Miguel O'Hara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninjavampire) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
nightlogs2023-11-13 11:02 pm
ninjavampire) wrote in nightlogs2023-11-13 11:02 pm
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))
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))
no subject
“It’s fine.” He decides. “It’s supposed to be a celebration, too.”
With all the strange things he’s suffered through, it felt deeply unfair that this was the one rule of the universe that seemed to stick. Made it hard to gather the energy to celebrate.
But at least two made it a little closer to that.
no subject
:All right.: Not that she's a particularly good person to celebrate something with herself, but it seems like a good sign that he wants anyone here at all, however briefly. :...What is calling me? That doesn't happen often. Is there a psychopomp around waiting to tell me to give it up and rest already?:
She probably should wait to bring that up but she can only hold back so much of that paranoia, though in this case it's inflected with exasperation. Psychopomps and any other manifestations of Death she meets tend to be a little affronted by her existence. Even the Shadow-Lover, who treats it as a true friendly concern and not an in to telling her to pass on, always has to take a moment to ask about her burdens.
no subject
Meeting an actual Calavera Catrina brought to life was very much like meeting Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. The iconography and cartoons from fuzzy childhood memories suddenly manifest in physical form. Even after having hopped around the multiverse, it was a little surreal.
"The flowers lead spirits to where they need to go, so the story says." he pinches the stem of the bone-white marigold left among the others. Of all the flowers arranged together, that one had an undeniable supernatural allure to it.
Pondering, he figures it must be a lonely existence for a ghost to never have anyone acknowledge them. It isn't so surprising one would end up wandering to the wrong place.
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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?:
no subject
"Well, she felt old as dirt." he begins. "All the bones helped with that. She talked like she had her phase of crazier years a long time ago, and sort of settled into whatever this is. Being a Guardian. Or the more modern version of it."
Settling into her role as the well-humored danse macabre mistress. It felt like something of a joke in of itself that he somehow always ended up finding people who want to try and pull him into their comedy routine.
"It was hard to tell if she could actually do anything with ghosts or if she was just messing with me. There was definitely some kind of magic. Hard to tell with the rules of this dimension."
He looks at the candles for a moment. He should probably tell Jack, eventually. But if he sat around here long enough... Maybe he could know for sure.
no subject
There's magic in the petals, but she hasn't really made a study of how that works here and can only speculate so far. :Well, she gave you a flower that called me, but I'm easy to call, so it might not mean much.:
She hesitates. Should she tell Miguel that she's lost sons and daughters too? It's not the same. Need's losses, even the most recent one, don't hurt her in anything like the same way even if she reminds herself as strongly as she can. It would be making this about herself, and sharing information that she can't take back without crossing a very serious line. Volatile as this young man is he might not even take it in the spirit it was intended.
:You should let me... let's call it hug you.: A wry tone colors her voice. :It's very dignified and you're not required to do anything, be at ease about that.:
no subject
He looks over his shoulder, forgetting for a moment that Need wasn't actually there, and feeling suddenly rather aware about the fact that he was basically talking out loud. To himself. With Lyla, he could at least see and hear the untouchable phantasm of a hologram. Yeesh.
If it drew Need, though, maybe there was some hope of the celebration having some truth to its myth in this world. He allows himself to consider the slim possibility.
At the suggestion, he doesn't recoil, but a hand reaches up to rub at the edge of his temples. Tiredly.
"Do I look that miserable...?" he asks, even though some gloom would be a perfectly appropriate emotion to feel. Unsurprisingly, he is skittish about admitting and accepting that a little comfort from someone else wouldn't be so bad.
no subject
Need is encouraging a sense of her presence, a kind of watchful, indistinct weight in the room. Among other things, it's very useful to let people think they can sense her attention. She's not going to go as far as providing a visual though! Miguel will just have to suck it up.
Need isn't as knowledgeable here as she is back home. If there's a spirit world, if the personality persists without a living brain, the rules therein, these and many other things are extremely variable and sometimes very difficult to discover. Anyway, the point doesn't seem to be to perform a ritual like it's a spell, to get some definite result.
:No idea, I can't see you,: she temporizes. He does seem about that miserable, but she doesn't have any other eyes in the room. Begrudgingly Need adds, :Maybe I just have a bit of fellow-feeling.:
no subject
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!
no subject
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.:
no subject
Miguel is not incapable of snark even at this late hour. But he did listen with some interest in how things worked in her dimension, even if a temporary distraction with present company was all it was. Attemping a holiday by himself was rough. He'll even take the ghosts and their lectures on psychic radio channels. Now he is informed.
"Well, it can't be weirder than being sucked through a wormhole for the first time. " he decides this in the moment, finding his determination to be a grouchy island softened with the mood.
"I assume it comes with less nausea."
It is kind of a yes?
no subject
Good enough! Fiddling about consent still - always - feels a little obnoxious and perfunctory to Need, even if she's on the upswing of trying to take it into account right now. :Let's run an experiment, then.:
Even if she'd been so inclined, it's not as strong or distinct of a feeling as she can convey when to someone actually touching her sword. It's a phantom sensation that might be like someone coming up besides Miguel and putting one arm around his shoulders, as if he isn't in the upper percentile of tall, broad men. It might also be standing close to something large in the dark and the rain, close enough to feel its presence and the water diverted off it, only for it to unfurl a wing overhead and hold it open. A moment of shelter against something quiet and still.
Need savors the proximity of actual grief and pain to her dull, distant awareness. Her lack of feeling is a gift, but it's not how humans were meant to be. They're not supposed to just get over it, like what was lost wasn't important.
no subject
He wasn't always a giant, so the feeling isn't completely alien. A little nostalgic, maybe. But still not the same as a tight embrace from his brother or from his mother - complicated as his feelings were on her later in life. There was a time, when he was young, when he could simply find comfort in that. The last time he felt it was the farewell before he stepped into the car to the Academy. And when he came back, she never looked at him the same way. The decades have a way of making the feeling fade to a shadow of itself.
Miguel stiffens there, trying not to get too lost in it, and taking the gesture for what it was. A ghost of the real, human thing. He sighs to himself, looking miserably on ahead. Well, the intent to comfort him was there. He just wishes that he could get more from it, touch-starved as he was.
no subject
She can understand why Companions embrace their Chosen so intensely. They pierce right through the barriers around the human heart and make their Chosen unable to deny the truth of being understood and deemed worthy of love. Of being loved, truly, deeply, by a friend of the soul, with the promise of it stretching on for their entire lives. It's life-changing. Chosen will uproot themselves entirely to keep that love. It would wound them, and the Companion giving it to them, to lose it.
Need doesn't do that.
Ethereal as the hallucination of her touch is, it feels rather tangibly like she ends this approximation of a one-armed hug by squeezing his shoulder with a large hand and pulling back, leaving a fading warmth. :There,: she says, with a deliberate wryness. :Was that so bad? Dignity intact?: