[Flashback] Just Listen [Laszlo]

[Chaeli Snowsong]

78 Fall, 510

In the distant shadows at the edge of the city, a light turned on.

It popped into being in a second and then remained as if it had always been, like a pale green star in skyless darkness. With its birth, the keenest of ears might notice a complementary noise, like the high-pitched snapping of air through a gas pocket. With each burst of quiet sound it flickered; for hours, it twinkled. It did not fade.

The roads lead to it easily. They drooped grey and silent through an abandoned neighborhood, the kind that was more often patrolled by adventurous children than the likes of a hunter or prospector. Still, even the least experienced of climbers could find a way to follow it, if curiosity drove them so far. They would soon discover how the light was not, in fact, suspended in air like a star, but simply confined to a gravity-bound rock. It was the size of a symenestra’s head and it clung to an almost horizontal slope which projected out from the cave wall, where it illuminated old and dissolving graffiti. The crude Symenos words and names with unreadable dates may have been drawn a decade before or a cataclysm ago, but until that day, they had been left forgotten in darkness.

And that noise... could not have been made by unwitting air and geologic cracks. A nearing mind would recognize the peculiar whistle as a distinctly sentient sob between shrill moans. A vaguely blue fog surrounded the rock almost protectively, bouncing with every gasp and lulling with every sigh. But the light had no face and no breath to take. It could not weep.

She had worked so hard to push it out into the open. She had found it deep within the cavern, the entrance to which stood hidden in the shadow behind the green glow. She thought, if she brought it out, she could see something... if not something nice, then something. But it was so bright that she could not even see into the thick black ink beyond her makeshift balcony, only words she could not understand in a language that she hated. It was useless. Everything was useless. She could not hope to see or hear or feel something beautiful, and so she wept. Alone and invisible and blind, she wept.

[Laszlo]

Stranded. How exciting. At least Laszlo did manage to not fall to his death. Being his own calendar was a mixed bag. In Kalinor, where the recognition of passing days was a superficial practice, the changing between Laszlo's night and day phases had helped him keep track of time. It also meant that both of his forms were time limits. Once he became Symenestra, he had roughly twelve hours to navigate the city on his own before he became a helpless, horned Ethaefal in need of Symenestra assistance. And as time limits go, he seldom noticed the urgency until the last few hours were upon him and draining away. Without being able to see the sky to gauge how much time he had left, he had to rely on instinct. By now, in the static, unchanging light of the cavern torches, Laszlo had developed a sort of internal clock which helped him roughly guess when his next change would take place. The Symenestra did keep time, of course, but Laszlo wasn't always in the vicinity of a watch. It couldn't always be known to him which bell it was. The most recent example, which had left him on some gods-forgotten ledge deep in the Kalinor cavern, is a very good one. It was Laszlo's own fault, of course. His naivety had proven over and over again to be his enemy, and his curiosity often got the better of him. Although he was born with limited knowledge from his past lives, he evidently had inherited no wisdom. Like a child (and technically, Laszlo was under a year old), he'd found himself exploring the uninhabited parts of Kalinor. The nostalgia was powerful as he traversed the old ropes between the quiet, empty structures. There were old memories lodged deep in the older parts of Laszlo's soul, which were so hard to grasp and bring back into his conscious mind. It felt as if the images were just out of reach, right in the corner of his vision. When an unexpected feeling of dread came over him, Laszlo had realized he'd lost track of time. Instinct told him that nighttime was drawing to an end. It required a Symenestra's dexterous grip to travel through Kalinor, which he would lose once he shifted back into his day phase. He was forced to find some level place to rest, or risk falling into the dark chasm below. Not fifteen chimes or so after he'd found his ledge, Laszlo's body was enveloped in a quick flash of light. He was Ethaefal again, and now he was stranded. He feared calling for help would attract the wrong kind of attention from the more horrific denizens of the Kalinor cavern, so his only open was to sit and wait, and contemplate his incompetence. It would be about twelve or so hours until he could shift back into his night phase; meanwhile he was trapped alone in a nearly pitch dark cavern. After a few curses, self-derogatory insults, and a final sigh of resignation, Laszlo sank down and sat on the rock. Resting back against the cavern wall, he closed his eyes. It didn't matter if he closed his eyes or not; he couldn't see a thing either way. At least with his eyes closed, however, he could pretend he wasn't surrounded by darkness. At some point, Laszlo must have dozed off, because an odd, unidentifiable noise surprised him into waking up. Slowly opening his eyes, he kept still and waited. He stilled his breathing and listened hard to the noises, hoping to pick out a pattern and identify what it could be. Bats, perhaps? Or snakes? Something worse? As a slow, nauseating fear built up in Laszlo's chest, he became assured that there was something nearby, alive and moving. Carefully uncrossing his legs, Laszlo rose to his feet, feeling along the cavern wall as he moved. He took each step with great care, worried that the next one would lead him to the bottom of the cavern. However he remembered that the ledge had been pretty sizeable when he saw it with Symenestran eyes. As he came around what must have been a corner, he saw a light flash. Laszlo gasped and jumped backward, his heart beating loudly in his ears. He couldn't control his breathing now. Fear forced him to pant irregularly. "Hello?" he called out with a broken voice. Laszlo shook his head, swallowed. Pathetic. Damn this fear, it wasn't doing him any good. If something out there meant to harm him, he was doomed anyway. Although he knew that his soul would simply pass on to the next life if he died (or he hoped it would), the petrifying fear of death was once again in complete control of his ambitions. "Hello?" he tried again, this time his voice carrying a bit more resolve to it. "Is someone there? I… I don't mean you any harm. Please, if you're a man and not a beast, please answer me."

[Chaeli Snowsong]

Consumed in grief, drowning in the echoes of her own sobs, she did not know much else for a long time. It was arguable that she had lost all perception of time, without the distractions of sleep or sunlight or obligation. Her lungs would not tire and her sadness would not subside, not even for a tragedy as trivial as darkness. But if she could do nothing else, she could think. Eventually she would find a different reason to cry, and perhaps that reason would stir her to some other emotion, some other purpose.

She could not think that far. Another sound dared to interrupt her weeping, and those peculiar noises culminated in a hasty gasp. Where the glaucous mist had once hugged the glowing phosphorous rock, it suddenly flourished like tossed snow and receded towards the corner opposite the cavern entrance. Freed from the sheen of soulmist, the green light burst with new radiance. The echoes of the terrified words were gobbled up by the surrounding emptiness and, for a moment more, the ledge was suspended in silence.

Then a loud whimper heralded her reply. “Beast?!” A girl’s voice shrieked, furious and frayed. The disembodied words flowed around the offending man like a gust of Talderan wind, everywhere at once. So distraught was she by the insinuation, she did not think to grant the ethaefal the courtesy of understanding. “I am as much a man as your sheep-mother is honest, you horn-headed, assuming insect! And since I am not a man, I must be a beast! Is that what I am to you? I am! I am a monster, to frighten children and fools!” And the song turned into wails, and for a few long seconds her despair filled the world. She neared him invisibly, pulling at the hairs on his arms with Avanthalan cold.

“No...” The word may not have been distinguishable until she said it again. “No.” With that single syllable, the translucent figure of a young woman blinked into existence before him. Untouched by the green glow that persisted beyond, the face that appeared seemed outlined in wisps of grey smoke between blue-violet flames, escaping into the vague shadow of a body beneath. It did not match the chill air that emanated from her, like a terrible aura that reached desperately out for some warmth to steal. Her brow was bent with offense, the non-flesh beneath her black eyes glistening like ice.

Though she had seen him well enough before, that moment of calm allowed her to realize that he was not a member of the race she detested most. Her expression lifted, if only a little. “I am a girl,” she insisted, her indignant Common heavily accented by the lyrical tirade previous. “You can’t call me anything else.”

[Laszlo]

