He still dreams of the langoliers and perhaps he always will.
In these dreams, he hears the clanking and clicking of the machinery. The stuttering, irregular pulse grows ever closer, his fear increasing proportionally with the distance. Maybe he wouldn’t tremble so terribly if its approach was more predictable, if he could anticipate every clank and whir. But the inorganic beat is as wild and untamed as the end of the world should be. Every CLANG drives him closer to the beach. Each WHAM sends him further into the sea. He tries to drown out the sound, but the crashing waves are barely a shhh when they reach his ears. When he can no longer feel his heartbeat (because it has burst from fear in its hiding place?) he relinquishes himself to the ocean, sinks deep into its murky depths. Even under there, though, the langoliers reach him. He cannot escape.
Ramiel wakes drenched in the mornings, but thankfully, never from sea water. That would have been too much.
They feel real, these dreams. Sometimes he thinks Carnage will never really leave them. He’s not sure about the others, but he’s almost sure of himself. Sometimes he thinks the time he is asleep doesn’t belong to him anymore, that their dark god has claimed it for use as his punishment. He has failed Gail, why shouldn’t he pay for his failure? The intermittent nature of the nightmares reminds him of the langoliers, so much that he thinks it cannot be a coincidence.
Can he even believe in coincidences anymore? When it feels as if your life is pulled by the strings of unseen forces and shaped by strong hands, what is there left to anticipate? He’s surely seen everything there is to see already; what surprises remain in the world? Even here, on this stretch of newborn sand, the young stallion has already grown used to the idea of walking amongst the dead. It’s normal to see the pale figures shifting in a blur all around him. The once-firm line between life and death being erased is no longer revolutionary. Ramiel’s always felt like an old soul, but now he seems almost ancient.
Finding Gail calms him more than it should (more than finding a half-ghost in the afterlife would to anyone other than the last six, perhaps). She looks better than the last time he saw her. It seems more impossible than anything so far on this impossible day - that a half-dead woman could look better - but she does. There’s a strength to her stance, a spark of life in her glassy eyes. He wonders if it’s the girl’s doing, if she’s given her purpose. It’s wonderful and sad all at once, this empty motherhood with no chance to see the fruits of her labor. The girl is as dead as the rest of them – she will not grow up and she will not live.
His smile grows in earnest when Gail says that the dark god found her. At least she has that, that moment and now the girl. Little comfort for eternity, maybe, but she will have other things too. Visits from him, for starters, and conversations with Wrynn and the other five (if they so choose). Her gaze turns critical then, and when she voices her concern, his smile falters. “Only to come back here.” He shakes his head slightly, realizing it’s not the full answer. “You didn’t doom me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Not to being a ghost like her anyway, but the nightmares, perhaps. “I can be like this back in Beqanna, too.” It’s not something yet seamlessly integrated into him, but it’s becoming so more and more every day.
The girl mirrors Gail’s new confidence, straightening herself when he addresses her. “Graveling,” he repeats, testing the name on his tongue. Wildly appropriate but still so sad, he thinks, then wonders if the filly knows it is both. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The grey ghost looks at her thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to Gail. He wants to ask Graveling who her parents are, wants to send word back to them if he can, but he doesn’t want to offend the girl at the same time. Afterlife etiquette is a dangerous, new frontier. If anyone has explored the bounds, it’s likely the anchor-woman. “Is there anything I can do for either of you?”
r a m i e l
what a day to begin again