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

[changechild]

:We'd either get along well or hate each other immediately,: Need speculates dryly. Is this a goddess, she wonders, or at least a goddess as Need understands them. Either way she might or might not be the kind of entity who wants to take Need away somewhere. They're already past the lady's particular date though, so Need probably doesn't have to warn Nyara away from specific symbols in a hurry.

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.:

[ninjavampire]

"You regularly have encounters with psychopomps..."

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.

[changechild]

:Now and then. Imagine if you had an ongoing issue with... paramedics, where even the ones who appreciate you would like it if you laid down on the cot.:

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.:

[ninjavampire]

"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!

[changechild]

: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.:

[ninjavampire]

"All right, you lied about the lecture being perfunctory."

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?

[changechild]

:Could have been worse. I could have showed you a memory of the academic debates on the topic. Don't assume that because I date back to when steel was an exciting new invention I don't know what science is,: she retorts, with her customary blend of amusement and irritation. Steel probably wasn't actually new when she was alive, she doesn't recall, but she does have a vague recollection of finding horseshoes deeply suspicious.

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.

[ninjavampire]

"I'm going to question your idea of science if that's what you're drawing from..." he grumbles, but then the hug starts to hit and it elicits a little shiver of surprise from him.

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.

[changechild]

Need drinks it in. It's pain and unhappiness, but it's something. A fire to warm her hands at and remind herself of when she too gave off heat. Both generally, and also he's calling forth the shadow of memories she can no longer consciously grasp. She had been like this poor lonely child once, spiny around an abyss of grief, functioning but inconsolable even by a touch like this.

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?: