[Flashback] Just Listen [Laszlo]

[Chaeli Snowsong]

Mostly, she remembered to keep far enough away so that some absentminded whiff of soulmist could not stray out at him. But occasionally other passions distracted her from that end; she seemed to have forgiven the light for whatever crime it had committed and enjoyed pausing to glance at it. With her anger hastily tucked behind a thin veil of anticipation, she became peculiarly amiable. She smiled at Laszlo and his sobering questions.

“You cannot go forward from the end, tikita.” The word, which meant warm-blooded, was spoken against foreigners in the North, where it demeaned anyone whose flesh was not blessed by the Snow Queen, Morwen. Compared to the ice-chill of her non-body, everyone was tikita; Chaeli did not use the term cruelly, yet. “Unless your end means different from the Vani end, then there is nothing after. But this is not the end. Would I be here, if the end has come?”

She had been floating backward in front of him, using the bend of the gloam-lit walls around him to hint at the way. At an unexpected turn, her ethereal outline dissolved into the wall behind her, enveloping her sight with solid darkness. She shrieked and lurched forward, casting herself far too close to the man on the other side. Mumbling an apology, Chaeli escaped quickly into the corridor beyond. The path had been descending from the start, but there the slope began to near on treacherous. Fortunately, the walls and ceiling sank inward, narrowing the passage and giving a groping hand a closer hold, should a body fall. Spurred by mortification and undaunted by physical obstacles, the ghost raced forward into the darkness.

Even without her, the path would lead Laszlo easily, without turns. In fact, moving further downward would even render the little rock in his hand useless. An identical glow soon illuminated the moist rocks with a slick, eerie shine, growing quickly in strength. Only a few more steps, and the tight hall would burst into a large room of stark air and bright light. Giant towers of unmined opalgloam rose above the height of even the tallest symenestra, rough crystals throwing their radiance in all directions. Chaeli sat among them, where most could not climb, the gray blemish of her form almost entirely eaten out of sight by the light that surrounded her.

As soon as she thought she heard the first hint of his arrival, she began to speak with unmistakable pride painted on her tongue, “I do not know the way out, but I have found the way to beauty. Can you see? It’s almost like the aurora. People think living is only in the body. Anyone who sees the aurora knows better. Anyone who sees me can learn better.”

[Laszlo]

What other choice did Laszlo have but to follow the apparition? Looking at roughly twelve bells worth of killing time, it was almost easier to deal with the dread of his uncertain future versus half a day of napping and staring into the blackness and the quiet. Even his dread was numbed, sunset feeling so far away. In the greater scheme of things, a day was just a day. Right now, the minutes spanned into an eternity.

Chaeli was frightening, less because of what she was and more because she was almost certainly unstable; even if Laszlo explain what he was and that his night phase was a false body, he doubted she would understand. She was beneath him in that aspect, in both intellect and reasonability. Yet he connected to her sorrow, despite his reluctance to humanize her. She clung so desperately to her lost Vantha life. Laszlo could hardly speak in judgment, considering he'd traveled far to find his earthbound past in Kalinor.

Laszlo wasn't foolish enough to attach his hopes to the pinlight at the end of the passage. They were miles underground and hours from the city of Kalinor. That light couldn't mean an escape, or safety. Still, he ventured onward, following the smoky wisp of a girl for his lack of options.

The fear of death didn't enter his mind. It couldn't. His mind was too paralyzed by anxiety to think that far ahead.

The aurora. The glowing pillars of rock painted Laszlo's form entirely in pale blue-green as he stepped into the chamber. The opalgloam stone in his hand dropped to the ground beside him, seeming pitifully small and dim by comparison. The golden color in Laszlo's eyes was robbed by the monochrome light and appeared blackish. His fiery auburn became brunet, and his glasslike horns glittered gray. As he gaped in awe of the beauty around him, his smooth, even features glowed greenish; even in this light, he was immaculate.

Laszlo didn't know what the aurora was, but if it compared to this, then he wanted to see it someday for himself. "Living is merely a state of being," he agreed in a whisper, having lost sight of girl. Her chilly presence could not felt, but he could still hear the eerie croon of her emotive voice. "The soul itself is eternal. There is no end, except in the direst of circumstances." Like what might happen to Laszlo, should he die.

