last I saw you were down on your knees; any

[salt]

to make something beautiful should be enough;

“Her name is Vael,” she says, smiling, thinking of her sister. “She glows, like candlelight, and she can heal sick things. She’s not a ghost, though. I think it’s why she had to leave mother and I.”
They’d been born in that realm of in-between, and Salt – an in-between creature, herself – had been fine, had thrived, but had Vael? She had left, Salt only knows that. She doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know if it was of her sister’s own volition, or if the land had rejected her.
Keeper asks after her mother, then, and Salt wonders.
“Her name is Gail,” she says, “and once upon a time she went to the end of the world, and she stayed there for years and years, trapped, until some people – including my father – rescued her. They brought her back, but not all the way back, so she lives in the afterlife with the ghosts.”
There’s more to the story – more than Salt knows, even – but it’s the gist of it. Her mother doesn’t talk much of the time spent there, or why she’d been at the end of the world in the first place. Salt has learned not to pry.

And then, another question, more complex, one Salt isn’t sure how to answer.
“I don’t know,” she says, “I liked it there. I felt like I belonged. I know I’m not dead, but it’s where I grew up, and mom’s there, and some friends. You hear a lot of stories. Some of the people there have died more than once. Ghosts are easier to talk to, I think. Or maybe it’s just who you’re used to.”
A thought strikes her. She doesn’t know if this girl’s a friend, or just a passing stranger, but –
“If you know anyone who’s died, if you miss them – I could take you, sometime. Not everyone who dies is a ghost, though. But a lot of them are.”

salt