talking to ghosts

[ninjavampire]

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))

Comments

Offerings (Castmate/CR)

[ninjavampire]

On November 1st, the decorations are set in a nook of Miguel's nearly untouched bedroom. It was easily the most colorful thing in the sparse space, used only for the functional requirement of sleep.

The altar was a ring of marigolds on floral wire, with loose purple hoary stock and gypsophila flowers. Candles, a glass of water and the nicest of the carved wooden critters are arranged alongside a few other effects. Flower petals are also scattered in the corner - the whole thing was a mostly small and unassuming affair.

"Discúlpeme, mija..." he says to the picture-less arrangement. "If I carved the usual fruit, then the elves might sniff it out and try to eat it when I'm not looking. But I have this instead - easier to hide."

A locked and laquered box with hidden peanut marzipan and chocolate is set at the center. Despite the solemn nature of it, Miguel sounds lighter. Or maybe he's simply a little more at ease with himself at the moment.

* (( 'mija' is a term of endearment for a daughter. He's apologizing in a sincere but lighter way. ))

[favoritefearlesshero]

"I left out a basket of apples for them, it seemed to work as a distraction," Puss says quietly from the doorway. He's standing just outside the threshold, not going to enter unless he's invited.

Puss knows the ceremony. There's no mistaking that mix of smells, though Puss never had a home to put an ofrenda in. His life took him on constant travels, but the smell was the same everywhere in his home country. It's solemn and a celebration all at once, and it's hard to keep a lid on the feelings it stirs in him.

So he stands outside of Miguel's room, not sure how his presence will be taken.

[ninjavampire]

He never quite entirely loses the strict lines of his face, but he seems softer. A little more muted and vulnerable than usual.

When he turns to the surprise visitor, he doesn’t look offended that Puss was there. So. That’s about as good a welcome as Miguel tends to give.

“Maybe with the candles, that’ll be enough to last the night.” he replies with more amusement than anger at the situation. The scent of candles and incense seemed to throw off the trail of treats.

“You’re back earlier than expected.”

The mission must have gone well.

[favoritefearlesshero]

"Indeed. Our plan played to all our strengths. Especially mine."

Puss's tone is quiet, but light. Ordinarily, he might not care if he gets under Miguel's skin, but not tonight.

"You should have heard me sing. And Branch was OK too, I suppose."

He takes Miguel's lack of animosity as an invitation to come inside. He stops when he's side by side with Miguel, and then takes off his hat...

And plucks an egg off his head. It's painted with a little golden vest. He very gingerly sets it on the ofrenda.

"...Don't worry. I shall take it back to my own room when I leave."

[ninjavampire]

"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.

[favoritefearlesshero]

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."

[orivodika]

Boba is still pissed that no one let him go on the mission. He's spent most of his time since then sulking.

He goes to Miguel's lab to tinker. He doesn't have a project now that he gave Branch the shock baton, but he's got plenty of things he can mess with. Unfortunately, the door's locked when he gets there.

He doesn't bother knocking when he gets to Miguel's room. He just opens the door and walks in.

"What are you doing?" His original question completely leaves his brain when he sees Miguel's setup.

[ninjavampire]

He reacts a little slower than usual, sucked in by the process of going through the motions over the past few days. Miguel stands straight and turns to face him, even-keeled despite the more solemn look about him.

“A ceremony from back home.”

He wasn’t a religious man, but doing all the preparations had its effects on him. A way to make remembering a little less painful.

“Did you want me to open the lab?”

He figures that’s why the kid sought him out - Lucky seemed to be possessed by a similar bad mood after being to told to stay on the Pole.

[orivodika]

Boba moves further into the room. The wooden carvings have caught his eye more than anything else. He's never seen those animals before.

"Yeah," he answers, clearly distracted from his original goal. "What's the ceremony for?"

He's attempted to covertly peer around Miguel to get a better look, but he isn't being all that covert about it.

[ninjavampire]

“A day for celebrating and remembering, among other things.”

Mourning. Feasting. Enjoying the company of the living and reflection of the lives of the dead. There were a lot of ways to do it. His did not involve much of a party.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Miguel makes for a substantial obstacle with merely his size, but he won’t stop Boba from going around him to look.

[orivodika]

When Miguel doesn't make any move to stop him, Boba moves around him. The flowers are pretty. Orange, white, and purple: lust for life, clean state, and... he doesn't know what purple means. Maybe it's reliability, like blue? Red is honoring a parent, maybe it's a different kind of honoring.

His brow furrows at the question. "Ghosts?"

His instinct to to say no, but it's a big galaxy. He thinks about the stories his dad would tell him-- about the kings that live in the stars. He thinks about the book filled with his father's voice-- about the millions of clones that wear his father's face.

Boba shrugs. "I don't know. I've never seen one."

