Solo Celestials That Fall

[Alice Weaver]

21th of Winter, 520

Dawn always comes too early. The sun always rose again whether the tired souls huddled underneath their blankets wished it or not. It rose in spite of those that operated under the dark and those that hissed as the rays caressed their skin. The sun did not care. It had its duty to do and nothing would bar it from that simple but vitally important task.

Alice could appreciate the clockwork appearance and disappearance of the sun as it dipped below the horizon, awakening the night sky, only to rise once again and hide the stars and black night sky underneath its powerful rays. The sun had become quite important to the wandering spirit as of late as it’s one of the only ways her days stopped blending together. When one doesn’t sleep, eat or feel anything from the world about them they tend to become quite detached and free from those living concerns such as the passage of Time.

The sun and stars were a break in that daily monotony. A time for the ghost to pause and look starwards, to remind herself of why she was here. Why she was clinging so stubbornly to this half-life, one out of touch with reality. Little did she know that her tendency to apperceive the changing of the sky would lead her to witness something that would shatter her monotony for a long time…

Alice found herself within the City of Anarchy, drifting atop a broken and beaten house. The walls of the hovel were caving in underneath its own weight and the roof was sagging from water damage. If she listens closely she could hear the soft rustle and mutterings of the few people that sought refuge from the streets of Sunberth inside the dilapidated structure. A few voices that sounded younger already up and about, rising even before the sun had. Much to the chagrin of their parents who could be heard with hushed whispers telling the children to go back to sleep for just a few more bells.

All of that was of minor consequence to the ghost who was completing their daily ritual in the rising dawn light. Her way of reminding herself why she was here and what she could accomplish if she just put her heart and soul, literally, into it. Dira be damned, though she kept that part to herself within her heart, some things were best left unsaid and unthought, kept in feeling and emotions only.

So the ghost was waiting patiently for the sun to come again. To rise and cast the world in its warm glows that she could not even feel, yet swore she could. The rays always seemed to cause a slight disturbance to her otherwise placid mists that would ripple and sway underneath the light but she could not feel the movement. It was all in her head it seemed. It did not make the experience any less electric whether placebo or not and made her long for the time when she could truly feel the sun’s rays on her face, gentle and caressing, in the chilly mornings of winter. Just another reason to not go peacefully into the void but bite and claw at the natural order. Just for one. Last. Chance. To feel the sun’s warmth and the breezes that rustled her hair.

WC: 557

[Alice Weaver]

Speak of the devil and they shall appear is the saying is it not? Just as Alice was imagining the warmth that she would eventually experience, the sun began to rise over the distant horizon. The light reaching out to snuff out the smaller celestial bodies. Begining its endless crawl to light up the world around it when it ran into a bit of an issue. A cosmic struggle you could call it. And it was definitely something that caught Alice’s attention.

As the rays raced across the sky they collided with a bright star, one that Alice had never noticed before, that shone like a beacon in the dawning sky to the south. Little did she know was that she was looking at the star (though whether it was a star or not was in hot debate over the stellar community) known as Vastimi. And she was incredibly lucky to be able to see it as it was considering a very large blessing to be able to witness the star that appeared for this single day only. She was doubly lucky to experience what the star was about to do.

Alice floated ontop of the roof, enraptured by the astral battle she was witnessing. The star sparked and struggled against the morning rays as it almost seemed to race towards the mortal realm. Wait...no. It was getting larger! The star having injured itself in its battle for its luminosity, cracking itself during its vicious fight with the sun and casting down a piece of itself in its effort to escape. A piece that seemed to be coming directly for the City of Anarchy, hot and full of potential, destruction, or otherwise.

The spirit threw her gaze around to see if anyone was witnessing this monument occasion but she saw no one. Not a single soul. Dead or otherwise. Dawn appearing to be the only time the City’s streets were truly asleep as the people who worked within the shadows of the moon trade control of the city for those that walked within the light, as well as those that cleaned up the mess left by those shadow walkers.

Unbelievable! She was the only one here to witness a piece of a star throw itself to the ground. Why was no one else awake!

She paused in her frantic thoughts.

Wait. Why would I want another person to notice this? This is meant for me and me alone! Who knows what a falling star could leave behind. In this city the fewer people who see it mean the fewer people that try and take it from me. Sweet Gods, please land faster!

The ghost pleaded to whoever was listening at the time while she started to race across the rooftops, blinking from one roof to another in a blur of mist, colors disjointed and swirled past her vision as the spark of the star burned bright in her vision. She felt called to it. That this was hers and only hers alone and she would not let some Sunberthain pickpocket profit off her good fortune!

WC: 520

[Alice Weaver]

The ghost, if not for her almost complete denial of gravity, would have stumbled off a dilapidated room and plummeted to her second death while chasing this falling celestial body. It was quite difficult, she was finding, to pick a clear path over the sky-reaching highways of the city while keeping her neck craned towards the sky, tracing the burning star as it carved throughout the night sky. Even with her locked onto it like a hawk spotting a rabbit far below, she could not yet determine where it would impact. For all she knew it could be flying miles over the city and never be seen again or it could smack right into the building beside her and her only warning would the star becoming concerning large and possibly the sound and flash of a large explosion?

Where ever it could or would land the ghost would chase after it. She neither slept nor hungered nor felt the pains of traveling long distance so that was not a matter if the star landed three hundred miles away or a thousand she would go after it. And the time she would lose was negligible to the possible eternity she could spend within this half-life state. What was a few days or weeks of travel when your lifespan was in the possible thousands or higher? (Depending on if her will flagged or not which she was positive it would but not at least until around the two hundred year mark...at least that was what she hoped.)

End result was she had time to indulge herself in chasing a falling star. Something that she might never see again. Even with the possibly endless lifespan of a particularly stubborn ghost.

The buildings paused in their blurring as she perched at the top of one to catch her ‘breath.’ Though not winded in the physical sense, but mentally. Blinking rapidly as a ghost was akin to sprinting to those still in the realm of the living. Good to do for some time but after that one needed to take a break and recoup themselves. Alice gave a glance back and realized she covered almost half the city in her flight after the shooting star having started her flight from the large tower at the edge of the city known as the Nightfall Tower, the seat of the Sun’s Birth power, and she paused her flight overtops the mysterious Temple of the Unknown.

How fitting. She mused to herself as she allowed the serenity that encompassed the temple to wash over her and hasten the restoration of her energy. The reason for the musing was that she was chasing down a falling heavenly body that was equal parts mysterious and exciting and she just happened to rest in that quest on a place known for being unknown. Maybe the temple’s supposed spirit guardian deep within its bowels was looking out for a fellow lost soul? A comforting thought, she supposed. Caught in the thought she took a few seconds longer to linger at the top of the temple, threading a wisp of her shroud down the stone and leaving a bit of it within the entrance to the temple as an offering and thanks for whatever lurked below. Whether it was the cause of this or not didn’t matter. It just felt the right thing to do as Alice resumed her purse filled with burning determination. A possible location for the star’s landing site crystallized in her mind as she left the bounds and serenity of the Temple’s walls.




As Alice resumed her flight a thought flitted through her mind as she left the almost mystical serenity of the temple. The star seemed to be arcing lower and lower with every passing second and channeling the logical side she had been steadily growing from talking with Moritz she dragged her eyes along its path. Attempting to once again understand where it could land. Cursing herself as she once again was trying to do this while she was on the move, flicking on and off the material plane only to blink back into reality a heartbeat later. Nevertheless, she tried. Taking the hundreds of flashes she was getting from the star that burned to look at for too long she pulled the last bit of serenity the temple gave her and with a burst pushed the thought through.

The Dust Bed? A falling star lands in a graveyard...how fitting. The corpse of a star among the corpses of the earthly people As she continued on another thought hit her as she adjusted her course to the communal graveyard of Sunberth, one that sadly got a great deal of use. Wait! This is the best thing ever! No one lingers out by a graveyard...at least not sane people! And it’s open to boot. Oh please land there I really don’t want to have to possess a pickpocket and run them off my star.

Now that she thought she figured out the destination of the star Alice could now pick up the pace and instead of chasing after the star, it would now be chasing her as it became a race to see who could reach the acres of land where the dead rested, lives claimed by the turning gears of Sunberthain life.

She was positive the star would win that but that didn’t mean one could not try, correct?

Race the falling heavens, run from its terrible destruction, and possibly find beauty within the ruins it leaves behind. Create something beautiful from that destruction that is fitting of the name of a star. So maybe one day it would shine brightly in the sky again. The words coming unbidden to Alice as a large smile crossed her face, dress billowing in the unseen wind as she took joy running under the burning sky, a shining and burning heavenly body almost within her ethereal grasp.

WC:1000

[Alice Weaver]

Alice, predictably, lost the race against a literal fragment of a star as it streaked over her head before it disappeared between the rocky hillsides of the community graveyard known as the Dust Bed. Strangely though the muffled wump of the celestial fragment hitting the ground was nowhere near the volume she would have expected it to be. Not the roaring blaze that kicked dirt till it reached the clouds above but a burst of dust and amber flames that barely reached over the top of the modest hills. Strange… Though she supposed that it could be just a very small fragment of the star and that would lend itself to being a smaller scale impact? Whatever the reason it meant that few people could have noticed it and be coming to check it out as well. To say that no one saw the impact was folly however and the spirit planned to make this quick.
The dusty and rocky hillsides blinked past the ghost’s feet in a blur of greens, browns, and greys as she was just heartbeats from cresting the last hill that she would have to cross to look down on the fallen celestial body. Well, maybe a bit longer than one of her current heartbeats because if she had a heart it would have exploded from the sheer excitement she was experiencing closing in on the star.

As she crested the hill she was met with chaos.

She floated just inches above the flat plane on top of the hill and gazed down upon what a falling star can cause. A deep pit was gorged in the ground and debris radiated out from it. The very earth was on fire from the intense heat of the impact and the flames flickered and danced, sending an unearthly light cascading through Alice. Akin to shining a light through the clearest water and watching it dance in patterns across the ground. Her hair blew in waves as the magically saturated air rolled over her form and loosely interacted with her soulmist before it vanished as quickly as it came and she was left cold, staring at the fires that were slowly dying out on the rocky soil, leaving behind batches of melted slate and cherry red glowing gravestones. Looking at the gravestones she grimaced ever so slightly, glad that it landed in the corner of the dust bed where not many were laid to rest.

From within the fire, something shone and sent a kaleidoscope of light flashing across the hills and her eyes snapped to it. Alice strained her eyes and she drifted closer to the dying flames and caught another glimpse of something deep within the fire. A solid object.

The fragment of the star!?! Did it survive impacts? She sure hoped so as she moved closer, keeping a careful eye on if she could feel the heat of the flames or not. Not much could touch her but there are a few things that can and she had no desire to find out that fire caused by a falling star could burn a ghost. Finding no sensation from the flame and her body remaining frustratingly cold she blinked into the flames, working towards the molten core that held the fallen star.

WC:549

[Alice Weaver]

She worked her way deep into the fire that surrounded the heart of the star liberally using her ability to blink to close the gap rapidly before she reached the heart of the fire where the hottest blaze rested as well as where the star piece she was chasing was. She could barely see it within its cocoon of fire but it was there, waiting for her to pluck it from its nest and abscond with it before anyone else did.

And abscond with it she did. It only took a brush of the hand, a siphoning of soulmist wrapped around the item, and exertion of will to lift it off the ground, defying gravity with her shroud and she was off to find a quiet place to observe her finding. Relegated to drifting along the ground at a jogging pace because solid items did not travel with her while she became here but also there as she blinked.

The fragment weighed heavily within her ghostly grasp. It begged her to look at it, to see what it had to offer but she resisted the urge for the moment. Putting distance between her and where the star stuck was more critical at the moment. Who knew who or what heard or saw the impact and she’d rather not be chased off her prize because she wanted to gawk like a child at the presumed sparkly object. That just would not do!

So the ghost continued to skim across the ground, the seconds ticked by as she created more and more distance between the strike and her, the prize in tow before she judged herself to be far enough that it would be safe enough to take a peak. Just a quick look. To see if it was all worth her effort to retrieve it with her mad dash across the city.

Gently she arrested the flowing mass of soulmist that comprised her form. She reached out with her extended mists and brought the item close in front of her face, becoming illuminated by its gentle glow that cast her cold body in warm tones of starlight.

What hovered in front of the ghost appeared to be a crystal in the shape of the stereotypical star shape brought to life in the three dimensions that everyone existed in. Even in the dim light of the early morning sun did it catch the few weak beams and send them scattered across the ground around her, adding rainbow hues to its already internal light and on the ground around her. Rainbows that shifted wildly as the spirit dipped and spun the skyglass while holding it up to the dawning light. She felt as if she could sit there for hours and just watch the way the light spilled through the star fragment. Perhaps she would when she had the time. Alice didn’t know at this moment as she continued her observation of the star piece.

The oddest thing about that star was not the fact that it cast the light wildly around it but the fact that it seemed to tug at her internal thoughts. Not aggressively but what she could best compare it to was the feeling of a Graceful Possession, a sharing of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It felt as if she could project her feelings into the skyglass construct and anywho also connected to it would feel her emotions as if she was sharing Grace with them.

Shame there’s no one here that I wish to share my feelings with… She ruefully chuckled to herself. It might be useful later on to prove good intentions when I ask for something. With this, I can bare my feelings to someone and maybe that would make them more inclined to trust a ghost-like myself? I can hope I supposed. That you for the run under the stars She thought towards the star kindly and though she knew it couldn’t understand she could have sworn it glowed brighter for a second as she began her trek back towards her stash within a broken building of Sunberth.

WC: 687