Closed Misspent Lives

[Meriann]

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1st Spring 518 AV
"Speech"

There were many things that the ghost could not remember fully. Life, when it came to it, was a blur of sunshine and meanness. Meriann was not even fully aware that she was a human or a ghost now. Her unlife was full of cold. It was so, so cold. Mostly she despaired, but she hung onto one thought and that was that she couldn't let go yet. There was something, or some things she needed to do. What those were, she couldn't comprehend yet. The world was moving around her whilst she stayed in one place, watching through eyes that no longer opened, the breathing, miserable existences of the few, seldom people that walked amongst the graveyard.

Meriann was without a name and without a body. She was torn in two. There was something important to be realised, she thought, but what was it? Something had changed drastically. What had she forgotten?

Where am I?

A youth, no older than ten years, wept beside a pile of rocks. He stared about him once the tears stopped, maybe sensing a presence. Meriann watched him. She wished she could reach out and touch him, maybe ask what ailed him so much. She felt tied down and she struggled and tore at the feebleness that wore away at her constantly. The young lad knelt beside fresh earth that had been turned over recently. There were no grave markers here except two short, wooden poles driven into the ground. Meriann was stood beside one of these, but the boy was next to her. On some level she knew that she guarded her body. The boy was no threat to her though. He punched the ground and swore softly. His eyes were cold and hard and brown as packed earth. The tears had stopped. Meriann studied his face. He was dirty and his hair was limp and greasy. His nose was speckled with freckles but alongside these there were bruises and they left his face looking closed and grim. She remained hidden from view, and silent. He was speaking, and she listened as if through muddy water.

"Fuck you, mother."

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The boy had left some bells ago. There had been no more tears after he'd spoken. She wondered whether this was bad or good. Meriann was cold. There was another person approaching her now, not the young boy full of anger and sadness, but a man carrying another in his arms. He was whispering and the words sounded like the susurrus of the waves on the shore. She wished to be there now, like an itch that needed to be scratched, but she had no way of reaching it. Even if she was at the shore, there was no way of knowing whether she could feel the sand beneath her toes or the waves on her bare skin.

The man was tall, and he too was crying in the black darkness. Of the people she'd seen, there were many who were crying. She wished for a smile of some kind, something to bring a bit of light to this dull place, but her wish had yet to be granted and a smile would probably look out of place in this landscape. The boy was in the man's arms. The child had scratches across his body and a large cut in his stomach. Once, it had been bleeding, but now the young boy's blood was dry and crusted up. His face was grey and more open that she'd ever seen it, but his eyes were clouded and stared without any kind of life. Meriann's own stomach twisted in response as she watched. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up! She shouted in her head to the young boy, hoping he would hear her. His head lolled, and the man dropped him as he fell to his knees and wailed into the night sky. Somewhere, a dog howled in response. Overhead, the moon flickered in and out of the clouds, and Meriann cried invisible tears that failed to materialise.

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2nd Spring, very early morning

She kneeled over the corpse as the man began to dig and gazed at the poor, grey face of the boy. There was another, tall and black-hatted, who would come over eventually. For now, the elder man dug with his hands and a slate. She watched, full of mournfulness, as his hands cracked and bled and the tears watered the earth. Her heart was breaking. She was so desperate to reach out and touch the man, to give him some comfort, but every time she tried her arms turned to lead and she could do nothing but watch invisibly.

She peered down at herself so achingly slowly, and saw what the crying man could not. Her body was see-through and churning with something inside. Her hands were shaking, she couldn't seem to stop it. She placed both her hands on her stomach and keened with a low, moaning sound. It was despair that filled her, a feeling so angry and worthless that she couldn't stop the muted cries from leaving her lips. How long had she known she was dead? For days she had refused to think of anything and only existed without acknowledging what she was now. She forced herself to stare at the form of her body; at the mist that was her skin and blood, at the way she could not even feel the earth beneath her. She was numb.

The hairs on the back of the stranger's neck rose as he heard the strange sound, and he dropped the piece of rock into the shallow grave. "Who's there?" Meriann said nothing but continued to rock backwards and forwards, concentrating only on becoming real again. There was something she could feel. She knew something of pain. It was more real than the coldness and numbness that permeated her ethereal state. Her eyes fluttered as she felt the knife dig into her body once again. Heat flushed her, and so did the imagined pain. Yessss... The numbness peeled back to reveal the coolness of the ground beneath her. Never had she been more pleased to experience the claggy earth.

"Aaah..." She moaned, suddenly feeling her hands grow warmer, to her at least, and her body flicker into visibility. She wore a grimace like a smile, and her hands were pressed to the worn, silvery wound in her abdomen. The man stood abruptly, his face lit with shimmering tears. "Who the petch are you? Where's my wife... My wife..." The man was staggering away, his eyes wide. The corpse of the young boy lay in the dirt. Meriann stood, feeling euphoria and agony and confusion. "Don't... run..." She reached her hand out, hoping to give him a comforting touch that would comfort her more than it would ber, but the man turned on his heel and ran.

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[Meriann]

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"Speech"

Instead, Meriann turned with effort to the dead boy that lay near to the grave beside her. His eyes were open and cold. She stared with wide eyes at him, as she reached her quivering hand towards him. With the gentleness of snow, she touched his cheek and sighed as she experienced the coldness of his skin. Who was he? Just some poor child of a shyke-stained city. To Meriann, he was the first thing she had properly touched since becoming whatever she was now.

The grasp she had on her soulmist was weak and she knew it. Only by concentrating on the hot feeling of the stab wound that had caused her death could she keep a hold of the feeling of being present and solid. She moved her hand slowly, inching her way up the boy's scarred, pitted face. He looked as if he had been hit, frequently and awfully. Her fingers hesitated over the bridge of his nose, and then she moved up and drifted her fingers across to his eyelids. With a slow movement that physically hurt her inside, she lightly dug her fingers in and pulled the boy's eyelids down so that he looked asleep rather than dead. His cold body said otherwise, but as she released the feeling and once more faded into invisibility she gazed at his lonely form and smiled softly.

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The black-hatted man came later. The sun was beginning to rise in the sky as she watched him clattering around with a spade. He was cursing about his knee, but though his appearance was alarmingly gruff, he seemed reasonable. He began to dig and she watched, sitting on her own grave, listening in on him working.

It took a bell for the man to dig a proper grave for the young boy, and he was sweating once it was done. With a lift that seemed as easy and lifting a feather, the hefty man placed the battered child into the hole carefully. He was not far from the surface of the earth, though Meriann wasn't worried about that. Over the course of the day, she had grown a fondness of the boy. His features were sad and determined, even in death. Now the gravedigger would cover his body in soil and she would never see him again.

She flickered out of invisibility, though did not materialise this time. It was as if she was blinking away a sheen of mist that had settled over her eyes. The world still looked grey and miserable, but now she was noticeable and so there was a little more brightness. Jebediah was not surprised, or if he was he didn't show it. She didn't move from her position, but instead raised her chin to look up at the broad man. "Please, don't. Don't bury him yet. I need to see him a little more."

Jebediah stared cautiously at her. He was paused with the spade in loose soil, ready to pour another lot onto the boy. Now he stopped. "You're the woman I buried recently, from Tall Johnny's, aren't you?" Meriann didn't speak. Her brow lowered and her head dipped. "Yes."

The two of them regarded each other for a moment. Meriann's soulmist was stirring agitatedly inside her, but she did not move. It hurt to think about the fight she'd had. She could barely think of it without throwing it from her mind. Her killer's eyes shamed her in every opportune moment. It was only the pain she could easily think about. Now she conjured that feeling again, the twist of the dagger inside her, the blood-red echo of hurt. The soulmist whirled more angrily in her core, and Jebediah had noticed it. Warily, he buried the spade in the ground. "What is it you want?"

She found herself unable to think of the words whilst she concentrated. Instead, she moved along the ground in a crawl until she reached the boy's grave and pulled herself into it. She nestled beside him in his shallow, cold hole and materialised once again to touch his cheek. It was not comfortable, but she was glad at least the Jebediah was not burying her alongside the boy. She had a moment's time alone with the corpse.

Words trailed from her lips and cracked quietly in the closeness of the grave. "I'm sorry for you, little one. I've leave you in peace now. I won't forget you. Your daddy will visit you, I'm sure of it." She smiled with gritted teeth and blinked out of materialisation and back to the ground-level. "Bury him..." She muttered.

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[Meriann]

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"Speech"

3rd Spring 518

Evening slipped into night, and night fell into the early day. Meriann avidly watched the world trickle by. Unlike the city where people came and went, out in the graveyard there was a stillness that pervaded every stone. Jebediah was a constant, as were the few wolves that nosed curiously at the freshly churned-over dirt, finding worms and other small, miserable creatures within. Actual people were more absent. The young lad's father had returned in the evening, his face dull and aching with grey sorrow. Meriann let him be alone, but she did not wander far from her own gravesite. There was a fear within her that if she were to leave her body, she would never get to live again. A dumb, stupid hope persisted within her spirit that it was all some kind of foolish, ridiculous mistake, that she had never been stabbed at all and she was on some kind of drug-induced trip. She knew it was stupid, but she feared to leave the site of her body, buried beneath the crumbling earth. If she still lived, she could return and reclaim her body.

Couldn't she?

The ghost no longer needed to sleep, but all that she could see grew to be too much after a while, and she closed her eyes. She did not sleep, but she rested. Invisible to all but the most canny of people, Meriann rested until the fifth bell. Something, maybe a bird, or maybe a wolf, sent a stone clattering nearby and she opened her eyes to look up into the sky. It was a hazy morning. Tendrils of cloud coiled lazily across the blue-grey sky that could barely be distinguishable from the horizon. On the lip of her world, the barest lick of sun's light was bathing the endless sky with pure, golden light.

Meriann cried, superficial silvery tears that tracked down her face and disappeared as they hit the earth at her feet. She cried without stopping as she watched the entirety of the sunrise. The orb that lit the way was once again being born into the oceanic sky. As with any birth, the sun started off pure and clean, its infancy still a dream in the eyes of all that watched it. Then, as it grew higher and higher, the other colours of the sunrise joined in. First was orange, strident and clean. Then gold, which sent shivers through Meriann's watchful body. After a while, the horizon was spilt with the blood-red of the sun's birth into the sky, and with a burst of noisy sound she sobbed and poured energy into her being, becoming tangible.

She steadied herself against the branch that marked her grave out and weakly raised her hand to the sky. Tears still flowed, but they were slower now and more introspective. Her hand could feel the rough texture of the wood beneath her palm, and there was something so incredibly lovely about the feel of it. She didn't have much energy left. The swirling grey mass inside her body told her that, but she pushed herself and pushed until mentally she had nothing left to give, all for the sake of the warmth hitting her face and the gritty branch in her palm. She gripped it until a few splinters fell to the floor, and then with a cry she let go of her materialisation and once more she was intangible.

Meriann had done more and felt more in the past few days than she had done since the 85th, the date of her drug-trip. She could be in denial no longer. If all the rest of it was a messed up lie, or a figment of her drugged imagination, the realness and the beauty of the sunrise could never have been make-believe. She was not on drugs. She was a dead woman. A ghost.

Her hand drifted from the wooden pole in the ground, and she stepped away from her grave. The earth was already drying and becoming dust above her body. It was a sad, pitiable, awful sight. Abruptly, Meriann's disgust filled her mouth and she turned her back on it. The sun was rising steadily now, maybe it was now even the seventh bell, and she knew what she had to do. There was still the fear there, lurking, telling her it was a mistake and that if she only stayed next to her body then she could come back! She ignored it, and Jebediah, and the sorry state of the graveyard and began to walk towards the city and towards the coast. There was something she needed to do.

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[Allassanachassanya]

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Grade Rewardsss

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Meriann

Skills

Materialisation: +3
Lores

Meriann: Will not forget the boy in the graveyard
Meriann: Has forgotten something important
Meriann: Is a ghost
Ghosts: Comprised of ‘mist’
Ghosts: Don’t need sleep
Materialisation: Imagining pain as a focus
Large, dark haired man: Gravedigger
Location: Place of burial
Wolves at the graveyard
Meriann: Filled with self-disgust

Notes

This was a self-grade as Meriann is my alt character.

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