ic Soot & Cinders

[Fox]

GM

 

"Visitors to the court?"

 

The voice was, annoyingly, sourceless - but they didn't have to wait for long. They could feel her before they could see her, warmth radiating out and around them, and (most concerning) they could feel the fire, crawling outward and along stonework without scorching it or browning the weeds. To Raina's senses it was unmistakably magic, like someone had wrapped the graveyard in a thin layer of fire that burned, quietly, without fuel. It spared the path between the gravestones, at least, for now.

 

The worst of the fire followed the stone stairs up the tiny hill to the tiny mausoleum, and from there strode the ghost, stepping silently through the weather-sealed doors. She was beautiful, albeit chastely so: the very picture of a storybook princess, tall and regal with fine features and finer clothes that, like her, were spun of spectral hues of orange and red, tattering away into nothing at the edges. Long hair blew away into nothing on a wind no one could feel, held back with a fine crown of embers.

 

"You've come again." She even moved gracefully, barely touching the ground as she floated down the stairs, fire moving with her. She had no rage, no anger, but no fear - a pure expression of regal disdain. "Are you still mad? There shall be no madness in my court, because I say so," she ordained, turning empty eyes to look at Raina. "Maybe you're here to apologize for him?"

 

Somewhere, out beyond the light of the fire, something was moving without quite getting close enough to be seen.

[Electra]

Raina looked around at the fire with eyes that were a little wide, but it was too early to freak out. She'd hold the option in reserve. Instead, she palmed the paper fan that Merlin handed her out of a secret slit on the side of the backpack and gave the woman an ingratiating smile. "I actually brought him here so he could apologize on his own. Apologies always sound better coming from the person who needs forgiveness, don't you think?" She gave Matt a nudge. "Go on then, say you're sorry to the very nice lady." Crinkling the fan in her fingers, she began humming softly under her breath, something that sounded suspiciously like "Pop Goes the Weasel." 

[Fox]

Matt let out a held breath, stepping forward - or as forward as he dared - with the paper bag in one hand's death grip.

 

The ghost was in front of Matt, and Matt was in front of Raina, so it was Fang, behind Raina, who spoke - just at the edge of the light, and her attention only briefly turned inward. "She remembers him," the dog growled, softly. "That is good. Do not turn around, we will protect you from outside. You protect Howl."

 

"I am sorry," said Matt, with genuine sincerity. "When I first met you, I didn't understand. I'm...dumb that way, sometimes, see?" His grin was less genuine, but it was friendly, and disarming. "And it is good to see your court! It's beautiful! But I think it's incomplete."

[Fox]

GM

 

"Incomplete?" The ghost turned flawless eyes around the graveyard, and then back to the would-be critics. "It is perfect! It is always perfect, because I made it perfect. It cannot be wrong!"

 

She raised her arms, gesturing at the unimpeachable beauty of their surroundings. The fire raised, too, an eager attendant showing support for its mistress as flames tried to encroach upon the flammable - now the grass did begin to scorch and burn, little rivulets of red snaking their way into the path toward the teenagers. Their shadows danced and shuddered, stone crosses and old broken stone casting awful shadows against the ground and walls. Shadows with claws, and eyes.

 

One to the left almost made it into the circle of fire when Matt's dog hit it like a bullet, having long since discarded its mundane form - fur like smoke and eyes like coal charged into the thing, the claw that grasped, and dragged it scraping back into the night as the fire grew higher. "What," demanded the ghost, "what am I missing? What would you know!?"

[Electra]

Raina raised her hands and her voice at once, holding her palms out flat to the fire on either side of them. "That's the way the money goes, POP goes the weasel!" On 'pop', the flames around them seemed to take a giant hop backwards, evading the dogs but giving the two humans a much wider circle of safety. A trickle of fire made its way from the burning circle to the tips of Raina's fingers, hanging there like a shining spark. Her face began to glow with hints of bronze and gold, till she looked a bit like a flame herself. "My lady," she said quellingly, "we come to your court with respect, bearing gifts, and you treat us like this? At the very least you could let him present his gift first!" She was less certain than ever that a teddy bear was going to resolve anything with this crazed creature, but maybe Matt had been speaking metaphorically. 