Crying. It was the sound of crying, weeping. Whatever was out there became suddenly a little less terrifying, but not by much. Laszlo was out in the middle of nowhere, in the dead, abandoned portions of Kalinor. There shouldn't have been anything out here! Ugh, why was he stranded on this ledge, of all ledges. A swirling light glowed brightly in the darkness, illuminating the nearby rocks. Wide-eyed, Laszlo watched it with his dull vision, mesmerized as well as horrified. It wasn't a child or a woman, like it had sounded like. It was just… light here, as far as he could see. What was it? Stray magic? The shadow of a god? It took Laszlo a little too long to realize that there was no one else here, making those sobbing noises. It was coming from thin air, like this phantom light. The Ethaefal closed his mouth and breathed through his nose, so he didn't have to hear himself gasping. The voice suddenly roared at him, repeating a word that he had said. Frightened and surprised, Laszlo stumbled backward and tripped, falling on his rear. Though there was no wind in the cavern of Kalinor, a startlingly chilled gust of air shot past him, bringing him to shiver and shuffle backward about half a meter. Still terrified, he sat and listened as the voice carried on in a language that he didn't understand. It definitely wasn't Symenos, but he picked out a few Common words that told him that she (it sounded like a she) had understood what he'd said. No, wait, there had been a Symenestran word. What was this? Images flashed in front of Laszlo like memories of a dream. It was like pale smoke, or refracted light on the underwater floor of a fountain. He stared, his eyes locked on the display in front of him, as the impossible coldness chilled his skin. There was something tangible to the sensation. Like… like the warmth of another body, a presence nearby. Only it was freezing, just as it felt when he'd stepped out of the winter-chilled Suvan sea on the day of his birth. It was a girl, an adolescent at the cusp of womanhood. Marrying age. He shouldn't have been able to see her in the dark, but she was glowing. Laszlo's imagination had already put it together, but logically, his mind didn't want to believe what it was seeing. "O-Of course you're a girl. When I said 'man', I didn't mean it quite like…" Laszlo swiped stray hair out of his face, to stop it clouding his vision. "It's just I didn't expect anyone out here, and… Are… are you an apparition?" That sounded like it shouldn't have made sense, but Laszlo didn't feel out of place for asking it. "I… I'm sorry for intruding, I'm just, uh, stuck here." In the presence of something apparently lucid, at least partially, Laszlo attempted to recover his dignity by finding his feet. Slowly, though, in case whatever she was, she wouldn't be startled into shoving him out of the alcove and plunging into the darkness. He held his hands up to show that he was unarmed, if she could see at all. If anything he would have had on him could have harmed her at all. "I, I didn't mean to insult you. I suppose that I… I'm sort of an apparition, too. Just… what's left after living so many lives in service to my goddess." He chanced a small, but forced smile. His eyes were still wide with fear. "You are a girl, then. A… lovely girl. I'm Laszlo. I'm an Ethaefal," he added without thinking, as he had become used to identifying his race to people he'd just met. Some Symenestra seemed to like the Ethaefal, even if they did stare at him a bit he was a science project. "Who… who are you…?"

[Chaeli Snowsong]

He was so scared. She could see him shaking. Chaeli moved backward, stirring the sensitive soulmist that swirled in rolling waves beneath her. A hand materialized and rose to her mouth; she gasped, surprised at her own pity for the stranger and his fear. When her hand dropped, an arm formed between the two fragmented pieces. Its brother appeared on her other side, and together they strayed behind her as she leaned forward to listen. His Common was not of any accent she could recognize, but he was most certainly not a Syliran human. For the first time in a long time, she felt curious. Soundlessly, she glided towards him, head cocked and brow bent. Then, he called her lovely.

And the girl dissolved into undulating grey lines, wailing. The lines collapsed into themselves until she was invisible again, but the renewed vigor of her despair were not lost on any ears. He was not the assuming one! She had mistaken his fear for disdain and scared him all over again, like the monster she was. And he was a kind man, the first she had met in years and years, and she had forced him to apologize and flatter and indulge her pettiness!

She reappeared beside the rock, leaning an elbow against it as she looked over the horrid wall on the other side. Soulmist pooled around her waist and hugged the green light where it reflected on the stone ledge. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said, refusing to look at him as she allowed him a glimpse of her. “I am sorry I frightened you. I did not mean it. I only...” She paused to sigh, remembering his question. It was a proper one, and one she had ignored, like a beast. Her eyes moved from the wall to dip downward at her invisible hand.

“My name is Chaeli,” she replied with a single loud sob, “I do not know if I am an appartition,” —she clearly did not understand the word— “But I know I am a girl, a Vantha girl, and I have lived here a long time.”

Finally, she looked up at him. When their eyes met, the whole of both arms became so visible that they seemed to have mass. There was a simple dress on her shoulders, which matched her greyish complexion, but beyond her waist there was only white smoke. Her voice cracked with tears of embarrassment and gratitude. “It is nice to meet you, Laszlo. You are a lovely man, too... you are not a Spider. How did you get here?” The soulmist suddenly spun around her, reaching for him from a distance, even as she remained still. She added eagerly, “Are you dead, too?”

