Presents of Presence

[Adeliz]

Spring the 14th, 520 AV

Adeliz stared at the big creature in front of her. Its wide, somber, wise eyes seemed to stare right through her. That’s probably because they did. It was one of the advantages and disadvantages of being a ghost. It was easy to go unnoticed, but there were times when one wanted to be seen. This was one of those times. Willing the mist that made her up to take form, the ghost pressed it outward until it reached the edges of her soul. Light struck her and bent, reflecting back at the world around her to show the form she used to be. It was her but less of her.

Fortunately, her pathetic attempts to materialize gave the vague idea of her-ness, of the Adeliz and Ines combination that used to exist, that those encountering her could tell who she was. The big beast in front of her remembered her and didn’t shy away from her sudden appearance.

Crom had always been Adeliz’ favorite Ashta. Maybe that’s because the Ashta had seemed elated at the arrival of Adeliz, at the arrival of Ines’ Akalak form. Though not as boisterous as some of the other Ashta, Crom was just as curious, if not more so, just in her own sedate way. Her eyes always seemed sleepy, no matter how much energy she had or how aware of the world she was. Whenever there was down time, Crom was perhaps the laziest of the Ashta, but she worked as hard as any of them when there was worthy work to be done. Sometimes, convincing her the work was of sufficient effort to be assigned to an Ashta was difficult, but Adeliz had quickly wormed her way into the big female’s heart. Whenever there was a spare moment, Crom’s gentle but searching trunk wrapped around nearby people’s bodies, poking and prodding and sniffing in hopes of finding a hidden treat. In her short time, Adeliz had always been sure to sneak the big girl something.

Snorting happily at Adeliz’ arrival as the ghost hadn’t been around much since her passing, the elephant prepared to trumpet her joy. Adeliz drifted backward and held up her hands, telling Crom to stop. “Sh, sh, sh. We don’t wanna wake up Ines, do we? I have a surprise for her, but we need to stay quiet, so it isn’t ruined. Okay?”

Crom’s tired eyes never seemed to look more awake than what they did now. With them so hooded in sleepiness, it was difficult to tell what her real emotion was, but Adeliz was certain she detected displeasure. When Crom hmphed angrily, Adeliz drifted forward again, holding her hand out, this time to calm the Ashta. Gently, reserving as much mist to her core so her touch wouldn’t be painful, Adeliz reached out and stroked Crom’s trunk, hoping her ghostly touch wouldn’t be off-putting. This was the first time she had touched one of the elephants since her death.

Shaking her head and sneezing, Crom blinked at the ghost, and Adeliz thought she saw something behind the tired eyes. Wariness? Confusion? Adeliz couldn’t be sure, but rather than wallow in whatever unpleasant thoughts were rolling in her head, Crom reached her trunk out to comfort the odd shade of Adeliz before her, only to stop back in surprise as her trunk sank through the frigid remnants of Ines’ second soul. Snorting again, Crom readied herself to trumpet in alarm.

Adeliz drifted backward once more, holding up her hands to show she was harmless. Crom bought it and reached a tentative trunk toward Adeliz again. As the trunk nearly touched her, Adeliz drifted away, just out of reach, and shook her head.

“I’m me, Crom, but I ain’t.” Her idioms were changing from the sailors she had stalked on occasion, changing from those she had shared with Ines.

Crom moaned a moan of anguish, and the tired eyes dissolved into sadness. It hurt Adeliz to see the big girl hurt, and she breezed over to her hiding spot where she had stored things for Ines’ surprise. One thing there had not been for Ines but for Crom. Adeliz hadn’t forgotten about her friend and had wanted to surprise the Ashta, too. Crom’s favorite snack was mangos, and the ghost had brought the ripest one she could find all the way from Bala’s Bowl. Forcing mist into her palms, Adeliz projected it outward, then scooped the fruit up between them, returning triumphantly to the Ashta.

