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

[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?: