The cliffs rise above him, a physical, foreboding reminder of his last time here. Though that first time, he had been on the Other Side of the cliffs. That time, he had felt the icy fingers of death rake both of his inky sides but he slipped through its grasp (he’d been smaller then, thankfully, and evaded its finality). That time, a dark god had sought their help but hadn’t obliged them much assistance in return (he’d cursed Carnage every day since he’d come back for leaving his sister a miserable mosaic). That time, he’d been a boy taken on a mission most men would find impossible or unbelievable.
He has a hard time believing it himself, sometimes.
Ramiel shifts from one reality to the next. The face of the rock watches him impassively, having perhaps seen stranger changes – and certainly more sinister changes – over the many millennia of its existence. His coat fades from black to pepper to white to nothing. Overshot it, he thinks, nervous as the moment grows nearer. His concentration is deep (though not as deep as it had needed to be at first, when the gift-curse was still baby-new) but effective. He becomes translucent, a pale imitation of his former self and a slight mirror of his future, of the grey that is already taking over his body.
He is alive until he isn’t.
Ramiel hasn’t worked out when exactly he dies during the change from man to ghost. At what point does breathing become a luxury rather than a necessity? When does his heart stop doing its job? And most importantly: why didn’t the stoppage of these functions align? When is death, really, when the heart stops beating or when you no longer suck in the air? More and more, he’s convinced it’s something else entirely. More and more he thinks it has something to do with thoughts and brains. Of course, his is untouched during the process. That’s the whole point of it.
Still, although he’s had a lot of time to think on it (all of it, from his untimely deaths to those waiting for him on the Other Beach), he’s nervous coming back. He’s a ghost now, though, and the cliffs seem to want him. Or rather, they want him on the other side. See-through as he is, he’s an imperfection amongst the solid living. He floats until he’s touching the granite with the delicate soft of his muzzle. The cliffs drive him forward until the flat of his forehead becomes indented by the unforgiving edges. If he’d been real, it would have hurt. But he’s thankfully, blessedly not, and he passes through unmarred.
In a few short blinks, he is out on the far side (so far that death is the only one-way ticket. Death, or the wielding of potent magic that is). The beach is there with its tepid spray and rolling waves. The sky is as translucent as he is; galaxies spread all the way to the horizon and the stars glint, even in the bright light. The ghosts are here and there, too. They mill about in their various hierarchies, unable to resist games of power even after their living bodies have become earth. Some of the ghosts stand alone or in pairs. These are far more interesting to Ramiel. He wonders what secrets they still keep long after it matters. He begins to walk and he wonders.
Unlike the last time, there isn’t a sense of wrongness when he moves across the sands. A chill doesn’t threaten to overtake his still-warm skin; pressure doesn’t squeeze against his sides (a pressure that wants him out, Out, OUT). He doesn’t feel like he is going against the concentration gradient of death, like his first visit when he was very much alive. Now, he borrows death, wearing it like a second skin that can be easily shed back on the Other Side. He looks back there, towards the cliffs where he knows he can cross once more into Beqanna. It’s comforting to know that safety is so close, that he doesn’t have far to flee if the need arises.
The ghost looks for a black shape achingly familiar for its attempted retrieval. And perhaps because he’s looking for her (or perhaps they are anchored for all their trials together) he finds her almost immediately. Gail. “Gail,” he repeats out loud, like the first time he had met her. It’s still bitter on his tongue and he thinks she can pick up on it, can hear it in his words. He amends it immediately, apologetically. “Did Carnage find you, at least?” Because he knows it’s pointless to voice the other things he would otherwise ask first: can you come back, why didn’t you follow us, are you stuck here? He knows all of those answers. Only this question will give him some semblance of happiness depending on how she answers.
It is only then that he notices another lurking nearby. A buckskin girl with silver in her hair and a lifetime in her eyes. She seems older than the other children (the children that had sent Wrynn home with their hope) though she doesn’t look it. He smiles vaguely at her but he is distracted. Gail seems like the purpose he came for, the cornerstone of this latest journey to the afterlife – a follow-up visit with a long-dead friend. He’s ever polite and she’s so very persistent that it almost seems compulsory to pull her into the conversation, so he says, “hello.” And then asks, “who are you?”
r a m i e l
what a day to begin again