He placed a careful hand upon one of the fat stalagmites sprouting from the ground, rolling the pads of his fingers over a layer of dust and miniscule moisture. It was cold, which itself seemed more unnatural than the glow. "You don't have to cling to this life." Laszlo stared at the silhouette of his hand, examining where the light penetrated through the beds of his fingernails. "Why do you? What was so important to you in life that you can't let go? Surely you'll have it again in the next life. Passions are strong, but they're fleeting. They can be replaced."

The questions were not meant to make Chaeli question her existence. Laszlo genuinely wanted to know. What could be worth becoming what she was? "I don't know the Vantha, but I know they don't live here. You must have been a surrogate, if you died here." Laszlo craned his neck, looking for the girl again. "I died here as well. At least, I'm fairly certain of it."

Fancy that. A dead surrogate and a dead Symenestra father. Laszlo swallowed, feeling his anxiety grow.

[Chaeli Snowsong]

She was descending slowly for him before she even realized it, inch by inch drawing her frayed and wavering soul towards the thing that held her thoughts. That brief happiness in the sight of the false aurora, the thrill of showing this lovely stranger this lovely thing, was falling from her like wax from an old candle. It dripped away beneath the heavy flame of Laszlo’s curious words, left the fragile wick raw for the catching.

Surrogate, he said, and presently she gasped, doubled over the thin and half-visible lines of her arms. Another sob shrieked through the echoing hall, faded into a whimper as she fell softly to the ground, without even the solace of gravity to hold her. She became a mess of soulmist and chill, barely enough form for a face to see out—but when it did, it was twisted in untold agonies. She emitted a whisper of a moan, clutched her unseen womb, felt the pain of a long-passed memory cut deep and terrible. The moments bled on in near silence. If words were spoken, Chaeli did not hear them.

“What do you know about death?” She rebuked finally, resentment poking through the holes of wailing sadness. Her voice was cracking and rolling, crawling with the mist towards the light of the opalgloams and the beauty of Laszlo’s feet. “You have not loved. You have not lived, if you think that.”

Fringed with melancholic blue, she rose tentatively, haggardly, out of her ‘mist. Her eyes were on the rock he had dropped, the dull little thing that would never match the glare and glory of its brothers, who stood so near. As much as she hated it, Chaeli knew in her heart that she could not regain the corporeality which that man probably took for granted. She wanted it. She wanted to touch things, to be human again, to belong to humanity. Her face did not tire of its tears, but her arm seemed strong as it rose up and into itself. As she reached for the little stone, a shadow sprouted on the wall behind her fingertips. It grew with each knuckle until it blossomed into a palm, a wrist, an elbow. Blue-black and dead, the hand that did not seem to be hers wrapped around the rock again. She could not feel whether it was smooth or rough or sharp, but she could feel it pull downward from her grasp; she sighed as if she had never felt weight before, though she had lifted the same not hours before. “I could love!” She insisted quietly, “I would have lived!”

Her face turned up at him, callouses of tangibility seeping into its corners. She glared, pulling the harmless little thing behind her. “I deserve it, more than you!” Chaeli screamed, and then threw it at his handsome, arrogant nose.

[Laszlo]

What was she doing? Parts of the ghostly Vantha woman appeared to become tangible, or at least, the light no longer passed through it as if it were made of smoke and mist. Laszlo couldn't begin to know what to think of this new development and so chose to react with caution, slowly backing away. From the start, Chaeli had only unnerved him, even terrified him. She was a spirit, he was certain of that much, a victim of fate somehow caught in the maelstrom of emotions she had felt as she died. To a degree, Laszlo could relate to that. That curiosity had helped him to function through the fear, to observe something so similar to what he was. He was beginning to realize, however, that she was far more different from him that he had imagined. And then a rock was hurtling toward his face. "Ah!" Too dumbfounded to move out of the way in time, he reflexively braced himself, attempting to duck as he covered his face with his arms. Something crack loudly, and he felt a burst of impact against his right horn. He grunted, more out of surprise than pain, stumbling backward. Not quite able to recover from the reverberations sent through his skull and the rattling of his head, his balance faltered. In the next instant, the ground came up to meet his backside. Momentarily paralyzed by his surprise on the damp, stony earth, Laszlo held up his upper half with both elbows, the points of them pressed painfully into the gritty texture of the cavern floor. The base of his right horn ached in tandem with his quickened heartbeat as he looked up at the whisper of a woman, the molten amber of his eyes barely able to make out her ethereal shape in the bleeding lights. Pushing the ground with his legs, he began trying to inch away. This was turning out badly. She was too wild, too unpredictable. She was hardly even a person; she was more like an echo, caught in a mad loop, barely able to comprehend the waking world. She heard what she wanted to hear. Her emotions were as transparent as she was, but she divulged them as randomly and capriciously as sides of dice. The mystery of whether a spirit could actually harm him was now clear. "I'm sorry!" he spat frantically, his steadied fear finally breaching its restraints, manifesting as something primal and severe. He'd known this feeling before: once when he was born, treading water and so far from the sanctuary of dry earth, and again on his first day in Kalinor, clinging for his life to a thin, taught rope above a pit of death. He now feared for his life. "I take it back! You're right! Whatever I said to upset you, I'm sorry!" Maybe she would calm down now, and maybe not. Even if she did, Laszlo would still eventually become a Symenestra again. He couldn't imagine how she'd react then. "Please, I didn't mean to disturb you! Just don't hurt me! Leave me alone!"

