yes i know that love is like ghosts,
few have seen it but everybody talks —
few have seen it but everybody talks —
She is so tired of their voices, the way they run like a current in her mind even when the rest of the world has fallen into sleep.
She is so tired of the way they flash into focus without warning, as if they have simply appeared from thin air—no footsteps to sound their approach, the rustle of the wind that their spirit creates hardly any more than a sigh.
Her nerves, set on edge from the moment this gift (curse) had been bestowed upon her, have yet to settle. They are still rubbed raw, and the tension that pulls her muscles taut has seemed to create permanently rigid angles that she is afraid will never loosen. She had thought she would have learned how to manage all of this by now; that if she had not learned how to turn it all off, she would have at least learned to ignore it. But the dead are persistent, especially once they find someone that can see and hear them. Sometimes she tried to help them—especially in the beginning, when she had thought that perhaps it was only a handful reaching out for help; only a few that had unfinished business.
But she is just one girl, and she cannot help them all.
She learns to mostly ignore them, with eyes always downcast so that she might not accidentally lock gazes with someone she shouldn’t. She does not answer their calls, does not acknowledge when their aura presses into her own. At night she forces her eyes to remain closed even though sleep so rarely comes, seeking any kind of respite from the lead-like exhaustion that had sunk itself into her bones.
But tonight there is a disturbance in the world, and try as she might, it is not one that she can ignore.
It starts first as a sudden rush of whispers, the equivalent of excited chatter. It happens sometimes, in the wake of disaster or a traumatic event, when souls are ripped from one world to the next but they are not quite ready to go. It’s another one of those things that she ignores and then immediately feels bad for ignoring, her heart twisting and her jaw clenching as if that might chase the guilt away.
The starlight, though, cannot be ignored.
It floods the world in a silvery light, the kind that penetrates the back of her eyelids, and immediately her eyes fly open, her heart jumping nervously. She listens, perhaps on purpose for the first time, to this world and the next, but she does not find an answer. Cautiously she stands, not bothering to shake the debris of leaves and grass that cling to her coat and tangle in her mane, the starlight glinting off the jewels that ornament her skin.
She follows a trail that is less of a path and more of a feeling, an invisible force that pulls her from the treeline and to the shores of the lake. The sight of the two bodies lying limp makes her shrink back, immediately closing her eyes and drowning out any voices she might hear with her own frantic thoughts. Against her better judgment she wills herself to open her eyes again, and this time it is not the lost souls—she does not recognize them, and the solitary creature that she is she knew very little of Baltia and Stratos to begin with, besides what she had been forced to learn (the way Beqanna had been forced apart in order for them to fit, like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite belong together)—but instead to the sprites that spin in the air.
Her senses are screaming at her to stop, reminding her of how unforgiving the supernatural can be. She already knows what it is like to be able to peer through a veil that the rest of the world cannot see—what might happen if she steps entirely through and to the other side?
Perhaps it is the fatigue that makes her reckless, or the ever-growing murmur of voices or the encouraging way the sprites seem to usher her forward. Whatever the reason is, Narya steps through the portal that they have crafted and to the other side.
She is so tired of the way they flash into focus without warning, as if they have simply appeared from thin air—no footsteps to sound their approach, the rustle of the wind that their spirit creates hardly any more than a sigh.
Her nerves, set on edge from the moment this gift (curse) had been bestowed upon her, have yet to settle. They are still rubbed raw, and the tension that pulls her muscles taut has seemed to create permanently rigid angles that she is afraid will never loosen. She had thought she would have learned how to manage all of this by now; that if she had not learned how to turn it all off, she would have at least learned to ignore it. But the dead are persistent, especially once they find someone that can see and hear them. Sometimes she tried to help them—especially in the beginning, when she had thought that perhaps it was only a handful reaching out for help; only a few that had unfinished business.
But she is just one girl, and she cannot help them all.
She learns to mostly ignore them, with eyes always downcast so that she might not accidentally lock gazes with someone she shouldn’t. She does not answer their calls, does not acknowledge when their aura presses into her own. At night she forces her eyes to remain closed even though sleep so rarely comes, seeking any kind of respite from the lead-like exhaustion that had sunk itself into her bones.
But tonight there is a disturbance in the world, and try as she might, it is not one that she can ignore.
It starts first as a sudden rush of whispers, the equivalent of excited chatter. It happens sometimes, in the wake of disaster or a traumatic event, when souls are ripped from one world to the next but they are not quite ready to go. It’s another one of those things that she ignores and then immediately feels bad for ignoring, her heart twisting and her jaw clenching as if that might chase the guilt away.
The starlight, though, cannot be ignored.
It floods the world in a silvery light, the kind that penetrates the back of her eyelids, and immediately her eyes fly open, her heart jumping nervously. She listens, perhaps on purpose for the first time, to this world and the next, but she does not find an answer. Cautiously she stands, not bothering to shake the debris of leaves and grass that cling to her coat and tangle in her mane, the starlight glinting off the jewels that ornament her skin.
She follows a trail that is less of a path and more of a feeling, an invisible force that pulls her from the treeline and to the shores of the lake. The sight of the two bodies lying limp makes her shrink back, immediately closing her eyes and drowning out any voices she might hear with her own frantic thoughts. Against her better judgment she wills herself to open her eyes again, and this time it is not the lost souls—she does not recognize them, and the solitary creature that she is she knew very little of Baltia and Stratos to begin with, besides what she had been forced to learn (the way Beqanna had been forced apart in order for them to fit, like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite belong together)—but instead to the sprites that spin in the air.
Her senses are screaming at her to stop, reminding her of how unforgiving the supernatural can be. She already knows what it is like to be able to peer through a veil that the rest of the world cannot see—what might happen if she steps entirely through and to the other side?
Perhaps it is the fatigue that makes her reckless, or the ever-growing murmur of voices or the encouraging way the sprites seem to usher her forward. Whatever the reason is, Narya steps through the portal that they have crafted and to the other side.
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go,
they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
they sing all day and they haunt me in the night