[Fox]

Matt cycled quickly through a grateful look toward Raina, a cautious look toward the dogs barely-visible at the edges of the fire, and as friendly a look to the ghost as he could manage...which, it turned out, was pretty friendly. "Absolutely, your highness," he said, stepping forward into the space Raina had cleared as much as he dared. "The problem with your court isn't you, of course! It's just...missing something. Something important."

 

The ghost was incensed, still, and a bit confused - but curiosity was crawling around the edges of her offense, and that was perfect. That's what he'd wanted last time, and couldn't get; too little known, too many concerns. He rolled the top of his paper bag open, reaching inside to present his 'gift'. "What's a princess without a knight by her side?"

 

The teddy bear was maybe a foot tall, as brown and cuddly as it game, though it was old - even in the fire's uncertain light it was a little worn around the edges, threadbare on at least one limb and it had long since lost a sword for its scabbard. And it did have a scabbard - a real one, teddy-bear sized, made of some kind of hard fabric to complement the comical knight helm that covered most of its head. Matt held it out, respectfully, even if the fire was much too close for it. "Who knows how anyone's supposed to sleep with no one to protect them, right? I know I can't anymore."

[Fox]

GM

 

The fire died. Not all the way, not gone, not with the ghost still there. But Raina could feel its strength ebb away, a tide receding back into an ocean as the ghost fixated on the stuffed toy like it was the only thing that had ever made sense.

 

Gingerly, she reached out to take it; Matt visibly winced when her hands met his, but she took it none the less, and it burned way to soot and cinder the moment it was in her hands. In its place was an echo, like her: orange and red, the soul of a stuffed animal restored to its glory...probably. Frayed edges had become licking flames, but it seemed stronger, even if it was now see-through.

 

"....it's a good gift. I like it. That was a good trick," she said, looking up to meet Raina's eyes. The pomp and circumstance had gone with the threat of teenage incineration, though with the fading of the flame the shadows grew closer and the dogs could still be heard pulling something, somethings, back into the dark. "Are you a good witch? I just get carried away sometimes. I didn't mean it."

[Electra]

"I'm an excellent witch," Raina assured her, resisting the urge to turn around and look at what the dogs were doing. Somehow it didn't feel as though the danger were quite over yet, and whatever was out there in the dark might not be too impressed by a light show. Merlin was keeping an eye out, he'd smack her if anything got too dangerous in back of them. "We know you didn't mean it, no harm done." The flames on her fingertips faded to a subtle glow, not entirely gone but more light than heat now. She glanced over to Matt. "So what happens now?" she murmured, sotto voce. "We all live happily ever after?" 

[Fox]

Matt was all nerves and wire, but he didn't let it reach his voice, at least - that was as calm and as collected as he could make it, and he'd had the practice. "No harm done," he promised, smiling. He seemed...sad, somehow, but hopeful. "It's no wonder you got a little worked up, aren't you tired?"

 

The ghost looked tired, sinking closer to the ground; she was still fixated on the teddy bear, but she looked up to see Matt's extended hand, and she started at that, too, then at him, like she saw something else. "I think it's time to rest."

 

The princess in fire looked at him, and then looked at her bear, and then clutched it to her chest with one arm while extending the other.

 

Matt's hand was black as it met hers, and his touch sent a wave of something back across her that made her less, somehow. Less real, or less attached, in a hundred ways: the graves behind her were clearer, the fire licking at her profile was calmer, her eyes seemed less clouded and more aware, if still fixated on something just past mortal reality. With her will no longer extended to it, and Raina having blown out the center, her graveyard fire died completely but for a few glowing embers in the grass, until that too was a memory.

[Fox]

GM

 

"But I can't go with you," said the ghost, and Matt visibly tensed before she turned to look at his arm - the hand he'd offered had burned back some of the wrappings over his bandage before she'd calmed, and the edge of a burn peeked out at her. "I've...I've hurt you enough. Maybe...princesses have royal dogs, don't they?"

 

---

 

If the princess even noticed the dog's smoke fur and glowing eyes, she didn't seem to think they were unusual - one hand still clutched her bear to her bosom, the other reaching down to just brush the tips of the hound's ears as it led her down the path away from that section of the graveyard. "Perhaps it will be nice to rest," she said, to herself, or to the bear, or to nobody. "It's been a long time. And it's important to sleep."

 

---

 

She held onto the dog's back by a handful of smoky fur, dwarfed by weight and nearly by size, as it led her toward an ornamental granite arch separating the mausoleum area from newer graves. "'cos you gotta get your sleep," she insisted. Her royal gown was a tattered bathrobe, trailing down behind her; her crown was an old tiara, a cheap and comically-oversized costume piece for such a young child's head. The teddy bear dragged behind, pulled along by one limb as it stared forlornly into the past. "That's what my mom always says. It's important, so you can get big and tall one day, and everyone's gotta be big and tall. Princesses got to get beauty sleep, 'cos a princess is always pretty. She said so, and the best books say so, so it's got to be true. Will she still read me stories?"

 

---

 

The dog and the little girl passed through one side of the stone gate, and didn't come out the other.

[Electra]

Raina stared toward the gate for a minute, the last dancing flames on her fingertips sputtering to darkness as the last embers in the graveyard died out. Her makeup still glittered faintly in the starlight, but other than that, it was quite dark. She rubbed the back of her neck. "Okay, that was definitely a thing that happened. And unless I miss my guess, we're done with the thing you wanted to do tonight. I'm gonna hold onto the two favors, but I'm calling in my explanation. If you want to do it over coffee, I'll buy." She would pay more than the price of a latte to get out of this cemetery right now, but unlike some people, Raina kept her powder dry when she was negotiating. Even when the freaking out option was seeming more and more palatable. 

[Fox]

Matt wasn't known to swear, but swear he did, a drawn-out profanity of relief as he sank back onto an untended bench. He laughed, too, through more like he didn't know what other noise to make than with any actual humor. It was, otherwise, literally as quiet as a grave - the other dogs' work must have been done, because one by one they were padding (and, in one case, limping) out of the darkness to stand by.

 

"They get stuck, right?" She hadn't actually asked about that yet, but he figured he would start there, and it was the only words he could find while he tried to get his legs back. He shook the burned hand, last traces of black something wafting off of it. "Like, someone dies," he explained, slumping back and looking out at nothing, "and sometimes they're okay. A lot of them just move on, which is good. Most of the rest are pretty okay with moving on once someone shows up and explains things, or gives them a push. And sometimes they're, y'know, out of it, but that's sorta reasonable and they come around. But some of them...."

 

He gestured vaguely at the still-singed grass, the scorched dirt at the center of it all. "Took like two days, found an old newspaper article. Like, an old newspaper article. Didn't say how old she was, but...I mean, you saw. Too young," he insisted, like a stab in his own heart. "Didn't even have her name, but it had an old photograph. Little girl with her favorite toy. Police thought maybe she'd seen a movie that was in theaters...can't remember what it was. Had some scene where the princess is in a throne room with braziers, right? And hey, she had candles, and nobody was awake, and...."

 

He did the not-laugh again, covering his face with both hands before trying to leverage himself back to his feet. "They get stuck. Some job, or attachment, or idea, spinning their wheels in the mud. Janitors who still clean abandoned hospitals 'cos they've got nothin' else, old women who protect their home 'cos they've gone feral, or a little princess who can't deal with what she did. S'not fair. Coffee sounds good. C'mon, I'll even buy if you're okay with cheap."

[Electra]

"I am definitely not okay with cheap," Raina told him, mostly to cover up how disquieted she was by the story he was telling.  She didn't really want to hear about some little kid playing with candles and burning herself to death. "Let's at least drive through at Starbucks. I can pay there with my phone." An impressively large Starbucks gift card had been one of her birthday presents from Anibal, one that would've annoyed her with its impersonality if she hadn't already had a good idea that the two of them were not long for this relationship. It was hard to date a guy who was never around, and even in her hour of need, Raina couldn't sponge off a guy forever. Letting Merlin out to scramble onto her shoulder, she tossed her backpack into the backseat and climbed into the car. "So what did you do to her? It was like... you bled off her aura or something. Is that your power?" 

[Fox]

"I'm death, sorta," Matt said, flatly and apparently in all seriousness. "It's - aw, Moon, no."

 

One of his dogs had not quite made it up into the car, and Matt made him sit long enough to inspect a leg. "Nuh uh. You aren't walking around on that. I'm sending you back 'til you can make one that's healed. Without arguments," he added, Moon having opened his jaws to protect. "You get first dibs on a drive later, okay?"

 

Moon dissolved into smoke, disappearing entirely alongside one of his brethren as the remaining three piled into the back and the teenagers piled into the front. "Y'know that first Halloween party, when I showed up as the Grim Reaper?" the boy continued, turning the key and backing out toward anywhere with light and caffeine. "Sort of a joke no one was supposed to get. People don't like it. Couldn't guess why."

[Electra]

Raina blinked, trying to absorb that. "Wait a second. So you're like, Death-capital-D-Death?" she asked, studying him from her seat. He looked no different than he had a few hours before, except maybe slightly more dishevled after the scene in the cemetary. "Does that mean you're an immortal being who causes, like, heart attacks with his bare hands? What the hell are you doing hanging aorund a high school, then?" 

[Fox]

"Not the killing part." Matt probably should have been offended, or apathetic, or something, but just didn't have anything left. He hated those nights. "Death-capital-D-Death isn't a person, it just...is?"

 

He glanced over, as much as he could while still driving safely, eyebrows pinched together to indicate that that was the best explanation he had. "Y'know what a psychopomp is? Like the Reaper, or the Ferryman, making sure the souls go where they're supposed to, making sure they don't stay around and go bad. That's them," he said, jabbing a finger back toward the dogs in the rear of the car, heads in the wind - heads with fur like smoke, and perfectly-round lidless eyes like burning coal. "Not all of 'em are like them, there's all types. But they see to souls, and I'm tied to them, so I do, too. But the Death-capital-D-Death is why I don't tell anybody. It gives people the heebie-jeebies. It gives me the heebie-jeebies sometimes, and I've been doing stuff like tonight since I was a little kid." His voice was tired, almost plaintive. "Nobody likes it."

[Electra]

"So you're not like Edward Cullen or something," Raina confirmed cautiously, "and like 200 years old but still hanging around in high school?" This seemed to be much more of a concern for her than the fact that Matt was apparently some sort of incarnation of death, capital-D or otherwise. "Because that's creepy. I read all those books and I don't understand why anybody would think it's even appropriate for Edward to be going out with Bella. She has the emotional maturity of a walnut, and she's still more mature than he is somehow. I don't even understand why she wouldn't just go to Jacob and say "please kill this crazy stalker vampire for me and then let me put my hands all over your abs and we'll live happily ever after." She was talking a little faster than usual, not quite babbling, but close to it. "Anyway, so you're the one who makes sure dead people don't get stuck on earth?" 

[Fox]

"Ugh, no." Matt made a face of disgust, a standard-issue teenage boy reaction to Twilight as they pulled up to a coffee shop that was hopefully still open. "I'm actually my age. And getting older like anybody," he added, shrugging as he got out. "The dogs're pretty clear on that. Whatever happens in the meantime, I've got old age to look forward to, and then dying of old age. I'm as alive as anybody, mostly, and apparently there are rules."

 

The line for caffeine was short to the point of nonexistence, one or two people getting off an obvious night shift being served by a barista who looked like they'd rather be sleeping. "I'm not as important as it makes me sound," Matt admitted, frowning at the menu. "Like I said, the dogs'n'I aren't the only ones. I'm the only....person?...I've ever seen doing it? But there's all sorts, and the dogs - and their parents, and their parents, y'know - have been doing it since way before I was born."

[Electra]

"How do you get picked for a gig like that, anyway?" A quick spell had turned Raina's costume back into her usual street clothes, at least superficially, and Matt could pass for normal anyway, especially in a city like this. "It it like genetic, or were you cursed, or just one of those weird things?" She dropped the subject momentarily as they reached the counter. Without looking at the menu, she quickly rattled off an order with at least half a dozen modifications, then dropped a couple of dollars into the tip jar to sweeten the deal. "Oh, and a strawberry cake pop. What do you want?" she asked Matt, scanning her phone to pay preemptively. 

[Fox]

"Well, you're gonna make fun of me for black drip coffee, so a medium mocha'll do," Matt drawled, shrugging and apology to the barista, who looked for all the world like he couldn't care less.

 

"And, uh. You almost die, I guess," he answered, genuinely at a loss for a better answer. "Can't recommend it, actually dying sucks pretty bad. I was...pretty little." That wasn't a good memory, and he shut it out almost immediately. "They saw somethin' they liked. If you ever get a better answer than that out of them, you let me know, 'cos it was always weird to me too. In a story I'd be serving them, not the other way around, y'know? But that's the deal, I'm the boss of a bunch of crazy spook dogs."

[Electra]

"So it's the dogs who picked you?" Raina asked as they walked over to the more comfortable seats on the far side of the dining room. It would take several minutes to make her drink anyway. "I thought it was cats who picked their owners." She settled down comfortably in a chair, then let Merlin out of the backpack. He had donned a little vest that said "Service Animal" on it, though he didn't necessarily look too pleased about it. He settled down on the ottoman next to her chair and resumed playing with his phone. "What happens if you don't do it?" she asked Matt. "Could you quit if you wanted to?" 

[Fox]

"I mean, it'd be a dick move," Matt said, eyebrows raised as he sat in his seat. Slumped, really; he was still exhausted. The dogs, for once, were staying out of it - piled in the open back of his car, getting some rest of their own. "I just, what, ignore it and hope it's somebody else's problem? Figure it'll take care of itself while old buildings burn down and some little girl stays lost and alone 'cos nobody's searching the city for a toy nobody's made in twenty years?"

 

"I mean, I probably could. The dogs wouldn't like it, and they'd be off doing their own thing whether I join 'em or not, but I could just stop doing anything about it. I can't stop knowing, though," he added, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "That's part of the deal. I can feel it. If we're ever talking or in class or whatever and you see my attention shoot out a window toward the city, it's probably 'cos someone or something died and that doesn't turn off. I try to do my own stuff, and have my own life, as much as that could even matter, but it's not like I can just forget for long."

[Electra]

"Couldn't you get the dogs to pick somebody else? They chose you, why couldn't they go find some poor new guy to make Death out of?" Raina asked pragmatically. "Like an adult, even, somebody who doesn't have to spend their whole life easing into it first?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, I can see why you can't really shake off the guilt if nobody's doing what's got to be done, but does it actually have to be you? Aren't there enough reformed ex-villain types determined to spend the rest of their lives atoning out there? Wouldn't one of them give his or her left tit for the opportunity to really get down and wallow in the pit of redemption?" The barista across the room called her name with no care whatsoever for the N. Raina got up and fetched her beverage. 

[Fox]

"Couldn't you just never do magic again?" That was a blatant challenge, but it was also fightier than Matt usually got; maybe the night was getting to him. "Just put it all behind and give your monkey away and move somewhere where you don't have to worry about jade statues and dudes with crossbows and fire ghosts that teach you that the world's an awful, cruel place?"

 

Matt had followed her to the counter, knowing his far simpler drink couldn't have been far behind, and he'd been right; he scooped it off the counter with a nod of thanks to a barista who didn't even notice, taking a sip and grimacing. "'cos, yeah, it sucks sometimes, but that's life. Life sucks. Life sucks, and death has no answers. But the dogs're family and it's good to do something worthwhile, y'know? It helps. Or...I think so, anyway." He sipped again, longer, trying to will the caffeine into his body faster than biology might allow. "And some of it's okay: teleporting's pretty sweet, and...other stuff. I don't think they need me, anyway, like you think - they just kinda wanted to do what they did. If they didn't have me, they'd just be on their own. I can't do that to them."

[Electra]

Raina let him talk as they resumed their seats, sipping her drink and passing the cake pop to Merlin. "I guess the difference is I love doing magic," she pointed out. "Everything else might be crappy, but the magic makes it better, not worse. Just seemed like you were saying that the gig as Death was pretty bad and you didn't really want to be doing it." She shrugged. "But if you get something out of it, then more power to you." She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment, relaxing bonelessly as a cat. "Another good reason to try and sign on with Fred," she pointed out after a moment. "You're not going to find too many workplaces that'll let you take an afternoon off so you can go deal with the restless dead."