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

[keeper]

Glows like candlelight and can heal sick things... but not a ghost. No wonder she couldn’t stay with Salt and their mother! Keeper would have been heartsick to be separated like so from a twin, she thinks. How on earth could either girl stand it? “How long have you been apart from her?” She knows she is prying now but cannot help herself - there is a niggling worm of sorrow that goes through her and seems to find an answering call in Salt. 

Salt perseveres; the conversation turns to the mother that Keeper had asked about and that tale is just as tragic. Trapped then saved but never quite all the same once back - Keeper couldn’t relate to that but it sounded like a story that had as much happiness in it as it did tears. But this is one thing she doesn’t press upon since some stories are not meant to be wholly known or completely told. 

Keeper nods her head. 
She understood the sense of belonging and ease that cane from being in a place with those that understood you. To be honest, she’d had a taste of that for all that her father had been half neglectful and completely bound up in the complexities of his own failing nature to care or nurture. Her half-sister had borne it better than Keeper had but only because Ceremony had been bigger and tougher. Keeper had been too soft and too sweet - too sheltered beneath the snowy owl wings of her half-brother.

(At least when she was not out running after the deer and thinking that she had been born into the wrong shape and species!)

“Sounds like it was more of a home to you then this place could ever be. I’d think ghosts have more knowledge and memories to pass on than the living do since we’re still making them and learning as we go.” Keeper is musing aloud at this point. Sure, Salt’s mother had a point since the girl had a dual nature but even Keeper could see that Salt seemed more out of place here than between worlds. 

Then Salt’s offer surprises her.
It was rather unexpected and Keeper would love a trip to the land of the dead. Except that she doesn’t know anyone that has passed on and traveled down that road. Her face falls just a little before her admission comes, “I’d really like that - to talk to a ghost or see the land of the dead but I don’t know anyone that has passed on.” She sighs, “They tend to live long lives in my family and I’ve been fortunate enough not to lose any friends yet.”