[Chaeli Snowsong]

For a moment, the same old pity and regret began to well up in her throat. Islands of dead flesh were flooded again with incorporeal ectoplasm, but the lines of her eyes revealed the apology that waited on a stunned tongue within a hanging mouth. He was so afraid, more than he had been before. Chaeli thought she had gained his trust; she thought they were happy, but then she had hurt him, frightened him. He was frantic and helpless, like a flailing fish at the end of a Coolwater spear. It was her fault, her weakness, her mistake.

But it was not a mistake.

Throwing that rock, holding it, using it, was more deliberate an act than anything else she had done in those hours. It was an accident that she had startled him as he slept, a mistake that her wandering aura had touched him and made him shiver. Laszlo had been the victim, stranded somehow with this wailing monster of a girl. And Chaeli had almost believed that he liked her. Slowly, her mouth closed with newfound determination. She rose up above him, over him. She was beginning to recognize the truth. He was the monster, who did not believe in love or second chances. He was the apparition, who could not know the value of life. It was her right to live, to do whatever she could to exist; he did not deserve that which she had lost.

The wisp of a hand reached out to his lovely face, his shaking cowardice. She imagined she could feel the warmth in the blood beneath his skin. She could make him so cold...

“You do not know what hurt is,” she argued, but her voice was too distant to be accusatory. It was a simple fact, set to the tune of an icy voice. Though her fingers still seemed curious of their own accord, she willed them away; the soulmist collapsed and disintegrated before it could fall onto him. Her head tilted and her eyes spoke of a genuine, if not fleeting, lucidity. “And you never will, because you will never love.”

A moment of silent observation remained suspended between them, like a drop of water on a stalactite or an icicle. Her transparent eyes were fixed on him as she began to float higher, unconsciously. Then she came to some decision and huffed; her face twisted with irritation. Fists formed at her sides and pounded the air as an ugly and frustrated groan, worthy of the sixteen years of her mortality, echoed through the beautiful room. She hated him like she hated that rock, that filthy, glaring, difficult, hopeless thing. But there was nothing she could do about it, nothing she knew how to say... so she fled. She turned and escaped unceremoniously into the wall without another word, and left him lost amid the undying aurora of the opalgloam garden.

[Macabre]

Thread Complete!
“Unbelievable. You, [subject name here], must be the pride of [subject hometown here].”

Chaeli Snowsong
Experience: Intimidation 3, Philosophy 1, Soulmist Projection 2, Materialization 4

Laszlo
Experience: Interrogation 4, Philosophy 3
Lore: Soulmist, Opalgloam Caverns

I loved this thread. Chaeli, your portrayal of the Ghost and the resolve that keeps them clinging to the tangible world was incredibly well-written. I loved seeing into Laszlo’s mind and the frustrations he faces being unable to navigate Kalinor during the day. The internal clock recognition based on his forms changing was a nice touch, thank you for portraying that it is time that changes Ethaefal, and not the light of the sun and moon.

Things to consider: Laszlo knows that Chaeli is called a Vantha, but he does not actually know what the Vantha people are. Chaeli has encountered an Ethaefal now, without realizing (or perhaps caring) what they are. With no name or consideration of their transformation attached, she could not associate Ethaefal with Laszlo. Because of this, I did not give race lores for these.

Laszlo, you can keep the opalgloam rock as a memento if you so desire!

Wish I could have given you guys more! If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me.