[Laszlo]

Vantha. Laszlo mouthed the unfamiliar word to himself, keeping his fixed on the smoky light display that claimed to be a girl. She was something out of a nightmare, wailing, vanishing, and reappearing. Perhaps he was dreaming, having fallen asleep on the ledge he'd stranded himself on in this cavern of darkness and desolation. What he was seeing, however, was so fantastic, so mystical that he wanted to believe it was real. A ghost, a lost spirit, could that really be what she was? In any case, this didn't feel like any of his usual dreams. He didn't know what a Vantha was. The girl looked like an ordinary human, or at least a representation of one. The girl seemed inordinately upset, unable to stop herself from crying. Though this had been alarming at first, her words were gentle, and Laszlo's confidence was beginning to return to him. As the smoke and light that rolled from her began to reach toward him, Laszlo took two cautious steps backward. Even if she was a spirit, he wasn't sure whether she was dangerous. She chilled the air around her like the sea in winter. "I don't know," he answered truthfully, watching the clouds of what he'd later learn was called soulmist. "I have died, many times. In my dreams, I remember being murdered. But I'm alive now, and I don't know why." Laszlo turned his molten amber eyes back to the girl's illuminated face. How well could she see him, there in the darkness? She said he wasn't a Spider. He presumed she meant Symenestra, but that meant that she hadn't seen him shift out of his night phase. Laszlo was a Symenestra, in certain ways. If he lied to her now, it might end badly if she saw him return to his night form. The Ethaefal felt thoughtfully at his cloak, wondering if his hood could conceal his face from this wandering spirit. Perhaps it would be on the safe side to establish a rapport with this… thing. Even if she used to be human, she wasn't anymore. "So you are a ghost," he observed carefully, noting the girl's accent and her apparent misunderstanding over the word 'apparition'. Common wasn't her first language. "You don't belong in this world, do you?" The Ethaefal chanced a small smile and a brief laugh. Interesting they had that in common. "Chaeli… why are you crying? What are you doing out here alone?"

[Chaeli Snowsong]

At the scarcest hint of fear in the man’s pair of backwards steps, Chaeli’s hands withdrew to her chest. The grasping soulmist collapsed into the ground as if beneath a sudden weight. It lingered close, like stray threads around her body, like little flames of hesitance. She would not frighten him. She could not let him leave, not before she had made things right between them, the lovely dead girl and the kind not-Spider.

He spoke of death, and she did not notice how her eyes strayed to the endless darkness over his shoulder. His explanation confused her, she who had not heard the words of sages in decades, she who was still offended by the subject of murder. She thought she felt his eyes on her, so hers darted back to match them. It amused her to imagine that his skin was actually as green as it appeared in the phosphoric light of the raw opalgloam. Her sad and drooping expression lifted when he turned his words to her again, and she nodded blankly at what he called her. She was a ghost; it was true, whether she liked it or not. But...

“I do belong!” She insisted, as the lines of her silhouette suddenly flared red. Her melodic voice rose to a teary trill. “I deserve to be here as much as you do! I deserve to belong, and to dream, and to see!” Beset with a few short sobs, she turned away from him when she could not find more words. Her body began to escape into invisibility again. “I... I wanted to see, for once. I want to see the air, to see if there is snow somewhere, if there is anything but death, if there is beauty in this hole, this hell. I want to see the walls. I want to see my Nest!” She spat the final word, which she associated only with captivity. When her flighty eyes regarded the light again, her tone dropped to some attempt at composure.

“This light...” Her hand reappeared, and a single fingertip truly materialized so that it could press against its sharpest corner. “I thought if I brought it out from the cave, I could see. I thought that if I could see, then the walls might be beautiful.” She sighed, and the tears welled again. “But there are only ugly words, ugly like a Spider’s lies, and not as pretty as his face.”

He had given her some cursory contentment, in enabling her to put her thoughts to words, but in that moment she seemed to ignore him in favor of that rock. The matte grey of her finger slowly spread to the whole of her hand, which she wrapped carefully around the glowing object. It scraped against the face of the ledge as she pushed it barely an inch, and the hollow noise of its fruitless progress inspired her hand to resign again to translucence. She groaned.

[Laszlo]

Laszlo stood watching the apparition, at a loss for words as he worked on steadying his breath. He could barely make sense of what Chaeli was saying, but she wasn't really talking to him. These were her broken thoughts spoken aloud, the musings of a lost soul, riddled with indecipherable phrases and unanswerable rhetoric. How shattered was her mind? Was she even capable of making sense? Or was she caught in this endless loop of desperation, oblivious to her predicament? No, she was intelligent. Even if Laszlo couldn't understand what she was saying, she had reacted to his fear, pulling back when he had recoiled away from her. He reasoned that she must have been capable of more than just responding to the disjointed nature of her own internal misery. What would happen now, he couldn't begin to speculate. Here he was, stranded on some forgotten ledge in a pitch black cavern, talking to a ghost, one who evidently had something against Symenestra. He could pass time talking to the girl and trying to make sense of her, but there was no way of escaping until after nightfall, when he'd regain the sharp vision and adhesive grip of the Symenestra. If she saw him that way… what would she do, then? Would she knock him off into the blackness? Possess him? Suck out his soul? Laszlo didn't know a thing about ghosts, but he decided that nothing good could come out of her knowing what he wholly was. He would have to persuade her to leave. The consequences if he didn't… he tried not to think about. Tempering his trepidation, Laszlo took a step closer to the ghost. He replayed her words in his head, trying to make sense of her vague rhetoric. "You can't see," he echoed quietly, processing the fact that she was as blind as he was. Suppose it was silly to think that as a ghost, she'd have some sort of magical all-sight. Her eyes, or whatever acted as her eyes, were no different than Laszlo's dayside ones. Presumably, anyway. "I've seen outside, Chaeli. There's nothing, just a dead city and a filthy pit. Not much to see. Nothing beautiful." He looked down at the opalgloam rock, trying to make sense of what she was doing. Ethereal as she was, she could barely seem to affect the physical world around her. She was trying so very hard. "Would you let me help you? I can move the rock for you. You'll see for yourself, there's nothing." Laszlo dared not touch the rock while it was surrounded by her soulmist. The concept of reaching through her was just too weird. "But beyond here, there's a city, Chaeli." Laszlo felt for the nearby wall, seeking the comfort of something solid to lean on, instead of standing out in the open unseen, barely illuminated by the glowing rock. "Through the darkness, there are many lights, and the Symenestra people. Probably your Nest." Laszlo repeated the Symenestra word she used. His grasp on Symenos was still shaky, but that word he heard a lot, especially around the Place of Purging. Suddenly, he began to put together what her fate must have been. Some small part of him pitied her. The larger portion, which had developed a sort of respect for his former race, but more importantly was terrified out of his mind, was more focused on his own survival than the death of a girl he'd never met. The Ethaefal narrowed his eyes at her, a futile gesture considering the lighting. "But if you're… if you're dead… then how long have you been here? In this place? Don't you know how close the city is?" There was no telling whether she would, or could give a direct answer. She was intelligent, Laszlo was certain of that. Whether she was particularly cognitive was a separate matter.

[Chaeli Snowsong]

“I know.” Chaeli asserted sourly, glaring. “I know there is a city. I have been there. There is not beauty, even where there is light. There are Spiders, Laszlo; you have seen them. Why would I want to look at that city? Out here, I thought... I thought, maybe...” She needed no air or lungs to persist in this world, and yet she still seemed to struggle for a breath between gasps and hiccups and cold, dry tears. These were not the same as those previous sadnesses that had sent her wailing, though; there was an angry edge in them, full of unfulfilled resentment and long-breweing hatred. It was easier to be angry, than to be sad.

She swiped uselessly at the raw opalgloam without hoping to stir it, then crossed her arms over her chest and rose to a standing height with a resentful huff. The lines that remained of her seemed diluted and thin when she retreated from the thing and towards the ledge. “There is no sky here,” she answered absently, “No sun or moon to tell the time of day, or the season or the year...” Chaeli sucked on her bottom lip and looked over it as if she might see all the way down to the bottom. She had been there once, a long time ago. She was perfectly intimate with the pit’s contents, at least that which sat beneath the city’s greater hub. She could not remember what it was that lit her way then, but she decided that she hated it.

She turned suddenly to Laszlo, and even as her arms dropped uselessly at her sides, they did not disappear. Her attention fell on the rock. “You should take it and throw it into the pits, where it belongs. It is of no use to me. It is a filthy, glaring, difficult, hopeless thing and I hate it.”

Whether or not he reached for it, she continued to stare at it with tight lips and a furrowed brow. When she noticed how the cold mist around her feet whorled towards that which held her attention, she consciously withdrew the stuff. Even in the faint green light, the flares of furious red in it were fading in favor of colorless hesitance. Then an excuse of a thought bubbled onto her rising eyelids and a peculiarly gaunt arm shot out in front of her, fingers splayed and reaching. “Wait, wait— no.” She said suddenly, translucent eyes locked for a second on the green-touched warmth of his amber gaze, before they averted to the entrance to the cavern. “I know a place. I am such a fool... I know a place.” Then she gasped, and her soulmist engulfed her like a sudden blizzard; as it collapsed before Laszlo, it rose again behind him, beside the dark threshold.

“I can show you. You light the way, so we can follow the path.” She could have moved through the walls, if she did not have a man to follow her, but she did not mind exploring the tunnels which she had used to push the rock from its source. As she dodged into the shadow of the passage, he might discern the faint hue of yellow delight on her silhouette.

[Laszlo]

She was angry, and that was terrifying. The fear, Laszlo realized, was not going to subside. His heart would continue pounding against his chest and his breaths would continue as they were, short and labored. However, he was growing used to it, the terror and the girl made of smoke and light. She was keeping her distance, at least for now, and there was no immediate sign that Laszlo's untimely death was imminent. Slowly released from a paralytic sort of panic, Laszlo's higher brain function was returning. He was scared, but at least now he could think more clearly, and feel out his situation. She was angry. That's what he noticed. Not at him, not even at the inanimate opalgloam rock. It was the Spiders she loathed, and the city. She resented her fate; Laszlo could relate to that. She was angry she was dead. The Ethaefal couldn't help but dwell on that. Of course it had occurred to him to be angry about his predicament, this unwanted life he was living. He could have cursed Syna and all the gods for not saving him, but what good would that have done him? What could anger accomplish? Yet, watching the ghost now, he wondered if anger would be justified. He wasn't the only one trapped in a world in which he did not belong—and Chaeli didn't belong, no matter how strongly the disembodied spirit insisted she did. Seeing her resentful made him feel… empowered. If he became angry now, he wouldn't be alone in that. "It's a little past sunrise," Laszlo told her quietly, his amber gold eyes trained on the glowing rock. He began to step toward it cautiously, watching the way the soulmist swirled in the light. "Trust me on that. It's late Fall, in the year five hundred-eleven. It'll be Winter in just a few weeks." Thinking about it, what good did that anger do for Chaeli? Laszlo was alive, he was driven by a biological imperative to survive, to keep going. Chaeli… she was dead, right? So what was the point? Why did she keep going? What did she do with all her spare time? Laszlo stooped over, hesitating before picking up the rock. The smoky extension of Chaeli's form began to withdraw, but the Ethaefal curiously reached for it, thinking it no more harmful than chilled smoke. It grazed his fingertip, and it burned. He gasped audibly, but the pain wasn't lasting. He closed his hand around the opalgloam, which itself was cold as a block of ice, and straightened as he lifted it up. "In there?" Laszlo asked, his tempered fear robbing any expression out of his tone of voice. He might have been incredulous if he could feel anything else right now. She wanted him to go deeper into the cavern? There could be anything down there. An army of vampire bats, maybe, or horse-sized spiders. That should have sounded ridiculous, but he was talking to a ghost. "Nothing about this is a good idea." A ring of light moved through the cavern with Laszlo in its center, holding the opalgloam out like an awkward torch. His glasslike horns glittered in the darkness, so dull in color and wishing for the sunlight. The still air of the Kalinor caverns was the same familiar chill, but next to the ghost, he was almost freezing. He shivered once, feeling his jaw tremor. Could have been the cold, or the fear. "Why are you here, Chaeli?" Laszlo asked her, half out of curiosity and half to fill the thick, smothering silence. "If you hate the Spiders, why do you stay? Can't you go anywhere?" He glanced back at her. "No, why stay here at all? You're dead. You are dead, aren't you? Shouldn't you move on?" He faced forward again. "That's what I did. It was hard, sometimes, but I did. Death is death. It's the end. You can't go back, only forward."