Keeper-
“You practice. I’m practicing.”
Of course! Practice is practical and Keeper can see the sense in this, seeing as Salt is less ghost and more girl now. Or she thinks she is, because Keeper hasn’t brushed her nose against Salt’s shoulder to confirm this. She has to trust what her eyes are seeing and the girl looks solid enough, smiles solidly enough to dispel any further thought of being incorporeal. Who would ever believe she was talking to a ghost? Granted, this place was full of magic and this was but an offshoot of said magic that allowed a girl to be a ghost and not a ghost from one instant to the next.
Still, no one would believe her. Keeper is not all that concerned with being believed or not. She knows that she has conversed with a ghost that became a girl and could go back to being a ghost again. It is not a life that she envies, there seems to be a tragic element to not knowing which one you were supposed to be - alive or dead, how could you choose? But Salt is not expounding on her adventures in the afterlife. She is asking about Keeper’s family and if they left her all alone in Beqanna’s wilds to fend for herself against all this magic and mayhem.
“To be honest, I don’t know if they actually left. Some of them are still here, I catch their scents from time to time on the air but always hours’ old as if I’ve just missed them.” Her head tilts to the side and there is a little frown that finds her lips. Moments become minutes and minutes become hours until hours are days and night that have passed her by and she has still not seen hide nor hair of them. Grandmother is easy to find but she grows fat now from a foal in her belly and spends her time grazing and napping, and less time telling stories to Keeper now that she’s all grown up.
“I think they’ve scattered themselves to the wind, the way ashes do from an untended fire. Grandmother is one of the few that remains, and a cousin or two. What about you, where is your family or do ghosts not have families once they pass beyond the veil?” Keeper is curious again, as Salt practices conversation and being a real girl and Keeper indulges her. Truth be told, she is happy to do so.
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless