[SO-Sylira] A Spirit, a Ship, and a Symenestra (Shai)

[Keene Ward]

Koroko nodded as Shai spoke, gazing out into the ocean with a steady smile. She fiddled with the hem of her scarf, running the silk between her fingers almost subconsciously as she calmly listened to Shai's answers. She didn't speak for a time after Shai asked her question, continuing to gaze outwards, her smile still casually planted on her lips. "The ability to affect ghosts, you say?" A small chuckle bounced her shoulders before she let out a tired sigh. She bent her head forward, pressing her forehead to her thumbs for a few moments before she turned to regard the precariously perched young woman before her. "You seem to believe you do not already possess the capability to affect the spirits of the dead." She raised a brow, "I believe you are mistaken."

Steepling her fingers before her lips, Koroko regarded Shai with a soft gaze, her thoughts clearly swirling behind her gentle green eyes. "It is not so much what you do, but how you do it." She pointed at Shai. "A spirit is no different from you or I in what it needs," The hand turned to open as an offering cup of her fingers and palm. "However, where we have the ability to grasp onto purpose," The fingers separated, letting the imaginary liquid withing spill onto the gently swaying deck beneath them. "A spirit, generally, cannot."

She let her had fall to her side, a curious glint in her eye. "What is your purpose, Lady Saris?" Gently fiddling with the hem of her scarf once more, she continued, her voice thoughtful and soothing. "To understand yourself is to understand those around you." A small smile played at her lips. "Often the things we find most disconcerting are those that we do not, or will not, understand."

[Shai]

Shai’s neck extended in an ethereal curve as she stared up towards the stars. The human was pushing against a subject that the little woman intentionally avoided. Weary, her eyes arbitrarily connected stars. “Purpose is what we want it to be.” The Symenestra replied, trying to deny that other eyes might watch the same constellations alone without his mother. “If we allow another to dictate our purpose, we will eventually be lost.” She rocked forward, dropping her gaze back to the deck and the woman. “ That is what it is to be…” Common words failed her foreign lips. “Made of blood and temporary life.”


“I can only disagree that a you and I are alike with spirits.” The emotional baggage of a soul adrift was one matter, but she cannot over look their capabilities. A ghost could impede her in ways a physical person never could, she had experienced it. They could also move in ways she could never hope to while alive. “I do not long suffer things which can spy on me without repercussion.” Secrets were more her shield that her armor could ever manage. “If you say that speaking with them will deter a lost spirit from stalking my shadow, I will gladly do it though in both of my previous encounters with ghosts it simply made them stay longer.” She spoke with what could easily be mistaken for a haughty attitude. In reality, Shai suffered needless delays only marginally more than spies.

“What would you have me say?” The spider inquired.

[Keene Ward]

Koroko gave the impatient woman a warm smile, her eyes creasing gently to cast soft shadows beneath the moonlight. A little chuckle in her voice as she replied, her gaze drifting into the horizon as she spoke. "Wise words, Lady Saris. Perhaps..." Her fingers fell from her scarf to wrap around the railing of the ship's hull, face turning to give the Symnestra perched so precariously a curious raise of her brow. "But wisdom can often conceal the most simple of details."

She inclined her head, a nod for little apparent reason before she continued, voice almost wistful. "And why do you think a spirit might stalk you so?" A small glint of mirth played in her eyes. "Why might something linger when you give the time of day?" Smiling to herself, Koroko shook her head, small frame - bundled as it was - so slight in the salty night air. They made an odd pair: pale elegance and weathered age. The old woman let out a small sigh, one of weariness that was not directed at the Shai's question, but rather a sort of general statement about her own long-lived life. "I would have you say nothing you yourself would not, and everything you yourself would think to."

Koroko let her eyes peruse Shai's face, an amusement playing in her features. "You wish for a straight path where there are only twists and turns." Her eyes settled on Shai's, a strong glow of life behind the woman's aged visage. "You are still young, my lady. Life has treated you as so many others, and I cannot say what it might have done to you thus far." There was a subtle, earnest lilt to her words. She spoke from experience of a life filled with both great tragedy and joy alike. "A spirit is merely a soul that life has not quite finished with." A small, matronly smile graced her lips once more. "What would you have you say?"

[Shai]

“If we accept that ghosts are like people then we must also accept that some are malignant.” Shai’s eyes narrowed, “It is those souls I have encountered and whether life was done with them or not, they were not done with the living.” That really was the crux of this conversation and Shai was growing bored of the subterfuge and watching it spiral back on itself. “It is these ghosts, that I would choose to influence. The benign are not my concern, I never go after a beast that does not first go after me.”


The widow tried to stop the feeling crawling up her spine, laying bare her intention was altogether a last resort. “Spoken influence means little between two people, as I am sure you are aware. Speech has power only in its deception and inspiration, speech without force of arms or influence behind is empty.” Alien eyes constricted, “It is not my way to speak at all, that is not who I am nor how I influence people. Words are imperfect tools where perception reigns.”

“I would say exactly nothing…” She trailed off, but her gaze only intensified. “Unless there was something to gain from speaking.” The polite mother was slipping down in the bowels of the ship where her friends slept. Gradually the cracks in her mask began to show and the monster brutally forged by survival and betrayal. Shai had probably created more ghosts than she had ever encountered in her travels, her kempt claws were far from unstained.

[Keene Ward]

Koroko's smile faded some, a sadness slipping into her features as she listened to Shai's reply. "I see." She turned away then, moving towards a crate to ease herself up onto it, a small sigh of effort passing between her lips as she did so. She motioned for Shai to join her, leaving her to her own devices after the gesture as she spoke again, he voice slightly more distant as if lost in memory. "I met a young man who was of much the same mindset as you, Lady Saris." His lips turned in a nostalgic smile, soft as the lapping of the waves in the serenity of the night's ocean. "He was... impetuous. Wild, perhaps." As she spoke, her eyes never once moved back to Shai's face, fully immersed in the visions of the past.

"He thought of spirits much as you do: beasts, monsters... Creatures who were no more of our world than we of theirs. He found words as impotent as any dulled knife, and I agreed with him." She chuckled, though the quality of the sound was as equally tinged with a bittersweet melancholy as her words. "I thought him... brilliant. Passionate." Her eyes lifted towards the moon, her smile warm in her remembrance, "Handsome." She shook her head, a sigh drifting to mingle with the gentle rush of a breeze that pressed over the deck. "I taught him what I knew, and he taught me as well. We hunted ghosts, destroying them for reasons that I fully believed valid." She shook her head, face falling into a frown. "But what I did not understand, and what he refused to see, was the inhumanity of it."

Koroko's eyes settled on the deck in front of her, shoulder sagging some. "We had become monsters in our own right, destroying even the most simple of spectres." Shaking her head, Koroko finally looked back to Shai, a glimmer of contempt in her stare, though it was void from the motherly rock of her voice. "You ask for something that I cannot give you." She paused, shaking her head, "No, that I will not give you." There was a heaviness to her voice that was similar in sound to regret. "You are still but a child. You rage against what the world has done to you, and I am inclined to believe it is for good reason, Lady Saris. I cannot, however, induct you into a new a world when the one you currently reside in colors your mind so completely."

Absently, her fingers played with her scarf, as her eyes softened some. "I do not often give definitive advice, but I will say this: Words carry more weight than any mountain, and they pierce the soul where a sword would only pierce flesh. All tools are imperfect, but few are so powerful." Rising from the containers, Koroko gathered her robes, situating them so that they weathered the wind nicely. "I am old and tired, Lady Saris. I must retire for the night." She gave a respectful bow to the Symenestra, moving slowly and steadily across the deck. Before she reached the captain's quarters where she would reside for the duration of the voyage, she turned to give Shai a gentle smile. "I enjoyed our talk. Perhaps will we speak again in a similar capacity."

[Shai]

Shai’s neck snapped towards the retreating figure, “Elder, there is no man or woman or soul upon this earth or sea that is not a beast. Choice gives us the right to be monsters.” She bit off the last word, “That does not mean we must be.”

“I have watched Ghosts that you so protect with your words, I have watched them lay siege to a city for a night. Run rampant where none could stop them, chase good people until their feet bled and still they ran.” She cleared her throat and some of the venomous tone with it, “Perhaps you are not a beast, perhaps he-” She motioned towards the last place the male ghost had appeared, “is not a beast. But Lady Koroko, I am. But, I do not make a habit of taking arms against those who do not threaten me.” The white of her teeth glinted in the clear night, “I am no hunter.”

The spider tipped forward onto the balls of her feet, adding only a few precious inches to her insignificant height but more importantly raising in her center of balance to deal with the waves. “I can continue to feed you the lie, the pacifist, the lost seeking redemption, but that would be less true than a child’s bedtime story. All that I am is by necessity, not by rage but by survival. I hold no venom against this world only the one who wronged me in the most primal way one can wrong a mother. This world will be how it is with or without me and will care not one drop for my anger or influence.” Perhaps she was offended, and that loosened her tongue. Shai was known for her rashness in the moment if she had no previous plan, but she was rarely known for her truth telling ability.

“Words are only power until the blade licks your flesh.” The Symenstra would let the woman go then, if she still chose to walk away. Shai eyed the rigging, considering a midnight climb to taste the sea wind. In the heights her mind might find solace.

[Keene Ward]

Koroko paused, eyes set on the woman who spoke so honestly. A frown was on her features, and it remained even as she rummaged in her robes for a chime before withdrawing a small vial filled with a shimmering, pale substance. Staring down at it, the woman seemed to mull something over in her mind before she spoke. "I am old. I have lived a long time, and I have seen many things." She wearily beckoned Shai over with a small gesture, her words continuing. "What is good and evil in the face of eternity?" She shook her head. "I suppose only the gods might know."

Her hands placed the vial in to Shai's, weathered fingers wrapping around hers for a moment of warmth as the old woman's eyes stared into the Symenestra's. "The World will always remember the marks left upon it, Lady Saris. She is a mother who never forgets." Removing her hands, Koroko let out a heavy sigh, the wear of the night becoming apparent in her posture and tired smile. "But..." She pressed open the door, hovering between the cabin and the deck. "Perhaps, there are still things for me to learn. You will find that the soulmist you now possess has the ability to affect the spirits. Use it as you see fit."

With a respectful bow, Koroko offered her one last, "Until we speak again." Before closing the door to leave Shai alone to ruminate over all that had passed between them.

[Shai]

Shai ran her fingers over the vial, she’d said nothing after Koroko this time. Letting the woman leave in peace behind the door. The spider slid the vial up her sleeve and let her cilia to the glassy surface securing it to her skin so she could climb freely. Waiting for the deck duty to look away from her, the slender woman approached the aft mast and began to scale it. It just so happened the side that faced away from the guards’ gazes happened not to have a ladder. Lack of climbing device slowed the woman not at all.

Nestled on a sail beam and the mast, the spider crouched in relative safety. Perhaps because she was quiet or because the humans were aware of the Symenestra in their midst no one bothered her. For several chimes she sat there examining the vial…

Chell, what do you think it is?

Koroko called it soulmist. It affects ghosts.. Came the familiar’s reply.

Yes that is what she said. Do you think its related to djed? Or maybe a potion of some kind? Shai tried not to be curt, in her response although only marginally succeeded.

Would need to test it to know more.

Ah, judging by her words Koroko would not approve perhaps it would be good to wait until we’re off the ship? Shai speculated.

Alternative: Ask her. She cannot leave the ship any sooner than us. Unless she is a Spirit too.

Shai’s reply was dry and out loud, “Thank you for the peace of mind, Chell. Truly a partner that banishes any need for enemies.”

The pair stayed up in the ocean breeze a bell more before returning to Shai’s hammock and quitting the night. In that time though, the widow couldn’t shake the feeling of unease. That ghost was still present on the ship whether she could perceive it or not.

[Keene Ward]

The ninety first day of winter, 514 AV

Night was solid and complete. Koroko had not appeared on the deck or anywhere else for that matter for the duration of the day. In the darkness, however, a figure lurked, wide gemtoned eyes staring at the swirling mists of the ghost from the night before. He stood with his back to her, shoulders shivering under the muted force of his sobbing. There were muttered words, a frantic sort of inhale and exhale in spite of the spirit's obvious lack of need to do so. Within the hull of the ship, the temperature had dropped to the point of an eerie chill, the presence of the spectre filling the darkened area with with the frigid breath of unlife.

The area had crates and such stacked along the sides, held down by ropes and nets to keep it from sliding in the gentle rock of the ocean. Koroko was no where to be seen, and while the ghost most certainly could have been waiting for an unwitting victim, he seemed harmless enough.

[Shai]

Shai had checked the previous night to no avail, Koroko had made herself scarce. Without being deterred she’d started her search as Leth rose this evening. It wasn’t just their first meeting that prompted the widow to search at night. The sun was harsh on her pallid skin and tended to give her a headache, out in the open sea where there was no shade to be found compounded the weakness. The night was her comfort, so Shai tried not to see it as a violation when she found the ghost once more.

Approaching gingerly, the Symenestra gave several long moments to the spirit before speaking up, “Good Evening.” Koroko had insisted they were like people, and there had to be some credence given to elders. Shai would at least try the older woman’s way. Besides if soulmist could affect the lost spirits then perhaps it would also know what it did. The little vial rolled against her palm, she taken to fiddling with it as she pondered. Shai had seen the sight magic used though she’d never inquired about it, perhaps it would have been useful with the vial.

What did one ask a clearly distressed ghost? Asking if it was alright was obviously inept. Shai knew it was looking for someone from the last time they met. She thought briefly when an answer came to her, it was a long shot but it might work. “Do you want to tell me your story, Ghost?”