He is a ghost, but he is also haunted.
He comes back to the shoreline easily (the world of the living cannot hold him like it does the others, cannot keep the pulse in his veins and the warmth in his limbs). The veil is less of a membrane than an intangible doorway; when he crosses the line, he doesn’t even realize he has at first. He doesn’t feel when his heart stops. He doesn’t notice the way that his coat lightens to a more uniform grey. Coming here is becoming too simple. The world just beyond is becoming too easily accessible – he wonders if this is the way he will die, eventually. One day, he simply won’t leave.
Because now he knows he won’t stay, even if he wants to linger on the shores of the dead. Now, his grief beats at him like the milky-white waves against the sand. He watches the grains numbly, feeling the pain of each lashing. Somehow, it is a better kind of pain here. Here, he is alone with only his thoughts. Here, he cannot hear the sharp agony of his father’s cries, the crumpled, aged look he had begun to wear. Here, his mother cannot stare with empty eyes and a swollen stomach, her grief compounded by Tiberios’s loss. It’s better here with the taste of salt on his drying lips. He starts to not know where it comes from, though: the sea or his own drowning eyes.
Ramiel lets himself be haunted for a time. And for once, it’s not the face of Oorn or the mechanical clanks encroaching ever closer that sets his knees to shaking. It’s better, in a way, more real and grounded. He doesn’t have to question everything he’s ever known with his brother dead. He doesn’t have to wonder if he’s gone mad or if there is more to the world than meets the eye. There is no dark god condemning him, no curses or quests or questions. Perhaps he wouldn’t recover from another event like that. Maybe he’s meant to exist in limbo. After all, he’s come back so many times already. He’s found himself walking the same stretch of Other beach more times than he cares to admit, driven by more than simple curiosity.
His brother is here, somewhere. He could find him and know for sure what had happened to take him away from life. And as much as he wants to, as much as he thinks his family would appreciate the gesture like a starving man appreciates a scrap of food, he can’t bring himself to go. Instead, he lets the water lull him into some semblance of sleep. Surrounded by the dead, he’s never felt more comfortable. They do not haunt him like his thoughts. They shift around him, silent specters and permanent residents of the sandy stretch of beach he has become so familiar with. While he dozes, the rigid lines of his body relax in ways they are unaccustomed to being. It’s better, he thinks though he doesn’t know why, before sleep pulls him completely under.
The dead watch the out-of-place ghost with glassy eyes that are far from empty. And if he’d clung to consciousness only a while longer, Ramiel would have realized why it was better. He’d understand that the real ghosts did as well, that they could still see they were cared about (grieved for, wept for) long after they left their breathing bodies behind.
Ramiel
ghost king of the dale