“See? I didn’t forget you. I’ll never forget you.”

Curious and trusting, Crom’s trunk snaked out, sniffed the fruit once, recognized it, and took it. Elephants’ calm intelligence never ceased to amaze the short-lived Akalak. Wisdom rested behind those sleepy eyes, deep in that gentle but overwhelmingly powerful soul. Crom trumpeted once in happiness, and Adeliz couldn’t help but laugh at the big beast’s joy. It was right that something good remained between them. She laughed again and marveled at how the sound erupted from her belly rather than her throat, though that too seemed right. She’d always found emotion tended to spring from the gut.

“I wanna surprise Ines, but I’m gonna need your help to do it.” Despite Crom’s deep and vast intelligence, Adeliz knew the big creature couldn’t understand her words but felt she knew a way to get her plan across anyhow. Her hand extended out and found Crom’s forehead just between her eyes. “I need you to trust me.”

There was no way to explain what she was about to do, so she just did it.

Using her hand as a point of contact, Adeliz funneled her soul through it into Crom’s body, slipping between and around and through the soul that was already there until she filled the body out. That was the aspect of possession that perhaps surprised Adeliz the most, the way her soul expanded to fir the size and shape of any body.

When she was completely in, Adeliz didn’t grasp for control. She’d found that was the best way to get kicked out. Instead, she took the more sinister approach, letting her presence grow in the body so slowly that it went unnoticed until she already had control. Control wasn’t the point, though, not today. Today, she wanted Crom to understand her. To that end, she reached out and brushed up against the other soul with her.

To her surprise, it brushed back.

[Adeliz]

This, this was more than any bond she had ever shared with the Ashta before. The gentle, friendly gestures of body against body, while demonstrating affection, fell far short of this, the touch of soul against soul, life against life. There was no comparison of the two as they were so different in how they felt, so different in how those feelings were expressed. For several long chimes, Adeliz bathed her soul in the soul of another, immersing herself in the essence of what made Crom Crom.

Then, she reached out, more deliberate with her touch now, and found Crom’s soul waiting. With possessing people, the process of communication was simpler. Words did their job, and ideas could flow freely. However, Adeliz was possessing an elephant, and while they were extraordinarily intelligent, it was a wisdom that demonstrated itself with a different language, one where words were meaningless. Words meant nothing to an Ashta aside from the few commands they recognized and coveted phrases of praise.

As her soul brushed against Crom’s again, the nature of the contact changed, Adeliz pushing herself deeper into her old friend’s soul, intertwining threads of herself with the more set and stationary soul of Crom. She sent general feelings of familiarity and warmth attached to the threads of soulmist. Hello is what she would have meant to say if she was actually talking.

Crom responded in kind, and where Adeliz’ soul was most completely adhered to Crom’s, the elephant sent emotions and thoughts demonstrating the ideas of recognition ad joy. Hello, Adeliz. I’ve missed you she might have been saying.

And for a multitude of chimes, this was enough. Where living introductions were short and became awkward if they were drawn out too long, the reacquainting of souls could take as long as it liked and never grew old or stale. Soul to soul like this, Adeliz could feel Crom’s true feelings toward her and tell the magnitude of those feelings. Soul to soul. Adeliz imagined for a moment that this is what it must be like dancing cheek to cheek with someone.

These thoughts and feelings, while still important, began to fade, and Adeliz knew it was time to tell Crom of her plans. There was only one problem. The idea she meant to convey was birthday. Elephants were simpler creatures, wiser folk that didn’t live their lives delegated by a calendar. There was simply today and the next, and even the latter tended not to cross their minds. Even if Adeliz could get Crom to understand the concept of a same date rolling around each year, she was certain she couldn’t get Crom to understand why that made the day so important. Ashta didn’t care about their birthday. In fact, no living creatures did aside from people. The thinking of it, though, gave Adeliz several ideas of ideas to convey.

It’s Ines’ birthday today. That’s important to me, and I wanted to surprise her with something nice to celebrate it.

That was what she meant to say, but to say that, she’d have to break it down considerably. The first ideas was Ines. Today, and everything she was doing during it, was for Ines. To convey that idea, Adeliz simply conjured an image of her sister in her head. Crom’s soul jumped excitedly at the thought of her friend and caretaker. For a moment, Adeliz was angry at Ines and jealous of the happiness her sister brought to others but stopped herself and cleared her mind and her soul. It was right, she knew, that the one person who had brought her the most joy in her short life should bring that same joy to others. A softer touch from Crom’s soul, similar to the one she would have given as a gentle pat of her trunk atop Adeliz’ head, told Adeliz this understanding was right. It was a gesture both corrective and loving. Once she put herself in the right frame of mind, Adeliz moved on to the next thought.

The thoughts came one at a time to put the idea across to Crom. Today. Important. Very important. Surprise.

Crom’s soul was practically giddy at the thought, and her large feet stomped impatiently, wanting to get to the work at hand. Adeliz’ final thought was the location of the many things she had stowed for Ines’ surprise.

Though transporting the many things she had found had taxed her due to her incredibly young and inexperienced handle on manipulating the physical world, what Adeliz had actually found to be the most difficult part of the surprise was finding a gift that she thought Ines would appreciate. Being a Kelvic meant Ines had a different appreciation for things, a viewpoint with a unique understanding. Material things meant very little to her. Generally, they only served to weigh her down and interfere with exploration that she so often did in her Kelvic form.

The idea that Adeliz had finally settled on was food. Though food was something Ines could easily get on her own, Adeliz had gathered a whole collection of fruits and nuts she had found through the jungle and had even managed to steal a wheel of cheese. It was a feast with some of the flavors Adeliz had enjoyed most in life. She hoped some of them were Ines’ favorites, too.

With one last idea of May I use your body? and Crom’s permission, Adeliz’ soul tightened itself around the body she inhabited and the other soul in it as well. There were pathways that her soul felt, ran through, and captured, twisting control of them away from their master. Usually, she was much more forceful, much more aggressive, than she was now, but Crom was both a friend and a willing host. Rather than rip control away, Adeliz gently peeled it, a motion and transfer so slow that neither could be sure when control shifted from one to the other.

Adeliz shifted the weight between each of their thick legs and stretched their trunk outward, impressing herself with their reach. She was powerful. No. She was power. Power in its rawest and purest form.

She was a gods-damned elephant!

Nearly forgetting herself and her masterplan for the day, Adeliz barely stifled a trumpet, and Crom’s soul danced giddily against her own. She loved that Adeliz loved being her. Several more chimes passed while Adeliz wrestled with the urge to do elephant things.

That had always been the most jarring and disorienting part of possession for her. Every time she entered a body, the creature’s instincts strove to be her own, even if for just a tick or two. Adeliz couldn’t be sure if this was every ghost’s experience or if it was just her own. Perhaps she was broken. Perhaps it was the product of her odd separation from Ines.

For a fraction of an instant, Adeliz had been Ines, not the Akalak combination of the two but Kelvic Ines. For a single moment in time, infinitesimal yet immeasurable in Adeliz’ mind, she had felt what Ines had felt, not as a soul sister but as Ines herself. Adeliz had felt every drive of her sister’s, but most importantly, she had shared Ines’ need to bond. Adeliz had captured that moment, froze it in her memory, and vowed to make it last forever. It was only an instant, but it was so important. Though the connection had been severed, Adeliz’ desire for a bond hadn’t dissolved. Every part of her wanted to be that bond for Ines, similar yet so different from when they were sisters, but she knew it couldn’t be. Still, one day, she hoped to show Ines she hadn’t forgotten that, that she knew what her sister felt.

When Adeliz’ instincts finally won over, she shifted one big leg toward the stash of surprise food. Heavy Ashta toes caught, scuffing the ground and throwing them off balance.

In a violent cacophony of the soul like a cyclone ripping through the jungle canopy, Adeliz shot free from Crom’s body with such force she bowled harmlessly through several trees. There were few experiences in death that Adeliz had found more painful than a forced exorcism. Perhaps it was that she, in a way, bonded to her hosts so well. Perhaps this was what allowed her to sense their instincts. Perhaps that was how she had become so adept at possession so quickly. Whatever it was, being kicked out of a body felt like being torn in two, and Adeliz sat where she had stopped, unaware of the world about her as her soul shivered and sparked as it tried to knit itself back together.

[Adeliz]

Too many chimes passed while Adeliz tried to regain her sense of self, and the night time hours were slipping into predawn crepuscularity, eating what little time they had left. The other Ashta would be waking soon, and once they woke up, they would wake everyone else at the mill. Knowing this helped to speed along the soothing of her soul. Along with the pain came disorientation. To switch so rapidly from being one person back to herself was a bit too much to handle.

Chime by chime passed, and Adeliz slowly became aware of the world around her. Of all the details, Crom was the most noticeable. Despite the toxic bite of a bitter ghost’s soul, the Ashta was reaching out and stroking at the empty air that made up Adeliz, consoling the ghost she cared so much for.

“Thanks, Crom. I’ll be okay.” Harnessing her chaotic, spitting mists, Adeliz looked into the wide, wise eyes again. “We need to try that again.”

As Adeliz reached her hand toward the elephant’s head again, Crom stepped several paces back, her wide head shaking to and fro. It seemed that meant the same thing in people and animals both.

“Please.”

Another shake.

“For Ines?"

Crom hesitated at the mention of her caretaker’s name.

“Please.”

This time, Crom sat still, not moving as Adeliz reached for her once more. Once again, Adeliz found herself pouring through herself and into Crom, though this time, Crom’s soul was waiting before Adeliz couldn’t even reach out for it. This time, it was Crom conveying ideas.

The first image Adeliz encountered was an Ashta, but not just any Ashta. Crom. This idea was simple enough. Crom was talking about herself.

The next idea was Adeliz, but it was interesting to see herself as Crom saw her. It was Adeliz without a doubt, but Crom saw her as an Adeliz-shaped cloud, an idea that wasn’t too far off from reality with her wispy appearance. However, Crom saw something that didn’t exist, not physically, not visually. The Adeliz cloud wasn’t a regular cloud, light and white and pillowy. She was dark, the kind of cloud that swallowed light, a storm cloud, but every so often, in Crom’s rendition of her, a part of Adeliz parted, allowing the light of some unseen and sourceless sun to come pouring through. And in its advent through the darkness, the light seemed that much brighter. Adeliz wasn’t quite sure what to make of this view of herself.

The ideas moved seamlessly between each other, creating more of moving story than Adeliz’ inelegant frozen thoughts. Next, storm cloud Adeliz was riding atop of Crom pointing and directing the Ashta where to go, but Crom reached up with her supple trunk, wrapped it around her waist, lifted her up, and placed her on the ground.

Adeliz got the message. Crom was telling her that Adeliz was trying to be in control through her possession and Crom was having none of it.

The story continued, though, and Adeliz watched as the imagined image of Crom set about performing the task Adeliz had set out for her. She plodded back and forth between the hiding spot for the food and the sawmill’s bungalow until all of the food was set for the surprise. Then, she picked up the little storm cloud and placed her back on top of her head.

Adeliz responded with a single idea.

Yes.

Crom was offering to do all the work, then allow Adeliz to possess her for the finale of the surprise. It was probably for the best. The big elephant knew her body better than Adeliz did. After that simple thought, that brief affirmation, Adeliz let go and felt herself leaking out of her host and back into the world.

Confidently, Crom stepped out through the jungle back toward Adeliz’ surprise food. One thing that never ceased to amaze Adeliz about the Ashta was how gentle they could be. Despite their size and power, the Ashta could navigate the jungle in near complete silence. Adeliz hadn’t even been able to do that when she the size she had been while she was living.

As Crom lumbered silently and effortlessly back and forth transporting the food, Adeliz tried to make herself useful. Forcing mist down into her palms, she scooped them under a coconut and pressed the projected mists upward. It shifted but didn’t lift, and after several chimes of fruitless trying, Crom stepped up to Adeliz and took the coconut in her trunk with a snort and a shake of her head that said she thought Adeliz was being foolish.

Adeliz realized she was and tried the same thing with a small handful of nits, ones she hadn’t had the opportunity to try while she was living, but she had overheard Randal saying they were exquisite. She’d stolen them from his home while he slept. Slowly, she managed to hoist them up and cradle them over to the bungalow, setting them down with the rest of the pile as Crom brought the final piece of fruit.

Crom stood there expectantly, and one last time, Adeliz reached out and touched the Ashta’s head. This time, the big elephant’s soul practically dragged Adeliz in, pulling her along familiar pathways like a child eager to show an adult her favorite toys. Crom’s soul moved aside, making way for Adeliz’ and relinquishing control.

Once she found herself in control again, Adeliz curled their trunk in tight, then stretched it out in front of her, testing its limits. Slowly, she reached it toward the ceiling of the bungalow, small corrections from Crom’s soul next to hers guiding her along until her trunk was hovering over the little bat she knew she’d find hanging from the rafters.

Ever so softly, so they wouldn’t dislodge Ines, Adeliz prodded her once with the tip of their trunk and blew a short burst of air to wake her sister.

Leaving Crom’s body, Adeliz threw her arm open wide to gesture to her collection of things for her sister. “Good morning, Ines! Happy birthday!”

[Ines]

Ines was awoken by the breeze. Not quite the breeze she was used to, however, and she flapped about from the rafters of the bungalow to come face to face with Crom and Adeliz. The tiny bat was only a fragment the size of the Ashta, and she landed on the floor and shifted.

"Good morning, Ines! Happy Birthday!" cried out her spectral sister. Ines had forgotten all about it, but she felt overjoyed at the scene. She loved Adeliz with all of her heart, and while she sometimes missed sharing a body, she was glad that she had stayed as a ghost to still be with her. Ines kneeled near the pile of food - she had even found cheese, a newfound favorite of the Kelvic's!

"Where'd you get all this, Adeliz?" She asked in Myrian while she reached out and pet Crom on the trunk. "Did Crom help you out? This is wonderful!" The bat immediately tore into the birthday breakfast. She dug out her eating knife and went to town on the nuts, and even offered fruits to Crom. As she and Ines touched, she could tell that the Ashta had no idea why the day was important, just that it was important for her. Ines could only assume that Adeliz had used some of her strange ghost abilities to tell the elephant this, but she was so happy that she loved Ines so much to help.

"I almost forgot it was my own birthday," Ines said between mouthfulls of mango. "I'm so happy you remembered it. You know, I don't think I told anyone else it was my birthday today." Ines swallowed the mango and reached for the nuts, cutting a bit of cheese and trying them together. "I'm 4 years old!"

After scarfing down much of her feast, Ines wrapped whatever cheese remained in paper and put the nuts into a pouch for safekeeping. She took the fruit and used it to feed as treats to the other Ashta during her usual morning greetings. They took the fruits readily. As Ines fed the Ashta the treats, she still talked to Adeliz.

"So, you want to go anywhere today? Maybe we can...I dunno, I know you don't like traipsing around the jungle with me and going into scary ruins." Ines handed off the last fruit and looked thoughtful. "Maybe we can explore nearby. I'm sure there's cool stuff in Syka I haven't seen yet."

If Adeliz agreed, Ines would start marching off in the direction of the Commons.
Opposite the Commons was where Ines had been least - she tended to stay near the Mill.