Eastern Threshold The Hundred Kingdoms 27nd Moon of Resplendent Wood, Saturn's Day, 768 T he winds on the plains picked up as
the young woman pulled her cloak tighter around her with one hand.
She used it to hide the stump of her other arm as she walked. She
didn't know where to – that monster had gotten the best of her.
Then those... people had saved her. Why...? She was a monster.
She couldn't figure out why strangers wanted to help her. After she
treated that village the way she had.
“You tried to help them regardless.”
A voice spoke softly from her right, and she instinctively turned
away from it. “You wanted to make things right even though they
couldn't pay. You want to be accepted .”
Her
fingers gripped the hem of the cloak tighter, pulling on it harder as
she tried to ignore the presence with her. “ Go away .”
She barked, her pace speeding up, a slight limp forming as the magic
binding her leg began its inevitable decay again.
“If
only I could. But you
won't let me.” The voice continued, before she grit her teeth. The
hand disappeared into her cloak, pulling a small black crystal from a
pouch, and looking at it. “You could free me, you know. I'd
disappear.” Her fingers gripped the crystal tighter, “Or, finish
the ritual. Seal me inside and make me someone else's problem.”
Staring
down, she moved unconsciously, walking towards whatever drew her. The
dying earth, she imagined, there was a Shadowland that direction. She
always found herself in them. “I can't. I don't remember it. I
don't know that I ever did.”
There
was a sigh from the voice as the source drifted closer, “Oh, you
do. You knew enough to get me in here, and I knew enough to bring you
back and make sure you finished it .”
The voice grew raspy, with a growl, as she spun, turning to face the
apparition that haunted her. The hazy form of a man she had once
knew. In a life. A different life. One that was gone.
“ I
am not that person.”
She snapped, as the ghost smirked, “You made me steal someone's
face. Their body. And now I have to keep stealing from the dead just
to stay alive . You
cursed me, and now I'm cursed with you.” Her hand slipped back into
her leathers, pushing the crystal back into some pocket to keep it
out of sight. Hazy, the ghost shook his head, as if
disappointed, “You keep saying that. You've even gone to extents to
attempt to ruin that face so that I wouldn't recognize it.” The
immaterial form circled her slowly, his steps methodical, and
planned, ignorant of how unnecessary such things were in that form,
“But you keep the yasal crystal anyway. Somewhere, you're still
her. Despite your insistence on being someone else.”
“Alabaster
Ghost.” She twisted her head to keep eye contact with the spirit,
“Not whoever you say I am.”
“Right,
Alabaster Ghost. Still.. somewhere, deep inside that dying heart of
yours, the one you so desperately desire to tear from your chest if
you knew it would kill you. In there somewhere is Soa Rumi.” He
stopped, to let the words linger and sink in for a moment. There was
a mixture of fear and confusion in the eyes of the resurrected woman
as she tried to process this, again.
“Doesn't
matter who you say I am.” She looked forward, avoiding his gaze
once more as she began walking, “I know I am Alabaster Ghost. Soa
Rumi is dead. Her heart died the night you killed her. The night you
replaced her soul with mine.”
“Of
course, of course.” The ghost smiled widely, drawing back slightly
as his voice grew smaller, “So she did.” The ghost looked up at
the night sky, as the last hours of darkness loomed and he'd be gone
again until the next night. This night, however, was fruitful. She
confirmed that somewhere – deep, deep within the
corpse-made-animate, Soa Rumi thrived. Somewhere, her soul never
moved on. She wasn't right, but Alabaster Ghost wasn't alone in
there. They were now one.