It’s just as he suspected – that Gail hasn’t and will never come home – but the truth still hurts to hear. Maybe he wouldn’t have believed it from anyone else. Maybe he would have kept searching until he himself was on the threshold of death, a desperate old man forever with unfinished business. But he knows she is telling the truth in the very core of himself. She was there with him on the beach; she saw the end of the universe. If anyone knew where the black light still shined, it would be her. He frowns deeply, the corners of his mouth pinching into his muzzle.
It’s his first true failure (all of their’s really, though he doesn’t know the extent of the other six’s guilt) and it weighs heavily on his mind, even as the girl studies him. He can see her concern in the narrowing of her rainbow-eyes, and in the back of his mind, he registers and appreciates it. He is glad she isn’t scared of him, glad she doesn’t turn tail and run like less braver foals might. If she had shown the slightest bit of hesitation, Ramiel isn’t sure he would have been able to handle it. This interest is far better. He may be a source of study, a curiosity, an oddity, but at least not a cause for concern. Not to Wrynn, anyway.
“Rules,” he spits out, the word bitter as brine on his tongue. There are always rules: don’t venture into the mountains, don’t approach strange horses, don’t be hasty or irrational or thoughtless. He used to think rules were put in place for a reason. He used to admire the safe boundaries that rules provided, felt comfortable in the safety net of his guidelines. But Carnage has shown him differently. Their dark god had bent the rules to his own ends, had grasped at futures that were supposed to happen and re-sculpted them to his will. If he has learned anything from the quest for Gail, it is that he is in control of his own destiny. Rules can be broken, one only has to learn how to do so.
“I think I could do it.” He says quietly, not entirely sure if he believes himself. “I think I could go back.” Ramiel remembers how he had poured from the cliff walls like liquid, how his ghost form had passed through granite as easily as it would a cloud. The bay girl asks him if he can control it and so he shows her. He does it slowly, his black fur going grey then translucent. He lingers at this midway point, craning his neck to look through his own stomach to the forest beyond. It’s still unnerving, and the young stallion hesitates before fading all the way, afraid he won’t be able to come back from it. Finally, he’s completely invisible.
He circles around the Jungle girl, his feet passing through the grass without a sound. He can feel the motion – can feel where his limbs are in relation to his movements – but he cannot see them. A thought comes to him then and he is compelled to try. With a deep breath, he passes through Wrynn. Shocked that it is possible, Ramiel loses concentration when he emerges on the other side of her and becomes solid once more. He wonders if she has felt anything. Her words have not been lost on him, however.
“So you can hear them, the ghosts from the beach? Do they talk freely, or do you have to ask after them?” The boy stands closer now, not having moved after his pass through. Up close, he finds the girl quite pretty. Perhaps she’s made more so because they were comrades, in a sense. They share truths that few will ever understand, except each other. He smiles when she gives her name. It feels like cement on their relationship, at least to him. It feels like they will have many more stories to compare over the years, that their shared experience was only a jumping point for greater adventures. "I'm glad we both made it out alive to meet each other properly."
r a m i e l
what a day to begin again