To Be Human II

[Alice Weaver]

The rain was falling with more force with every passing breath as Alice stood exposed to the element of water, suspended over the large valley that formed between the peaks of Lhavit’s mountains. Her pie had already tipped over the edge. Filled and beaten over by the water and wind, tumbling into the open air below, taking one last flight before it faded from her sight. The sound of its earthly impact was lost to the ghost washed from the world in a furry of rain.

The cool and heavy drops smashing down on her new skin. Portions of it ran clear as it was freshly fallen from the sky while others became thick and viscous, tainted by the bloodred pie filling that was smeared across her lower jaw.

Alice stood, weathering the storm, face turned towards the sky and sending her eyes fluttering as a few stray drops made contact with her iris sending the world into a spiral of distorted colors with an annoying scratch shortly following the contact. She let the feeling resonate in her eyes before she raised a soddened jacket sleeve to wipe a few drops of moisture from her face. Only to have that water quickly replaced and filled back by the heavy drops tumbling from the heavens above. It was a futile gesture to keep removing the film of water from her face.

It almost felt like a reminder as the last bit of filling slipped from her face.

Nothing was permanent. Not this body, not her, not the stupid pie, and especially not her mark on the word. This just proved it. She had the body and even now her mark made in the mud was being washed away, her coins have already changed hands, her name was probably already forgotten by Ajah, and the only person who cared anything about her wanted her to die. To have her get stripped of everything that made her, her and pass on to the other side without complaint. How brutally unfair was that.

Maybe this body was a bad idea. Maybe she should have never done this. This whole adventure, this whole outing, dried up in her mouth and left behind a bitter aftertaste like a dead rat left in the sun far too long. It only showed her what she could not have easy access to anymore and it was not a happy feeling.

She was already an angry ghost, to begin with. Her simmering anger was hidden just under her cool surface, angry at the whole world for deciding that she had no place in it anymore and that she had nothing more of value to offer than just being a walking payday for a robber with a sharp knife and shakey hands. It was just this final realization that she might be more than a little screwed in her choice of lifestyle. The gods did not give a shit about her plight and the only two that showed the vaguest interest had either thrown her into the middle of the swamp and made her fight for her life or wanted to turn her into an undead pawn to be used for his own games.

Every path forward seemed so irreparably blocked and stopped at every simple damn junction.


Where did she even go? What could she even do?

WC: 557

[Alice Weaver]

Well, there was one thing that the ghost could do that was not all that productive but made her feel a hell of a lot better about her situation and it involved screaming into a storm and watching the words get ripped away. The sounds decomposed into waves of water and wind but carried for miles around, not gone but transformed.

First, it began with a few swears at the goddess of Death herself. Trailing along the lines of how dare she let people continue on, how dare she let death be so violent and sudden, and how dare she just let people rot in the fear of being forgotten and offering no comfort about it. There was no need for Death to be so cold, yet she was. No comfort or succor was to be found to the lost souls that clung to life, the ones who refused to be taken too soon and they had to suffer for it.

Ghost were terribly broken, lost, or determined individuals who had to wander the world just because a certain Goddess was too lazy to fix the issues plaguing the world herself. What was the point of having godly powers if the only thing you did with it was to make people better at killing others? The story of Dira’s Eiyons was a popular one to tell to the children to give them a scare and Alice was mostly falsely heaping blame on the Goddess due to misunderstanding and bitterness, though she was positive the Goddess had heard worst than her rantings at the sky.

She did hold off into tearing into Udyr however because she was almost positive that he would take it pretty personally and come smite her or something. She was angry...not stupid for the most part. And anyways the next breath she took to continue to shout into the now raging storm was cut short as heard the deep thunderous crack overhead.

Brilliant and blinding light lanced down from the sky and smashed into one of the bands of skyglass that arched around the bridge to provide it with more structure. The sound was deafening as the sky was split mear meters away from her as she threw herself to the side as it the lightning tried to ground itself to the tallest point. And in the open space that would be the bridge that hung over the great ravine of the mountains.

Alice impacted the glass bottom of the bridge and threw her arms over her head as her vision went white, the electric light invading her eyes even through closed lids. The sound continues to roll through the structure and as fast as it came the even was gone. Luckily for the ghost who was currently human glass was a good insulator of electricity and save her from being entirely electrocuted unlike if she was on a metal bridge.

It took a while for Alice to collect herself from the loud, electric, and overloading experience. She rested still cradling her head as she laid on the skyglass floor of the bridge and let the rain wash over her. The world’s sounds were faintly muffled and she felt something warm leak from her ears before being washed away from the rain.


Shakely she stood up.

“Ok...maybe I said some hasty things. Let’s call it even for right now?.” She spoke towards the sky getting another rumble in response. Her voice sounded muffled and far off even when it was coming from her as her ears gave a pained throb.

She did not even take the chance to give the next rumble of thunder time to decide if it should continue to try and smite the mouthy ghost as she was already off. Her legs stretched as wide as they could as she pounded down the streets of Lhavit, bleeding from the ears and in the pouring rain.

WC: 653

[Alice Weaver]

Infinity manor could not have come into view quick enough as the ghost had taken longer than she would have liked to get here. She had to navigate the streets of Lhavit half-blind from the rain and at regular intervals threw herself underneath the nearest object as the sky let out another rumble. That one encounter was enough and she was determined not to let the sky get another shot at her...at least not without making it work for it. Alice was determined to become target practice for some natural, or divine, lightning.

To say she crashed into the Manor’s door would be an understatement as she slammed open the door and without the faintest pause races up the steps, stripping wet and soddened clothes off her body as she went. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the ethereal outline of a small girl as Emma emerge out of the wall and open her mouth to speak but Alice was already gone. And she did not stop her pace until her door was shut firmly behind her and a soddened pile of clothes rested in her arm as she stood in the male body, nude as the day it was born.

“What a day what a day.” The ghost spoke to herself with shaky breaths as she went about scattering the clothes across the room, hung on various surfaces and hooks to dry and not get moldy from getting soaked in the rain.

Now that the pounding of her heart was under control and the excitement was leaving her physical body Alice felt a wave of lethargy wash over her. Not mental exhaustion as she was used to from using her ghostly abilities but physical tiredness from a body coming down from an adrenal high. It took most of her willpower to keep her eyes open as she stumbled cold and still slightly wet to the bed that rested in the center of the room and flop the body roughly in the center of it. It took even more willpower to grab the blankets and make a cocoon of warmth around the body and lay it comfortably.

She was content to lie there for the foreseeable future just enjoying the warmth the blankets could bring her cold body when she heard somewhere deep in the Infinity Manor a chime go off indicating the passing of another bell.

“I must have been gone a long time today.” She mused to herself before she felt something wrong. Deep pressure was building in her body as something was gripping her edges and forcing her in one direction. All her senses instantly fled her body as she was violently ejected from the body and went sailing across the room, now fully incorporeal, and cartoonishly passing through three walls before coming to a stop and righting herself absolute livid.

“It has a damn time limit?!?

WC: 487