[changechild]

Something is tugging at Need in a peculiar way. She splits her attention and investigates, peering through living senses, going from one mind to another as she gets closer. Mostly hopping between the perceptions of elves, and then - oh, yes, she knows this one. Miguel's made some kind of ancestor-shrine, she assumes, though she doesn't look into his memories.

That pull is still there. It's not remotely the same as that brand, which had constantly reminded her that Guts' soul was hanging there crying out to be eaten, it doesn't have that ugly aspect at all. Still it reminds her, in a comparatively friendly way, of things she's taught herself to ignore.

Deliberately she causes an impression of a presence that starts distant and draws closer, like she's something that can come into a room to stand behind and to Miguel's left, to look over his shoulder and see what he sees. Living people are often more comfortable if they think of her as having a bit more distance from them than she actually does.

:This is nice,: she says, with less edge than usual.

[ninjavampire]

Miguel also seems to have lost some of combativeness that made him even less pleasant to be around. He wasn't happier, per say, but the heavy weight inside has gotten a little lighter while going through all the motions of the holiday. At hearing the voice percolate in the room, the peaceful look on his face tenses up, though he decides to keep his eyes closed in thought.

"I'm going to assume you know your ghost manners." he remarks, and it's only half accusatory, with the other half daring to venture into something approaching humor. Not that Need seemed capable of eating candy or drinking water (wrong kind of ghost).

[changechild]

:It's tempting to say no, but I gave up my right to offerings a while back.:

The statement is a little uncertain because she has no idea. Hadn't there been a tradition of pouring wine or... no, wasn't it milk? over lykeblades once? Honeyed, or fermented maybe. Or was it blood? That is a faded path that trails right into one of the holes in Need's memory. She's pretty sure, though, that she's never asked or told anyone to do that for her. It wouldn't feel right - self-aggrandizing in a particular way that she doesn't like, something that would cost others and benefit only her.

She pauses, inflected by the more bittersweet tone of Miguel's grief as it is in the moment. :Should I let you alone? Something is calling me towards this, but I can ignore it.: Despite herself, a suggestion of concern makes it across.

[ninjavampire]

Miguel stares at the gathered things as he mulls it over. There will be time to be alone. He’ll be lingering here all night, secretly hoping for some sliver of the joy he felt with Gabriella.

“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.

[changechild]

She waits neutrally for Miguel to decide. Need often seems to be impatient, but it's an affectation really. Shallow, the way her annoyance with most things is shallow.

: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.

[branchifer]

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.

[ninjavampire]

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..

[branchifer]

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.

[ninjavampire]

"Oh. Uh..."

Horrifying Raptor Hands Spiderman still had a beating heart in there somewhere as well, it seems. His shorter fuse came with an equally reduced fuel source to keep it going. So, it burns out. He rubs the back of his head, pondering how to explain what was going on to a woodland creature with no contact with human civilization beforehand.

"Well, this is a holiday back in my dimension." he begins, a little stiffly at first. Not pissed off, at least. The appearance of the CLAWS was mostly a surprise reaction, rather than trying to be aggressive. His very literal sharp ends disappear back into their appropriate sheaths once he settles.

"It's supposed to be about remembering your family that's passed. And... celebrating life, and all that." he waves his hand around in a weak attempt to demonstrate celebration, lacking the energy for an Encyclopedic description to Some Guy he didn't even like that much. "Not really in the mood for a party."

He internally debates switching the subject to the mission to get this conversation to end faster. He is extremely not used to being vulnerable out in the open like this.

[thismaskismybadge]

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.

[ninjavampire]

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.

[thismaskismybadge]

The response is enough to unglue her feet from the floor so that she can drift into the doorway. The way she leans shoulder-first against the frame, arms crossed loosely, is a far cry from the more deliberate posture she used to have when standing there in his boss lair.

"More trouble than he used to, thanks to how our powers have been affected, but nothing I couldn't handle. Really just some aches and weird marks that'll be gone by morning."

Not necessarily an answer you should trust from Gwen, admittedly—she always was resistant to medical attention even when a fight did go wrong, would hide injuries if she could—but this time it's the truth.

[ninjavampire]

"... Markings?"

He crosses his arms, gears ticking more quickly now that he was fully awake.

"Are we talking Runes? Poison? Some octopus are venomous and the variants of the squishier kind get inspired."

Follow up questions. Gwen had been one of the most consistently on-mission Spiderfolk the few months that Jessica had mentored her. Things like 'tends to underplay injuries' has a way of floating up to his ears. Though that wasn't exactly an uncommon trait among them.

She didn't seem to be ill from any other effects...

Re: Offerings (Castmate/CR)

[credit_not_blame]

There's a knock on Miguel's door. Three knocks in quick succession, then a pause, then another three knocks. Apparently, someone wants to make sure Miguel knows that yes, he is being summoned to his door.

Mostly because Stacia does. Then she skedaddles around the corner as fast as her little feet can carry her, leaving an open box behind. Inside is a note, a little toy goat, and a handful of hard candies. The note reads:

For the kid (pun unacknowledged).
-Stacia