Encounterlogs
Everlys Odd Encounter Sr Ritsuka 240919
In the dense atmosphere of early dawn, as the remnants of a flood envelop the town, Everly finds herself in a chilling encounter within the sparse confines of her newly occupied bedroom. The unsettling silence of her once peaceful sanctuary is broken by the inexplicable sound of footsteps, despite no one being visible. The temperature plummets, enveloping her in a cold so fierce it seems to seep into her very bones, accompanied by a mysterious, creeping fog. As terror grips her, Everly confronts the presence, not with fear, but with a flat, challenging neutrality, her every sense heightened to the spectral menace that lurks unseen.
The ghostly presence, heavy with an unspoken sorrow, reveals itself through a heart-wrenching melody of loss and betrayal. It sings of a past marred by tragedy—of love and war, of innocence accused and lives unjustly taken. Everly listens, her own struggles momentarily forgotten, as the ghostly maiden recounts her and her lover's fate at the hands of false accusations of witchery. With compassion born of shared pain, Everly speaks to the ghost, acknowledging her fight and offering a stark semblance of solace. The ghost, yearning for a purpose and place beyond her sorrowful limbo, is advised by Everly on how to possibly find peace. As the ghost departs, following Everly's cryptic directions towards an uncertain resolution, the room's atmosphere lightens, leaving Everly to ponder the encounter and the fleeting connection she shared with a soul lost between worlds.
(Everly's odd encounter(SRRitsuka):SRRitsuka)
[Wed Sep 18 2024]
In a slowly coming together bedroom
This bedroom has a tasteful off-white paintjob on the walls that compliment the delicate blue carpeting throughout the space. It's clear that it's new occupant is still in the process of moving it and settling down. Rather than bedside tables, the dark frame of the bed is flanked by two unpacked boxes. To the right side of the room is a small door leading to a shallow closet containing a steel rod that spans the walls, and a good number of clothes hanging upon it. The room itself is still rather sparse and lacking some personality
It is dawn, about 57F(13C) degrees,
(Your target encounters a ghost who's fixated on some past tragedy from their life, they need to either give the spirit some sense of closure, or send it on it's way through more violent means.
)
The town is awash with reeking floodwaters, the sun has come up after a long night spent with the moon full and bright, and Everly is flopped on her back sideways across the bed in here, staring at the ceiling. Either undertaking some seriously deep thought, or else just daydreaming.
It is the early morning hours, when the world teeters between night and day. The moon still hovers in the sky, pale and full, just above the horizon, while the first light of dawn begins to stretch across the heavens. Its faint glow touches the city, reflecting off the floodwaters that now submerge the streets. The soft trickling of water gently brushing against the sides of buildings is one of the few sounds to break the stillness, punctuated only by the occasional hollow clunk of debris, carried by the current, striking a wall.
Then, everything falls to silence. The constant murmur of the water outside fades into nothingness. And then, the sharp click of footsteps echoes the distinct sound of two heeled feet treading across the room with nobody to be seen. The footsteps grow louder...
The temperature plummets abruptly, the warmth of the early dawn vanishes. The air becomes so cold that each breath turns into a visible puff of mist. A faint, creeping fog unfurls along the floor, drifting barely an inch above the ground and surround the bed that Everly rests on.
Everly must have been deep in the fog of her own mind, because it takes her much too long to realize that the sound of footsteps isn't from one of the upstairs apartment. It's in this room. She bats her dopey eyelids, and that's all it takes to sharpen the focus of the dull gray peepers set beneath. She's very present now, but there are zero signs of any real alarm.
Slowly, Everly sits up, suppressing a shiver. The door is still closed. Which means... "... Bright...?" Everly croaks, and a note of hope shines through her monotone drone. Apparently, she knows at least one person who can perform such feats.
For the briefest moment, Everly catches sight of something the faint flicker of long, darkened strands of hair at the very edge of her vision, swaying ever so slightly, but when she looks, there is nothing. The air feels heavier, thick with an invisible weight pressing down on her.
When she speaks into the stillness, the echo of her words seems to stretch far beyond the confines of the room. The ghostly footsteps have stopped, and the silence falls once more over the room. A creeping awareness wraps around her like cold fingers. The sensation of being watched by something that lingers in the spaces between shadows. Unseen eyes trace her movements, dissecting her thoughts. The hair on her arms rises as a shiver runs down her spine.
As silence reigns for but a moment, a subtle sadness blooms. It's quiet, almost imperceptible, but it tugs at the edges of someone' emotions, a faint, unspoken whisper of sorrow that tries to curl its way into her chest. It's not her sadness it feels foreign, like it belongs to something else, something near but far away that tries to pull her in, to understand her, or perhaps to make her understand it.
Then, breaking the eerie stillness, the faintest sound slices through the air a soft, deliberate scraping of metal against concrete. It starts slow, the dull grind sending a shudder through the floor, as if something hidden in the darkness is dragging itself across the room. The noise reverberates, low and unsettling, and she can hear the cold edge of steel on concrete, just beyond the reach of her sight.
For the briefest moment, Everly catches sight of something the faint flicker of long, darkened strands of hair at the very edge of her vision, swaying ever so slightly, but when she looks, there is nothing. The air feels heavier, thick with an invisible weight pressing down on her.
When she speaks into the stillness, the echo of her words seems to stretch far beyond the confines of the room. The ghostly footsteps have stopped, and the silence falls once more over the room. A creeping awareness wraps around her like cold fingers. The sensation of being watched by something that lingers in the spaces between shadows. Unseen eyes trace her movements, dissecting her thoughts. The hair on her arms rises as a shiver runs down her spine.
As silence reigns for but a moment, a subtle sadness blooms. It's quiet, almost imperceptible, but it tugs at the edges of Everly's emotions, a faint, unspoken whisper of sorrow that tries to curl its way into her chest. It's not her sadness it feels foreign, like it belongs to something else, something near but far away that tries to pull her in, to understand her, or perhaps to make her understand it.
Then, breaking the eerie stillness, the faintest sound slices through the air a soft, deliberate scraping of metal against concrete. It starts slow, the dull grind sending a shudder through the floor, as if something hidden in the darkness is dragging itself across the room. The noise reverberates, low and unsettling, and she can hear the cold edge of steel on concrete, just beyond the reach of her sight.
Everly is, by now, breathing considerably harder than she had been before, and not just because the atmosphere has thickened with the gravity of her predicament. She has deduced that it isn't Bright toying with her, and her expression as shut down into a flattened neutrality like a steel gate. Or perhaps a portcullis, because if one looks closely, they might see through the cracks to something painful behind.
She's on her feet without quite remembering how she got there, fists clenched at her sides. Alert. Her mundane senses are all pricked to the orchestra of menace being played for her so prettily. After a deeper, slower breath, Everly speaks to the cold, cold room again. "... If you're gonna make a meal of me, at least have the courtesy to show your teeth."
As Everly rises to her feet and speaks, the weight of the sadness clings to her, heavily. This time, it is not just a foreign emotion pressed upon her, but also one that comes from within originating from the pain that Everly holds. It lies even heavier, like a cloak that wraps around her shoulders, and tendrils trying to wind through her chest, squeezing with great melancholy.
A moment later, the bed shifts ever so slightly. The mattress dips under an unseen weight, a small impression settling on the side of the bed, as though someone or something has sat down atop of it. The air feels colder now, denser, and then, faintly, a sound begins to rise in the silence. It is a low, beautiful but haunting hum, barely more than a saddened murmur.
The metallic scraping that could be heard before is now gone at around the same time that the impression settled on the bed and then, just before her, she glimpses something the tip of a leaf-bladed spear. Its edge gleams translucent in the half-light, standing upright at the foot of the bed.
The blade of the spear is bluish and has some fine engravings of silver with some dark bluish hue that follows along the edge of the blade and at the center that draws up from what connects the blade to its staff. Then, it vanishes again, but the impression on the bed remains.
Contrastly, Everly has stiffened in place, like maybe finally the subzero temperature in here has frozen her very bones. She just watches, a silent and sorrowful audience member, bearing witness to the presence both here and not-quite-here. Rather than wettened by the fist of grief clutching at her heart, her gaze has instead emptied itself out. A barren plane of gray, lightless, like something's missing. The stare marks the impression in the mattress. It scours the spear. Then it comes back again.
"... Death doesn't gotta be the end, y'know," murmurs Everly, voice little more than a wretched rasp, even tighter and scratchier than usual. But still toneless. "I'm sure the pointy end of that thing's meant for somebody who deserves it. Why not go give it to 'em?"
The hum intensifies, swelling slightly as if it was alive with sorrow and melancholy. The room seems to pulse with the rhythm of the haunting melody. The air is even colder than before, sharp and biting, and the mist on the floor appears to cling tighter to the ground as the ground takes on a sheen of frost. As the hum intensifies, so, too, does a melody begins to take form, words paced slowly: "Blood and ashes spread beneath the dark and twisted canopy." The voice is soft and determined, and still carries something very sprightly. She must not have even seen twenty winters. "Sweat and tears I sacrificed, always willing to lay down my life. There's no gods left, that's what I found, but I'm the one who's always fought." At the word fought, the space above the impression on the bed flickers. The air shimmers, and for the briefest moment, a figure appears in the morning light.
It is a young maiden that appears, her form is translucent and she appears exceedingly beautiful. Her face is delicate and the overall demeanor appears to be of ease and grace. Long and dark hair flows down her back like a liquid shadow, and her eyes carry the most dull and gray of tones.
In the moment that she appears, the mantle over Everly's shoulders grows lighter, the shared pain, which must have been the most compassion a ghost in its own misery could offer, retreats and centers back onto the maidenly figure itself and the grief that lingers is all her own. "I was a fighter. It all came down in flame. Oh, my home, so distant and lost." The melody, now evidently sung by the ghostly figure, continues. "I burned, burned, burned that day, but I was innocent..."
Everly's next slow breath is draw much more free, like some blockage has come unstuck. She wraps her scrawny arms round herself, trying to conserve what precious warmth is left. The ghostly image of the dead girl is reflected in Everly's eyes, and the line of her mouth slants itself more rueful around the lip ring. She attends to the song mostly in silence. But that last trailing note makes her speak up again. "... You did your best, man," she croaks to the ghost, an utterly tuneless and rather grating rhythm. "You fought and died for what you cared about. Nobody coulda done more than that."
"My love had a price, but I wouldn't grant them the gentle of my knives," the ghostly voice croons. The song floats on a thin thread of pain and her form begins to tremble, and though the melody continues, her shoulders shudder with soft, ghostly sobs while the rhythm of her song remains unbroken. "Oh no, they wouldn't watch and learn, just how bright I could turn." Her sobs sharpens, morphing into a painful, wrenching wail, as though her soul begins to crack open making the sound almost unbearable and weighting on the room with a felt and experienced pain that tries to consume Everly.
The ghost's voice rises again, the anguish seething from every word, "There's no gods left. I did come to save the crown, I did come though they tried to hold me down." Her words spill out in fragments now, her tone growing more frantic, the sobs weave through her song as if shes battling to hold on to both her melody and her crumbling heart. "I am what fate has brought, but they gave me all to hold me down," she cries, and then, the melody falters.
The ghostly maiden now looks utterly shaken. Her hands rise to her face, trembling as they try to wipe away the spectral tears that flow freely down her pale cheeks. Her fingers pass through her own face, unable to catch the tears that never seem to stop.
"Oh, my love, Rhett..." Her voice cracks on his name. "We burned together. We burned together," she repeats, her voice trembling. "But where are you?" she cries.
The ghostly figure continues to sob, and tries to place her own arms around herself, and then turns her gaze to Everly. "Do you know, where I am?"
Everly grimaces, hard, her face gradually scrunching as the ghost-girl visitor starts going full banshee on her. She stops interrupting now, perhaps recognizing by this stage that it doesn't really matter what she says, she's just along for the ride. There's a vaguely awkward air entering into her frame now, like maybe she's wondering if she should be offering some kind of comfort. Pat the dead girl's shoulder? Cough up a croaky 'there-there'? She also glances at the door. What if she could just walk out?
Oh, the ghost is asking her something now. "... Yeah," creaks Everly, sleepy-blinking at the vision of misery sat on her bed. "You're in my apartment on Elm Street. In Haven." A pause. Then she tacks on for good measure, "On Earth," just in case the ghost is *that* far away from home.
The ghostly maiden stares at Everly, as if not recognizing the names at all. Elm street? Haven? Earth? None of it wakes any recognition in her gaze which then shortly after, turns away again. The maiden's eyes close, and then she rises to her own feet, and for what did not draw attention before, she does indeed wear a full suit of plate armor, adjusted to her own features. Her gaze turns back to Everly and her lids lower, the pain still lies heavily over her gaze, her heart, it lingers in the air.
"I'm not supposed to be here." She says, as if it wasn't the most obvious thing by now. "The church caught me and my love and accused me of witchery; because I was different, and I thought it was right and well to trust the interrogator with the truth. But he's only twisted it to put myself and my love on a pyre." A short silence, and then she raises her eyes again to look at Everly, expression ashamed. "I apologize that you had to see me the way you did, I'm not sure but I couldn't... feel or see you, and then, suddenly you were there."
Everly tries to keep her teeth from chattering while she listens, still hugging herself tight. "What a miserable motherfucker," she scorns of said inquisitor, not batting one droopy eyelid. "Probably jealous."
Apart from this, Everly doesn't offer any words of sympathy, nor reassurance. She just wishes the ghost-warrior well with a raspy, "... Well. I hope you get back to where you belong or, uh, wherever you wanna go. But if not..." Her gaze darkens, and a quiet twist of something wicked enters her tone. "Can come visit again if you want some work. I can find a lotta people who'd benefit from getting poked with a ghost-spear."
That does have the ghost look down at herself and to raise a hand up to look at it, and then back at Everly, and it leads to her letting out what would most resemble a sigh, a misty cloud that leaves from her lips the same. "This is certainly not how I imagined an afterlife to be like." The ghostly maiden says, her other hand still on the pole of her spear. "I suppose the worst of it is the yearning in my heart, like I have to go somewhere. Do you know how I can reach it?"
Meanwhile, Everly's lips have by now turned a lovely shade of pale blue. She crackles a quiet 'mhm' like she understands the yearning spoken of, in her own restless living way, and can relate. But when the concluding question comes, she stops rubbing at the end of her red nose to stare at the girl. Thinking. Deliberating
"... Okay, so," Everly begins once she's made up her mind. Everly gestures as she describes the following route: "You go out that door into the hall. You take a right. When you hit a road, you follow it until you cross a bridge. Then you go left again. And there's a big bright light." She drops her hands again. A pitiless rasp concludes, "And if there isn't, then I guess you're fucked."
the ghost listens to Everly, and then makes a nod. "I will- go and take a look. I do not belong here." She says, haunted and makes a slight dip of her head to Everly. Then, she takes a step forward. There is the clack of a heel, from armor sabatons that are just slightly raised at the heel, though now it sounds far more metallic than it did before. The ghostly maiden takes another step and another, her form begins to turn more and more translucent, and both the mist and the temperature in the room begin to rise slowly. Notably, the figure did not move towards the wall, but moved towards the front door and both mist and temperature become far more comfortable again the moment she disappears into the door.
Everly is barely able to contain her shivering, like her skinny body is trying to shake itself apart. She says not a thing to delay the ghost's departure, bobbing a nod that sets her tangled locks flopping. The relief is instant as feeling floods back into her tingling extremeties, drawing out a grateful sigh. When she's sure the dead girl is gone, Everly just turns and flops straight back onto her bed again, this time face-down.
Much, much later: "... shoulda asked her name..." Everly mumbles into the bedspread. Too late now. But if nothing else, she's shown a knack for talking her way out of things.
The ghostly presence, heavy with an unspoken sorrow, reveals itself through a heart-wrenching melody of loss and betrayal. It sings of a past marred by tragedy—of love and war, of innocence accused and lives unjustly taken. Everly listens, her own struggles momentarily forgotten, as the ghostly maiden recounts her and her lover's fate at the hands of false accusations of witchery. With compassion born of shared pain, Everly speaks to the ghost, acknowledging her fight and offering a stark semblance of solace. The ghost, yearning for a purpose and place beyond her sorrowful limbo, is advised by Everly on how to possibly find peace. As the ghost departs, following Everly's cryptic directions towards an uncertain resolution, the room's atmosphere lightens, leaving Everly to ponder the encounter and the fleeting connection she shared with a soul lost between worlds.
(Everly's odd encounter(SRRitsuka):SRRitsuka)
[Wed Sep 18 2024]
In a slowly coming together bedroom
This bedroom has a tasteful off-white paintjob on the walls that compliment the delicate blue carpeting throughout the space. It's clear that it's new occupant is still in the process of moving it and settling down. Rather than bedside tables, the dark frame of the bed is flanked by two unpacked boxes. To the right side of the room is a small door leading to a shallow closet containing a steel rod that spans the walls, and a good number of clothes hanging upon it. The room itself is still rather sparse and lacking some personality
It is dawn, about 57F(13C) degrees,
(Your target encounters a ghost who's fixated on some past tragedy from their life, they need to either give the spirit some sense of closure, or send it on it's way through more violent means.
)
The town is awash with reeking floodwaters, the sun has come up after a long night spent with the moon full and bright, and Everly is flopped on her back sideways across the bed in here, staring at the ceiling. Either undertaking some seriously deep thought, or else just daydreaming.
It is the early morning hours, when the world teeters between night and day. The moon still hovers in the sky, pale and full, just above the horizon, while the first light of dawn begins to stretch across the heavens. Its faint glow touches the city, reflecting off the floodwaters that now submerge the streets. The soft trickling of water gently brushing against the sides of buildings is one of the few sounds to break the stillness, punctuated only by the occasional hollow clunk of debris, carried by the current, striking a wall.
Then, everything falls to silence. The constant murmur of the water outside fades into nothingness. And then, the sharp click of footsteps echoes the distinct sound of two heeled feet treading across the room with nobody to be seen. The footsteps grow louder...
The temperature plummets abruptly, the warmth of the early dawn vanishes. The air becomes so cold that each breath turns into a visible puff of mist. A faint, creeping fog unfurls along the floor, drifting barely an inch above the ground and surround the bed that Everly rests on.
Everly must have been deep in the fog of her own mind, because it takes her much too long to realize that the sound of footsteps isn't from one of the upstairs apartment. It's in this room. She bats her dopey eyelids, and that's all it takes to sharpen the focus of the dull gray peepers set beneath. She's very present now, but there are zero signs of any real alarm.
Slowly, Everly sits up, suppressing a shiver. The door is still closed. Which means... "... Bright...?" Everly croaks, and a note of hope shines through her monotone drone. Apparently, she knows at least one person who can perform such feats.
For the briefest moment, Everly catches sight of something the faint flicker of long, darkened strands of hair at the very edge of her vision, swaying ever so slightly, but when she looks, there is nothing. The air feels heavier, thick with an invisible weight pressing down on her.
When she speaks into the stillness, the echo of her words seems to stretch far beyond the confines of the room. The ghostly footsteps have stopped, and the silence falls once more over the room. A creeping awareness wraps around her like cold fingers. The sensation of being watched by something that lingers in the spaces between shadows. Unseen eyes trace her movements, dissecting her thoughts. The hair on her arms rises as a shiver runs down her spine.
As silence reigns for but a moment, a subtle sadness blooms. It's quiet, almost imperceptible, but it tugs at the edges of someone' emotions, a faint, unspoken whisper of sorrow that tries to curl its way into her chest. It's not her sadness it feels foreign, like it belongs to something else, something near but far away that tries to pull her in, to understand her, or perhaps to make her understand it.
Then, breaking the eerie stillness, the faintest sound slices through the air a soft, deliberate scraping of metal against concrete. It starts slow, the dull grind sending a shudder through the floor, as if something hidden in the darkness is dragging itself across the room. The noise reverberates, low and unsettling, and she can hear the cold edge of steel on concrete, just beyond the reach of her sight.
For the briefest moment, Everly catches sight of something the faint flicker of long, darkened strands of hair at the very edge of her vision, swaying ever so slightly, but when she looks, there is nothing. The air feels heavier, thick with an invisible weight pressing down on her.
When she speaks into the stillness, the echo of her words seems to stretch far beyond the confines of the room. The ghostly footsteps have stopped, and the silence falls once more over the room. A creeping awareness wraps around her like cold fingers. The sensation of being watched by something that lingers in the spaces between shadows. Unseen eyes trace her movements, dissecting her thoughts. The hair on her arms rises as a shiver runs down her spine.
As silence reigns for but a moment, a subtle sadness blooms. It's quiet, almost imperceptible, but it tugs at the edges of Everly's emotions, a faint, unspoken whisper of sorrow that tries to curl its way into her chest. It's not her sadness it feels foreign, like it belongs to something else, something near but far away that tries to pull her in, to understand her, or perhaps to make her understand it.
Then, breaking the eerie stillness, the faintest sound slices through the air a soft, deliberate scraping of metal against concrete. It starts slow, the dull grind sending a shudder through the floor, as if something hidden in the darkness is dragging itself across the room. The noise reverberates, low and unsettling, and she can hear the cold edge of steel on concrete, just beyond the reach of her sight.
Everly is, by now, breathing considerably harder than she had been before, and not just because the atmosphere has thickened with the gravity of her predicament. She has deduced that it isn't Bright toying with her, and her expression as shut down into a flattened neutrality like a steel gate. Or perhaps a portcullis, because if one looks closely, they might see through the cracks to something painful behind.
She's on her feet without quite remembering how she got there, fists clenched at her sides. Alert. Her mundane senses are all pricked to the orchestra of menace being played for her so prettily. After a deeper, slower breath, Everly speaks to the cold, cold room again. "... If you're gonna make a meal of me, at least have the courtesy to show your teeth."
As Everly rises to her feet and speaks, the weight of the sadness clings to her, heavily. This time, it is not just a foreign emotion pressed upon her, but also one that comes from within originating from the pain that Everly holds. It lies even heavier, like a cloak that wraps around her shoulders, and tendrils trying to wind through her chest, squeezing with great melancholy.
A moment later, the bed shifts ever so slightly. The mattress dips under an unseen weight, a small impression settling on the side of the bed, as though someone or something has sat down atop of it. The air feels colder now, denser, and then, faintly, a sound begins to rise in the silence. It is a low, beautiful but haunting hum, barely more than a saddened murmur.
The metallic scraping that could be heard before is now gone at around the same time that the impression settled on the bed and then, just before her, she glimpses something the tip of a leaf-bladed spear. Its edge gleams translucent in the half-light, standing upright at the foot of the bed.
The blade of the spear is bluish and has some fine engravings of silver with some dark bluish hue that follows along the edge of the blade and at the center that draws up from what connects the blade to its staff. Then, it vanishes again, but the impression on the bed remains.
Contrastly, Everly has stiffened in place, like maybe finally the subzero temperature in here has frozen her very bones. She just watches, a silent and sorrowful audience member, bearing witness to the presence both here and not-quite-here. Rather than wettened by the fist of grief clutching at her heart, her gaze has instead emptied itself out. A barren plane of gray, lightless, like something's missing. The stare marks the impression in the mattress. It scours the spear. Then it comes back again.
"... Death doesn't gotta be the end, y'know," murmurs Everly, voice little more than a wretched rasp, even tighter and scratchier than usual. But still toneless. "I'm sure the pointy end of that thing's meant for somebody who deserves it. Why not go give it to 'em?"
The hum intensifies, swelling slightly as if it was alive with sorrow and melancholy. The room seems to pulse with the rhythm of the haunting melody. The air is even colder than before, sharp and biting, and the mist on the floor appears to cling tighter to the ground as the ground takes on a sheen of frost. As the hum intensifies, so, too, does a melody begins to take form, words paced slowly: "Blood and ashes spread beneath the dark and twisted canopy." The voice is soft and determined, and still carries something very sprightly. She must not have even seen twenty winters. "Sweat and tears I sacrificed, always willing to lay down my life. There's no gods left, that's what I found, but I'm the one who's always fought." At the word fought, the space above the impression on the bed flickers. The air shimmers, and for the briefest moment, a figure appears in the morning light.
It is a young maiden that appears, her form is translucent and she appears exceedingly beautiful. Her face is delicate and the overall demeanor appears to be of ease and grace. Long and dark hair flows down her back like a liquid shadow, and her eyes carry the most dull and gray of tones.
In the moment that she appears, the mantle over Everly's shoulders grows lighter, the shared pain, which must have been the most compassion a ghost in its own misery could offer, retreats and centers back onto the maidenly figure itself and the grief that lingers is all her own. "I was a fighter. It all came down in flame. Oh, my home, so distant and lost." The melody, now evidently sung by the ghostly figure, continues. "I burned, burned, burned that day, but I was innocent..."
Everly's next slow breath is draw much more free, like some blockage has come unstuck. She wraps her scrawny arms round herself, trying to conserve what precious warmth is left. The ghostly image of the dead girl is reflected in Everly's eyes, and the line of her mouth slants itself more rueful around the lip ring. She attends to the song mostly in silence. But that last trailing note makes her speak up again. "... You did your best, man," she croaks to the ghost, an utterly tuneless and rather grating rhythm. "You fought and died for what you cared about. Nobody coulda done more than that."
"My love had a price, but I wouldn't grant them the gentle of my knives," the ghostly voice croons. The song floats on a thin thread of pain and her form begins to tremble, and though the melody continues, her shoulders shudder with soft, ghostly sobs while the rhythm of her song remains unbroken. "Oh no, they wouldn't watch and learn, just how bright I could turn." Her sobs sharpens, morphing into a painful, wrenching wail, as though her soul begins to crack open making the sound almost unbearable and weighting on the room with a felt and experienced pain that tries to consume Everly.
The ghost's voice rises again, the anguish seething from every word, "There's no gods left. I did come to save the crown, I did come though they tried to hold me down." Her words spill out in fragments now, her tone growing more frantic, the sobs weave through her song as if shes battling to hold on to both her melody and her crumbling heart. "I am what fate has brought, but they gave me all to hold me down," she cries, and then, the melody falters.
The ghostly maiden now looks utterly shaken. Her hands rise to her face, trembling as they try to wipe away the spectral tears that flow freely down her pale cheeks. Her fingers pass through her own face, unable to catch the tears that never seem to stop.
"Oh, my love, Rhett..." Her voice cracks on his name. "We burned together. We burned together," she repeats, her voice trembling. "But where are you?" she cries.
The ghostly figure continues to sob, and tries to place her own arms around herself, and then turns her gaze to Everly. "Do you know, where I am?"
Everly grimaces, hard, her face gradually scrunching as the ghost-girl visitor starts going full banshee on her. She stops interrupting now, perhaps recognizing by this stage that it doesn't really matter what she says, she's just along for the ride. There's a vaguely awkward air entering into her frame now, like maybe she's wondering if she should be offering some kind of comfort. Pat the dead girl's shoulder? Cough up a croaky 'there-there'? She also glances at the door. What if she could just walk out?
Oh, the ghost is asking her something now. "... Yeah," creaks Everly, sleepy-blinking at the vision of misery sat on her bed. "You're in my apartment on Elm Street. In Haven." A pause. Then she tacks on for good measure, "On Earth," just in case the ghost is *that* far away from home.
The ghostly maiden stares at Everly, as if not recognizing the names at all. Elm street? Haven? Earth? None of it wakes any recognition in her gaze which then shortly after, turns away again. The maiden's eyes close, and then she rises to her own feet, and for what did not draw attention before, she does indeed wear a full suit of plate armor, adjusted to her own features. Her gaze turns back to Everly and her lids lower, the pain still lies heavily over her gaze, her heart, it lingers in the air.
"I'm not supposed to be here." She says, as if it wasn't the most obvious thing by now. "The church caught me and my love and accused me of witchery; because I was different, and I thought it was right and well to trust the interrogator with the truth. But he's only twisted it to put myself and my love on a pyre." A short silence, and then she raises her eyes again to look at Everly, expression ashamed. "I apologize that you had to see me the way you did, I'm not sure but I couldn't... feel or see you, and then, suddenly you were there."
Everly tries to keep her teeth from chattering while she listens, still hugging herself tight. "What a miserable motherfucker," she scorns of said inquisitor, not batting one droopy eyelid. "Probably jealous."
Apart from this, Everly doesn't offer any words of sympathy, nor reassurance. She just wishes the ghost-warrior well with a raspy, "... Well. I hope you get back to where you belong or, uh, wherever you wanna go. But if not..." Her gaze darkens, and a quiet twist of something wicked enters her tone. "Can come visit again if you want some work. I can find a lotta people who'd benefit from getting poked with a ghost-spear."
That does have the ghost look down at herself and to raise a hand up to look at it, and then back at Everly, and it leads to her letting out what would most resemble a sigh, a misty cloud that leaves from her lips the same. "This is certainly not how I imagined an afterlife to be like." The ghostly maiden says, her other hand still on the pole of her spear. "I suppose the worst of it is the yearning in my heart, like I have to go somewhere. Do you know how I can reach it?"
Meanwhile, Everly's lips have by now turned a lovely shade of pale blue. She crackles a quiet 'mhm' like she understands the yearning spoken of, in her own restless living way, and can relate. But when the concluding question comes, she stops rubbing at the end of her red nose to stare at the girl. Thinking. Deliberating
"... Okay, so," Everly begins once she's made up her mind. Everly gestures as she describes the following route: "You go out that door into the hall. You take a right. When you hit a road, you follow it until you cross a bridge. Then you go left again. And there's a big bright light." She drops her hands again. A pitiless rasp concludes, "And if there isn't, then I guess you're fucked."
the ghost listens to Everly, and then makes a nod. "I will- go and take a look. I do not belong here." She says, haunted and makes a slight dip of her head to Everly. Then, she takes a step forward. There is the clack of a heel, from armor sabatons that are just slightly raised at the heel, though now it sounds far more metallic than it did before. The ghostly maiden takes another step and another, her form begins to turn more and more translucent, and both the mist and the temperature in the room begin to rise slowly. Notably, the figure did not move towards the wall, but moved towards the front door and both mist and temperature become far more comfortable again the moment she disappears into the door.
Everly is barely able to contain her shivering, like her skinny body is trying to shake itself apart. She says not a thing to delay the ghost's departure, bobbing a nod that sets her tangled locks flopping. The relief is instant as feeling floods back into her tingling extremeties, drawing out a grateful sigh. When she's sure the dead girl is gone, Everly just turns and flops straight back onto her bed again, this time face-down.
Much, much later: "... shoulda asked her name..." Everly mumbles into the bedspread. Too late now. But if nothing else, she's shown a knack for talking her way out of things.