psychic theory, I hope you realize,: she says dryly, not actually against the idea. :Psychic theory that might not even apply otherwise. Get comfortable.:

She takes a moment to collect her thoughts. These days in Velgarth, Mind-Gifts are barely known on the continent where she's generally based, outside of Valdemar and Seejay and the Kaled'a'in offshoots, and she doesn't know if there's been some new and more exciting theory in the past... however long.

:People with relevant Mind-Gifts, what you'd call psychic powers, have the ability to send and receive information along a particular channel. They can connect these to talk to each other across some distance. ...It's a revelation for people who don't have the kind of infrastructure you're used to, don't mock.: Miguel's too used to information transfer being instant and effortless even across great distances to really understand what a boon it is.

:Most people aren't Mind-Gifted. You might or might not have some latent tendency in there, I haven't dug around to make sure. Regardless, I can't use that channel to talk to you in that way, so there has to be more effort involved. If you'll recall, you could hear me when you were touching the sword I'm bound to because there was a physical connection, but you could interrupt it by letting go.: And being rude in the extreme, she thinks. :After that I was familiar enough to speak to you with some more distance. Essentially, I use my Gift to present your body with partial sensory information and your imagination fills it in. You're hallucinating my voice right now.:

"It's more of an effort, but I can seem to be heard with your ears." This starts as if a low, cracked, slightly 'off' voice with her cadence is speaking into an earpiece and ends as if she's in the room, with all the subtle effects of sound bouncing from the hard bare surfaces and a much more natural 'sound'. :I just don't care to. If you want to go into the 'hows' past here it's going to have to get a lot more technical and speculative on my part.:

"A model kit?" he asks, about the 'fiddly build kits'. Awkward silence as he drums his fingers and turns around a little more, feeling the urge to explain himself.

"...I knew someone who was obsessed with your century."

Miguel never talked about any close relationships in his home universe. For all that he mentioned them, they may as well have died a decade ago or never existed; he just emerged into his world as Nueva York's frightening night creature of a Spider-Man. Apparently, retro nerdy stuff was popular at any time period.

Another pause. Miguel wasn't good at this any more than Gwen was, and he seemed allergic to trying to smooth things along with idle chitchat humor, which made all this so much worse. But, he was trying.

"There is whole wheat flour in the kitchen."

There are details lost in translation: The dimension wasn't originally his, that it was a cowardly attempt to escape an already miserable state of affairs in his home universe. The bizarre surreality of seeing (another version of) himself snuffed out by something utterly mundane. Looking at the body. Lying to Gabriella, even though he loved her more than anything else. Realizing his selfish intervening had been the reason for the collapse. It was his fault. It was all his fault.

His teeth are clenched together as the guilt surges up like a geyser, masseter tensed at the jaw. There is a little copper taste on his tongue from the fangs. He decides he prefers the blood to having any of the words reach his mouth. Dan seemed to understand, but at the same time, seemed impossibly distant.

"I didn't plan anything out." His voice is quiet, like he was admitting something shameful. "I'll have to see what would be best to put together. They deserve to be remembered."

Miguel opens his hand, releasing the wooden birdshape from chitin talons. He turns it around with his fingertips, and gets to work shaving out a very basic wing shape. In TRN-660, Mourning Doves thrived in the parks of Nueva York after they were reintroduced.

"What are the boxes for?" he asks idly.

"Yeah, they do."

Dan doesn't know anything about who Miguel's talking about, but he's firm in that determination. Whomever they were, they deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be preserved as well as Miguel can preserve them, for his sake if nothing else.

He gives Miguel the dignity of not watching him and instead turns his attention to a small box of screws and hinges, deciding on the right one for this type of wood and size and shape of box.

"Gifts. Impersonal gifts for folks. I was going to make you one too."

Boba doesn't flinch at the hand on his shoulder. He does shudder and suppress the instinct to grab one of the knives at stab it, though.

"Yeah." Boba stands and slides his hands, with the lighter still in his grip, into his pockets in one smooth motion. He gives a lingering look to the helmet before turning away.

He keeps his gaze to the floor. His eyes aren't wet, he knows better than that, but his voice is more hoarse than he'd like. A part of him resents Miguel for being there-- resents himself for not making him leave.

It's too late to change now. Boba waits for Miguel to lead him to wherever the flowers are.

Miguel watches the lighter disappear into his pocket and sighs to himself. Seems like a bad moment to get on his case about it. Given it was scrounged from around the Pole anyway, maybe it would be fine to let him keep it.

"Sorry, kid." He says it with an unusually soft sympathy.

What context Miguel gleamed from the ritual didn't leave him with much else that felt appropriate. So he leaves it at that and walks ahead of him. Their trip to the Relaxation Area would be quiet but relatively brief.

With the Winter Season around the corner, the Workshop Floor was already building up with a lot of hustle and bustle, so he opted instead to leave one of the quieter dens with his remaining bundles of flowers at the top of the tall bookshelves and cabinets. The floral scents were obvious the moment they entered the room.

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