Closed Don't Panic (Ssanya)

[Madeira Dusk]

29th of summer, 517
18th Bell

"I'm looking for a woman named Ssanya. Well, that's not her real name. Her real name is crazy long and involves a lot of spit and tongue acrobatics. She's about this big. Dark skin, darker eyes. Dhani. Might be poisonous. Oh god, do you think she's poisonous? I've never asked. You think that would be a thing you ask your best friend, but nope. Never occurred to me."

Micha Netven blinked dumbfounded at the wreck of a human standing in front of her counter-like boulder at the Wolfs Cave. Her honeyed eyes took in the other woman's blown pupils framed by a sliver of blue, and her skittery hands as they crawled over the skirt of her green dress. Her attention was briefly caught on the strange necklace tied around her skinny neck; a small rabbit skull on a leather cord that bounced on her chest with every nervous movement. But most of all she took in the woman's overriding fear. It was in the sour scent of her sweat and the way her weight was born on her toes, like she was seconds from tearing out of the room. To a wolf Kelvic like herself, it was the exciting scent of prey.

She made the effort to reign in these primal instincts, though. Murder would be bad for business.

"Are you ok? You seem a little nervous." Micha smiled in a way that might have been reassuring to anyone else. Madeira counted all twelve teeth in that smile and swallowed noisily.

I can smell you and you smell like death. Like my death. There is a ghost lurking in my body and a cursed Legacy fetish around my neck and I can hear the Zith on the other side of the fire pit sucking the marrow out of a bone. I can see every drop of moisture on your lip and it's telling me you're wondering what my marrow tastes like too. I am one tick away from losing it completely and I need my Maledictor and I need her now.

"I'm completely fine."

"She's renting a room down that tunnel.” Micha nodded. She showed fourteen teeth that time.

Madeira twitch a nod at her and made for the tunnel at the other end of the cavern. She was walking too fast to be casual, and her eyes darted around the room without making any sort of contact with the people in it. Her senses had never been so crystal clear. She could hear every shift of weight and smell the fetid breath of every predator in the room. And her extra effort to be small, quiet and inconspicuous to hide from these predators was in itself conspicuous. She could feel eyes burning into her back as she finally made it through the archway and down the appointed tunnel.

Just as she moved out of sight of the cavern, a great bellow of a laugh rang from behind her, like someone had just told a hilarious joke, and Madeira gave a squeal of fright from under her raised arms. The fetish around her neck seemed to press hard into her thundering heart like it too trying to seek shelter in her ribcage.

No, screw it, she couldn’t do this anymore. Madeira pulled the leather strap out from under her hair and made as if to whip the thing away. Far, far away preferably. But at the last second her muscles seized and her grip tightened as a foreign soul wound it’s way through her arm, and all she got was an awkward pinwheeling motion with the cursed skull still safely tucked in her palm. She made to snatch at the closed fist with her left hand, and her right hand shot out of reach. She tried to tighten her right fist, thinking she could try to damage it somehow, and her hand disobeyed. The thing remained gently cradled and in perfect condition.

The ghost was powerful enough to control one limb at a time, and to do it well. She could feel it coiling around her bones and levering her soul out of the way with single minded focus. It was drawn completely, inexplicably, to the skull. It would not let her get rid of it or hurt it in any way. It hadn’t the last time she tried, either.

But that was fine. She could still try to force the ghost out, and then get rid of the fetish.

She brushed at her damp forehead with her equally damp hand and sat down hard where she stood. The Spiritist gathered herself with a breath and prepared to turn inward and shut her body down. Sightless eyes rolled back in her head and her shoulders turned to stone under the thin linen dress. She imagined every nerve, every muscle, every line of sinew becoming stiff and immovable. Mental defences from a decade of practise closed down around her shivering soul and she was prepared to wait as long as it took for-

Somewhere deeper in the vast, cavernous Inn someone closed their door a touch too hard. A stirring of breeze, carrying the scent of dust and something animal, brushed over her skin and the Spiritist’s concentration broke with a jolt of panic and a burbling noise.

She couldn’t get rid of the ghost when she had the fetish. And she couldn’t get rid of the fetish when she had the ghost. The thought rose from some dark well inside her, and she dared not look down to see how deep it went.

Madeira scrambled to her feet and watched as the short, animal kind of panic brought the tunnel into excruciating focus. With disgust she replaced the cursed skull back around her neck. It took all her self control to walk and not run to the Dhani’s door. Especially when she heard the soft footsteps of two Symenestra walking a couple meters behind her and talking amicably with each other.

When she finally found it though, nothing could stop her from pressing her back to the rough wood as hard as she could as the two walked by. They gave her a polite nod as they passed, like they weren’t watching a grown woman trying to melt into a door by osmosis. Madeira pounded at the door behind her with the flat of her hand, suddenly unable to give up the tiny modicum of safely to be found with her back against the wall.

“Ssanya, Ssanya for the love of the gods, I have made a terrible mistake and I need your help!"

[Allassanachassanya]

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29th Summer, 517 AV
"Speech"

Ssanya ate quietly in her room, and idly tried to spin a knife on it's tip with little success. The blade was making small holes in the tabletop, but she didn't particularly care. The rickety table was already pockmarked with countless guest's activities, and Ssanya was in the process of making her own. Her room had a history in its dusty stone walls and its well-loved furniture. In a small way, the faded, brown bloodstain that spilled across the table-top, covered haphazardly with her purple scarf, was a record of the snake-woman's stay there. Unlike some of the other guests, she hadn't been eating some bloody steak or proud hunting trophy. The mark was a relic of malediction, of course. It would presumably stay there for many years, fading into the dusty old table, until some guest felt offence at the stain and chose to eradicate that small indicator of the Dhani's presence.

But that was the future, and no-one was aware of what would happen yet, only what could happen. But of all the things that Ssanya could have considered happening in the future of her evening, the slapping of her room's door was not one of them. The sound startled her, mouth half-open as she waited to see who it was. Something shuffled, and spoke. It was Madeira's voice, the voice of someone that was even further from her imagining of how the evening would pan out. What she had pictured was as follows: that she would eat her food, then maybe go for an evening's stroll, find a nice place to sit for a while, and then perhaps she'd treat herself to a blanket and a spot of sleep. Nothing fancy, nothing elaborate. Just a simple, plain evening.

But somehow Madeira was Ionu's mouthpiece on this most irregular of evenings, telling her it was not to be. There was a strong feeling in her, as she scrambled up to open the door for her friend, that she was both anxious for her... and excited. There was a strained quality to the pitch of her plea that stirred worry in her gut, but the corresponding feeling was that of adrenaline. Something was wrong, that was true. But Madeira had come to her. She knew that something was about to happen, but rather than eschewing the danger that must be coming their way, she ran towards it. Her dinner was three quarters finished and completely forgotten as she whipped a grey shirt hurriedly over her head and cried, "I'm coming!" She rushed and stumbled to her feet, and opened the door with a squeal of protesting hinges.

The very first thing she noticed was that contrary to what she had been expecting, the woman was crouched on the floor, her back to the very door that was now flung open. Secondly, the sheer aura of fright and the smell of it, radiated from her. Her Dhani senses pricked, despite it being muted in her human form. That surprised her. She had been expecting indignant, or maybe angry or purposeful. Not... frightened. "Madss... what iss wrong?" She offered her arm to pull the blonde woman from the floor, and shut the door behind them as they entered into the cramped, messy room that was Ssanya's home.

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[Madeira Dusk]

"Ssanya! Thank the gods. Let me in!"

She clung to the offered arm and let herself be pulled into the small, cramped room. The smell of Ssanya's skin, something Madeira had always fondly associated with sandalwood and the dust on wine bottles, was corrupted by the power of her stronger senses. Now all she could smell was the meat on her breath and salty, animal sweat in her pores. She smelled like a predator.

The door shut behind them and the panic hit another high note, whistling through her like her bones had been whittled into the shrillest flutes. The room around them was messy and cozy, a place where dust never seemed to settle because nothing stayed still. At any other time she would have pulled up a chair and made herself at home, perhaps grimacing at the untidiness. But today the fetish pressed hard to her ribs, and she realized she had just closed herself in a small space with a (possibly) poisonous Dhani.

She grabbed the other woman by the shoulders and forced herself to look her in the eyes. She needed help and this is the only person she trusted. She had to focus. The Spiritist took in the dark, narrow eyes, and the burnished summer glow of her skin, like she might find her rapidly dissolving cool behind the Dhani’s eyelashes or pooling in her cupids bow.

"I made a mistake. Big, big mistake. There was a house. A big, scary house. It was haunted and..." A bubble of nervous laughter squeaked out of the tight press of her chest. "Why couldn't I have been a candlemaker? Do candlemakers get jumped by hostile, supernatural creatures? Or come across cursed charms? No! And I shouldn't have picked it up. I was so stupid. It was just kind of there and..."

Her head tilted to the side, and her almost completely black irises briefly lost focus as her attention was pulled away.

"No, wait! Wait, shhhhh! Feel that? Your neighbour down the hall is having sex. I can feel the vibrations in the floor. But wait, wait, theres more", she leaned in and whispered theatrically. "I can tell his partner isn't very thrilled with his skills because I can't smell her excitement! Why the ever loving shyke do I know this?!"

Madeira spun away and began bouncing on her toes to relive some of the nervous energy in her twitching muscles. Her pack began digging painfully in her shoulders so she threw it off and it tumbled onto the bed with a mysterious jangle. She was a wind up toy on the hand of a malicious child who kept spinning the key, waiting for her to snap with the pressure.

"It's this necklace! It's the skull! It's petching maledictated! Oh, but I'm not alone in here. I'm possessed too! I have a ghost along for the ride and I cant get rid of either of them.“ She pulled the leather cord over her head and made to dash rabbit skull against the wall. At the last second her fist pulled around and caught her in the soft cave of her stomach, winding herself.

The sudden lack of oxygen did seem to derail her babbling, though, and Madeira was able to close her eyes briefly and centre herself as she gasped for breath. She turned to the Dhani with her palms pressed together and her voice purposefully deep and slow, but she could not help the way her eyes skittered nervously around the room.

"In my bag there is a jar of black dough, and a length of beads. Please, make me some soulmist. I can walk you through it.”

[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

The Spiritist was a-whirl, like a dervish. Even if she was standing stationary, everything else about her moved. Her fingers shuffled, her feet tapped, her torso swayed. Even her eyes seemed to roll, almost animal-like, as she grasped the diminutive Dhani with alarming force. Her eyes snapped to the Dhani's abruptly, searching for something in the depths. She blinked. The gaze layered an uneasiness on top of the adrenaline of the encounter. To have someone stare into one's soul like that was unnerving, to say the least. But she glared back, with fierce eyes intended for the spirit lurking inside her dear friend. Get Out, she told it as she listened intently to the words that spurted and tumbled from the panicked lips of the blonde woman.

But the more she listened, the more a rising sense of worry threatened to take over her curious calm. She bit the tip of her tongue. This was bad. Madeira was cursed, all right. It could all have been incredibly interesting if it wasn't her friend. She could have seen a nasty curse in action, seen what it could do when provoked. As it was though, Ssanya's mind raced ahead, trying to figure out what they could do together to get rid of the thing.

"...Make me some soulmist." Her head whipped up, to find the clattered pack where it now lay. "Right." Quickly, she fumbled with the catch and took out the contents. Inside was a jar, it's glass slightly green and cool to the touch, with a lump of blackish dough lying inside. A coil of verdant beads followed, smooth and regular. The alien items felt odd in her hands, but she unscrewed the jar to pull out the lump of burnt-earth black. It was ever so slightly sticky, and without meaning to she cringed.

"How do you eat thiss ssstuff ssso eassily, Madeira?" The question was rhetorical- the dough was already making itself reluctantly towards her lips. She hoped she wouldn't taste it. "Sso... I eat it. Then what? Iss magic process?" And yet despite it all, despite the situation, again she found herself excited. It was a forced learning, where neither party had much option for anything else, but she could already feel the blossoming of a new magic in front of her. The thought of it sent warm honey-wine bubbles of pleasure through her veins, straight to her heart where the sheer potential waited, eager to devour. In more ways than one. She popped the dough into her mouth and waited to see what the cursed woman would say next.

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[Madeira Dusk]

"No! Don't eat it. Just kind of... hold it. In your mouth."

Some Spiritists could swallow the dough and process the soulmist while keeping their mouth free to speak, but that was a trick for a later date. Madeira ran her fingers through her fraying hair, her eyes squinted shut. In her mind her instincts battled her higher brain functions, and she struggled to piece together a coherent sentence, much less explain a complicated world magic.

"So, yo-you have the dough. Good. Thats good. It's made of equal parts flour, cheese, raw egg and blood. Ha! Why do both our magics involve so much body fluid? It's absurd. No, no, no, thats not what we're talking about." She took a deep, stuttering breath. "Remem- Remember Catherine? It's like that. But instead of pulling the soul, djed, residue out of her bone- bones, you're pulling it out of your own body.

Soulmist is dead. When a person dies, and comes back, their astral body -you know, the part that moved their living body- is shed and turns to soulmist when it no longer has a body to control. You are… You are turning the dough into an external piece of your soul, therefor killing it."

She paused, somehow hit by a revelation that took nearly two decades to connect. Oh gods, she's been manufacturing soulmist for years. What if she was somehow destroying her own soul? Granted, nobody had ever made such observations. And the head's of the Craven family, all bound to come back as ghosts to serve the next head
for five generations, were all master users and didn't seem worse for wear. But what if?

She must have looked like quite the loon, as her mouth went slack and her eyes lost focus as her mind fled the room to chase that particularly horrific thought. But then someone down the hall gently closed their door, and Madeira came crashing back to the task at hand on a trebuchet made of panic.

"CONCENTRATE." she shouted at the Dhani, like she was the one losing it, and slapped her hands together with a force that left her fingers with the tingle of fleeing blood. "Concentrate on what you want to achieve! Pull hard at your soul, mould it, let it absorb and change the dough. When your mouth turns cold, you are done. Spit it into your hand and smear it on the beads!"

Without further ado, she dropped to her knees and crawled under the worn wooden table. And in that dusty twilight she wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered. The rabbit skull shivered with her, it's hollow eyes soaking in all light and the shadows turning the long jaw into an even longer smile.

[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

If she was to pin-point the exact moment her calm turned to agitation, it would be as she realised exactly how difficult it was to comprehend a language that was not her natural tongue being spoken by a ghost-possessed, cursed woman. Madeira's words were as tumbling in nature as her jerking, shifting movements. Each stutter and hesitation sent a thrill of shock through the Dhani's own brain. Yet one of them had to remain calm. It was this thought and this thought alone that allowed her to keep a grasp of her own sanity in the face of such insanity.

That, and the thought that she was going to learn Spiritism.

The dough lay dormant in her mouth, filling it and making her want to spit it out. It's earthy, organic taste clung to her lips, but her initial distaste faded. Blood wasn't an unusual taste to her, after all. She listened closely to her friend's words, trying desperately to understand on a deeper level than the actual text that told the explanation. Her fists clenched and her knuckles showed cream against the caramel of her own skin's natural colour. Think, Siku-damn you Ssanya. Imagine it. Imagine malediction, but opposite.

Soul pulling. Not from them, from me. Myself. Grasp the threads of my soul and take some. Use some. Reach inwards and grasp what I have. Concentration narrowed her field of vision until she could see nothing but the crazed eyes of Madeira. Blackness crowded around her as she struggled inwardly, aching and grasping for even some of her fleeting soul. In her utter concentration, she mashed her teeth around the edges of the dough that still lay in her mouth. An incisor nicked her tongue, and her own bloody taste gave her the catalyst she needed.

Ssanya delved inwards, using every inch of her concentration. A low hum throbbed from somewhere in her chest as she imagined her hand. In the cramped world of her room, her actual hand grasped the fabric that covered her chest tightly, her fingernails scraping over the skin of her collarbones. Her imagined hand sunk inside as her eyes shut, as she finally pinched a tendril of her own soul. Without leaving space to think and lose what she had, the Dhani clawed a fragment free. Her stomach lurched, and she almost retched at the curious feeling that spiked through her. But it had faded in less than a singular tick, and her imagined hand now stroked up her throat, coating her oesophagus with in a tingling cool sensation.

She coughed, and covered her mouth. Ssanya's eyes opened and widened. Her pupils dilated, and she lifted her hand away from her lips. What was once dough was now a silvery... thing. A silver she had created. "I did it..." But there was no time to hesitate. She felt the keenness of the now hiding Spiritist. Her shouted, "Concentrate!" still echoed in her ears. Ssanya didn't gather herself. She didn't think or focus or understand what she had done. With a quaking hand, the Dhani woman smeared the curious silver-sheened substance onto the cool, green beads. A familiar headache spiked behind her still-wide eyes. Her mouth felt like it didn't belong to her anymore. But none of it mattered. Exhilaration swept through her like a tidal wave, leaving behind a surge of heat that raced up her spine and made her stand tall. "I DID it, Madeira!" It wasn't a jubilant exclamation. It was a scared, worried, euphoric one. Ssanya would have smiled to reassure the curled mass of human under the table, but her lips wouldn't budge due to the state of sheer amazement that seized her short form.

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[Madeira Dusk]

"I DID it Madeira!"

From below there came a great crack and a clatter of plates as the Spiritist smashed her head on the underside of the table.

"Ow... Great job Sa-sa-sa" she swallowed around her thick tounge. "Chassa!" she resorted to using the old name she used to know the Dhani as. "Hand them over!"

She stuck her hands out but didn’t move from her safe, dark little cave. Once the familiar weight of her ghostbeads were in her hands, she immediately threw them over herself. They clattered heavily on the stone floor like a patter of rain, and a sense of security washed over the Spiritist. More than anything else, inside a ring of these small stones was where she felt safest.

Now the ghost would have to hunker down in her body and become inert. Or else it would be forced to evacuate it's rattled host. Madeira held her breath and waited.

And waited.

There was no lift of soulmist from her body, or the curiously empty feeling of a powerless ghost. What happened? Was it... was Ssanya’s soulmist not powerful enough?

There was a shuffling under the table and the dishevelled blonde emerged, red-faced and livid. Her heart was still hammering in her chest, and her breath stuttered from her lungs. The world was alive with new smells and sights and they all terrified her. But something hot and furious was eclipsing it.

"You know what? I give up!" she roared to the empty space to the left of her Maledictor. "Petch this. Petch you! I'm out!"

And just like that Madeira stepped away from her body. She crowded her soul aside like she would do for a willing possession, and her astral soul peeled away from her physical body. Immediately her body collapsed like a deflating accordion. Limbs buckled, her head lolled, and the empty body slumped forward on the floor of the tiny room.

It laid there for a tick, unmoving. Until slowly, gingerly, it picked itself up again.

Madeira seemed to have cooled off considerably with the fall. Her expression was calm, but baffled and a little unsteady. A string of drool trailed in a shining thread from her parted lips, but she didn't move to wipe it away. Instead she pawed at the necklace, and found it still there bumping against her chest. But there was something just a little bit off about Madeira Craven. A strange disconnect opened like a canyon between her body and her movements. Muscles were still wound tight beneath the skin, bunging in her neck and jumping in her fingers, her eyes were still bloodshot and the astringent scent of fear still rolled from her in waves. Yet her movements were slow and almost clumsy. Her straight, neat posture was bent and her limbs hung at her sides like she wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

She looked at the Dhani in front of her, then at the door. The decision clicked, and with a flap of skirts Madeira pulled the door open and bolted down the hallway.

OOCFeel free to control Madeira for your post. If it wasn't obvious, Maddy isn't at the helm anymore.

And I'll consent to injuries if you want to tackle her.

[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

It took a moment for Ssanya to realise that Madeira's words weren't aimed at her. She tried not to let the fragment of hurt show on her face, managing only in changing it to one downturned lip. She thought she had been able to do what the spiritist had said, but it was clear as the woman shouted and stuttered and shivered that she had failed. Disappointment settled like a thin cloak around her shoulders, but she didn't have time to waste on feeling sorry for herself. After all... failure was part and parcel of magic. Her lessons in malediction were proof enough of that.

Everything happened all at once. The Dhani rushed forwards as the other woman collapsed onto the floor, only just managing to stop her head from cracking painfully on the paving. But there was something dreadfully wrong. She backed away slowly as the spiritist rose, feeling an awful sense of doom. What had she said?

"Petch this, I'm out!"

No no no no no.

"Madeira, lisssten! Ohh Sssiku..." She cursed again, louder and in her own, flickering tongue, as the woman promptly turned on her heel and ran out the door. She had no choice but to follow.

Her feet pounded through the corridor as she chased after the fleeing woman. She burst through into the Wolf's Cave, ignoring the wild stares and painful lull in the normal, quiet chatter of the place. Madeira had clearly just passed through, judging from a disrupted chair and the way the door was still swinging. She had... no, the ghost had run out onto the streets of Alvadas. If it got too far...

Steely determination shot through her limbs and she pushed the door so it slammed with a loud clatter onto the outside wall. "MadEIRA!", she bellowed, and wildly scanned the nearby streets. Siku, where have you got to woman? Indecision wouldn't help. She started to run towards the most likely alley, the most narrow and gloomy-looking one. Whatever this ghost was, it wanted to be safe, away from Ssanya. She wouldn't let it get away with her friend's body.

An idea sprang willfully into her head. The alley walls grasped at her with painful fingers of stone that grazed over her skin, but as Ssanya ran she began to strip. In any other circumstance, the sight of a woman running in decreasing amounts of clothes might look amusing, but the look in her eyes said otherwise. She cursed again, with a long string of sssss's, as she bounced painfully against a stony wall and turned a corner into a small, tree-lined plaza. Sunlight dappled from somewhere up high, and a string of washing hung suspended in open air across the plaza, as if held up by nothing but empty space. Somewhere a bird was singing, a mournful, singular chirrup that was the only sound in the square. Yet there, in the centre, was Madeira. She had dropped to her hands and knees for a moment, but for all she knew it was a trap and had some way to incapacitate the Dhani woman if given half a chance. She hadn't seemed to notice her yet though, and she drew in her breath and hauled back the fierce beating of her heart in an attempt to stay quiet and unnoticed.

In the shadow of the nearest house, Ssanya shoved her remaining clothes into a narrow gap and began to shift. Her bones clicked into place, but Madeira and the ghost inside her noticed and looked up. Allassanachassanya gritted her teeth in concentration and half-leapt, half-tackled the blonde woman back to the floor. "You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere, ghost." She switched to common, and said desperately, "Pleassse come back, I can't help you alone." Her legs locked around the struggling ghost, and her hands slapped away the raking claws of Madeira's fingernails that threatened to gouge out her eyes.

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[Madeira Dusk]

No longer in control of her body, Madeira was able to turn inward and attack the mind who was.

Her flight from the Wolf's Cave was lost on her, as was Ssanya's roar of mingled frustration and fear. The ghost wasn't being terribly kind to her body, as it knocked her into people and walls in its mad bid for freedom. But it might as well have been happening to someone else for all Madeira was involved.

Instead she forced herself into the bond of a graceful possession, and snaked herself into it's mind like a parasite. She reaped whatever memories she could reach, ripping through it's consciousness looking for any reason why. Why was this ghost involved with the fetish? Why was it here? Why was it so determined to keep the cursed necklace?

Fumbling madly through a string of logic that didn't quite connect, memories that were not her own flooded through her. A dark, dense loaf of bread was shared between two pairs of hands. A snippet of song in a language she didn't recognize. A brief reflection in a teapot showed a small woman with a thin, pointed face and beady black eyes staring back at her.

Madeira held fast to this image, and dug deeper looking for more. She watched as the woman's image floated through teaspoons and shop windows and puddles of water. Suddenly the vantage point changed drastically until it was no more than two centimetres off the ground. She was a mouse reflected in the glittering eyes of a grey rabbit.

She seized the memory of the rabbit, abandoning the line of thought for this new one. At once the flavour of the thoughts changed and the harried, stressed tone of the memories softened. The rabbit was in the crook of her arm, quivering and scared as she made soothing sounds. It was kicking around happily in a patch of emerald green grass at the bottom of a birch tree. Then fast asleep in a cocoon of blankets. And then it wasn't a rabbit at all, but a teenage girl with the same black eyes and a small, nervous smile.

The thoughts stuttered and skipped. Suddenly small pointed shoes curling with soulmist stood over a patch of disturbed earth in a familiar grove of trees. The air smelled of rain, but it cut through her unimpeded, as she was no more substantial than air. Out of the damp earth poked a little paw, and between the mud and rot you could just make out the soft grey fur, and the empty space where the exposed spine ended at the shoulders.

Madeira pulled away from it's mind.

While not able to eject the ghost forcefully, Madeira still had enough strength of mind to battle the ghost for control of her body. Withdrawing from it's mind, she shot her soul through her own overwound limbs, and succeeded in tripping herself. Her legs seized and she smashed onto the cobble plaza with her arms pinwheeling comically for balance.

Fully aware of her surroundings once again, she took in the wide colourful plaza and the dozens of curiously staring eyes. But the ghost had a different view; it saw an open space with nowhere to hide. And the skull, pressing into her chest and burning through her senses, saw the Dhani sneaking up on them.

Madeira and the ghost both shrieked as Ssanya leapt, but it was Madeira who was winded as the tiny woman tackled her body and wrestled her to the ground. The ghost, made mute with panic, tried to rake the Dhani’s skin with nails and teeth. Her hips bucked and rolled, trying to dislodge her, but her wire strong legs were wrapped hard around her waist.

Even struggling with the ghost attacking her friend and her own overwhelming fear, Madeira had enough presence of mind in her to wonder why on earth Ssanya was naked, and enough shame to know that now was not the time to admire it. It was then that Madeira noticed the popping of dislodged joints in the shifting of the woman's hips and the hands trying to restrain her. She had never seen a Dhani shift form, but remembered Maro stripping naked to shift, and the dots in her overcrowded mind connected.

"Pleassse come back", Ssanya hissed desperately, riding her own wave of fear. "I can't help you alone."

The pleading in her friend's voice, a sudden bad idea and a ray of hope were enough to lever the ghost aside, if only temporarily. And Madeira came roaring back to full possession of her faculties. Her blown, bloodshot eyes focused on the Ssanya's, and the hands that were attacking now tried to both push her away and pull her closer at the same time.

"It's a Kelvic! It's a mouse!" she rasped, aware that people were staring but unable to fully internalize what this strange fight might look like from the outside. "Ssanya, scare it! You're a snake! Scare it away! Please!"

But would the mouse flee before the fetish killed her? Fuelled by the skull and trapped under a predator, her heart was bounding and she couldn't seem to drag enough air into her body to satisfy it. How long before the curse became stronger than her body could manage? Was this what people meant when they said 'scared to death'?

[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

The woman beneath her was struggling to breathe, she could see the panicked gasps that lifted her lungs from beneath her ribcage as if her body was literally trying to escape from itself. It was painful to watch the woman tearing herself apart, but she knew it was not her, but the ex-Kelvic ghost that hid like a coward within her body. Ssanya had never thought too hard about why ghosts remained after their physical removal from the world, and she did not know how or why they possessed people other than to interact with the people in the physical world. But she felt the greatest contempt for the one that hid in her friend's body, causing her harm whilst she was already incapacitated from wearing the cursed amulet. It was unfair for a ghost to take advantage of her, not for any real reason other than that it wanted to protect itself. It was already dead, and Ssanya could not cause it any real harm, but she gods-damned wished she could.

Instead, as her body elongated and slid into it's Dhani form, she seized Madeira's shoulders and vowed that she would terrify that Kelvic mouse spirit into submission. She was larger, more violent, and more angry than it. She hissed, and her tongue rattled in her mouth threateningly. Whatever spectators remained now saw Allassanachassanya in all her awful glory- the dark, hooded eyes, the broad length of her chest, the rippling scales of a wild, desert colour, and the black, club-like rattle at the end of her powerful tail that rattled like the hawking breath of a long-dead skeleton. Swiftly she reached down with tight, cold hands and grabbed Madeira's pale, fragile wrists.

There was terror on her face now, contorted features as if the spiritist wanted to pull down into the earth to escape her. She knew it was the spirit back and invading her body, but it still felt like a lance to the heart to see such abject horror written so clearly across her only friend's face. She would claw out the invader if she had to, if only so that she could finally sit down with the battered spiritist and understand what was happening, and so she could explain herself, tell her she never would cause her harm and that it was all an act because she needed her to be a monster.

Her blood boiled and her gut churned as she reared down so her face was inches away from Madeira's. She drove a daggered stare into those eyes, seeking the mouse that cowered there, but she herself was fearful and terrified that whatever she did to Maddy would break her own, indomitable spirit. What kept her from breaking down under such mental and indeed physical abuse? Ssanya could only admire the spiritist's personal resolve with a fierce passion, loving her for her drive and her determination even in the face of such odds as these. She could only hate the pathetic creature that tested her friend. Ssanya did not know this, but she assumed and maybe rightfully, that the wretched combination of the cursed fetish and the wilfully strong Kelvic ghost wreaking havoc in her mental hallways could only spell disaster. Perhaps her fate now rested on Ssanya's shoulders, on whether she could frighten the mouse enough that it left them alone and they could recouperate enough to figure out how to break the stranglehold of the curse. She spoke then, in fluent snake-tongue, falling as naturally from her lips as water. "Get. Out. Get out of my Madeira, you petch, you coward, you pitiful, inexcusable prey animal. You do not deserve the death I will give you."

Her voice spat and hissed with vile hatred, and her front teeth extended out with a wicked curve as she wrestled the woman's wrists in her sides. Then she screamed, directly into her face.

The scream of a Dhani was something unique. Her voice was cracked and guttural, unused to making such sounds, and it tore through the empty plaza, echoing off the façades of the nearby buildings. Please. Please please please come back Madeira. Don't get lost fighting this ghost inside your mind. Please. Please. Please. She roared until she had no air left, until she felt like exploding, and then she collapsed and let out a ridiculous sob that flooded her eyes with sudden tears. She wasted no time, even as she gulped and gathered her conflicted emotions. With swift but gentle hands, she reached forwards to gently pull off the loop of cord that tied the cursed amulet to Madeira's neck. She dropped it to the ground gingerly, and then glared with sparkling tears in her eyes.

"Do not die on me Madeira... Pleassse. I. I..." A drop of sunlight fell over the crest over the rooftop and landed onto Madeira's ghostly white face. She looked so beautiful and so tragic and so fierce all at the same time, and Ssanya suddenly could no longer take it. She was physically larger and well-aware of the inherent danger of crushing the spiritist after such an ordeal, so she didn't touch her. Instead, she sat back and curled her legs up and her tail around, subconsciously making herself as small as possible. "I am sssorry. I... Sssorry that you ssaw me sso angry, in thiss form. I ssupposse I might sscare you now, I would not blame you. Many hate me out of fear. But... I am ssorry." She bowed her head, and awaited whatever was to come.

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