Daniel approached the book stand with a calm smile.
"Hello Ava, it's nice to see you. How have you been?" he inquired.
He curiously looked over the available titles before asking "Any good ones on ghosty stuff?"
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Daniel approached the book stand with a calm smile.
"Hello Ava, it's nice to see you. How have you been?" he inquired.
He curiously looked over the available titles before asking "Any good ones on ghosty stuff?"
Pocketing the pen, she turned to look at the Gravewight with a reflexive smile that softened into sincerity when she saw who it was. "Daniel! Nice to see you too; I've been alright, trying to find enough hours in the day." She shrugged in a 'what can you do' gesture and glanced back at the table. "Well... let's see. I don't have anything specifically about ghosts, but there's some mention of them in the general folklore books, and a bit about the symbolism of characters based on the dead in dreams..."
Her voice trailed off as she moved the contents of the table around slightly with her fingertips, as though touching the covers would somehow remind her of the contents. After a moment she shook her head and looked up once more. "If you'd like, though, that's something I could keep an eye out for in the future. Is there a specific topic, in relation to ghosts?" The Scrivener's dark eyes gleamed with curiosity as she rested against the edge of the table, her full attention on the Darkling. Ghosts weren't something she spent a lot of time thinking about, and in consequence, reading about, but new avenues of inquiry were always intriguing.
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"Nothing specific really, just thought I could do with a bit more knowledge of them," his adventure on the western patrol had shown him that. He noncommittally picked up a bestiary and absentmindedly flipped it open.
"I guess how to make them go away, if you're willing to keep an eye open. I mean, I've helped a lot of people cross over," a lot of friends "from... you know... before. But anyway, they were always willing," in the end "and never violent." Since being trapped on a granite slab didn't allow for much physical violence anyway.
He looked up and gave a half smile to hide the deep sadness of his events in Arcadia and moved on.
"Don't always have the luxury of talking things through, though. Morgan's probably told you about what happened in the artist's apartment." Looking down at the book he found he had unintentionally stopped on the entry for revenant.
After sending a smile and a wave in the direction of Marcus Evan s , Ava nodded as Daniel spoke, making a mental note to keep an eye out for books about ghosts that didn't seem like total hacks. Though, now that she thought about it, she might need to do some research and ask some questions to make sure she actually knew what sounded reasonable and what didn't.
She returned his half-smile a little uncertainly, unsure of the precise emotion behind it, but reciprocating out of habit. The mention of the artist's apartment made her pause, taking a moment to recall before her eyebrows flew up in recollection. "Oh, yes! Morgan mentioned something, a little while ago, but I didn't get all of the details." Her gaze was expectant, hoping he wouldn't need much prodding; when Morgan had come over to drop off her notes on Fairweather there had been some brief discussion of the event Daniel mentioned, but a combination of beer, Morgan's storytelling abilities, and Mal's general grump had left her a little light on specifics.
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Daniel chuckled, imagining Morgan explaining the chaotic scene and her injecting her own frantic energy and wild leaps of thought. He explained what had happened while glancing over the entry in the book.
"I was helping Green do a patrol on the western side of the freehold. I sensed some activity on the other side coming from an apartment building."
Revenants were ghosts or risen corpses. Their name derived from the word from 'returning' in the Latin.
"We ran into an ogre name Ramona, Morgan, and Doctor Ngoc. We decided to investigate because of what I'd felt, and Ramona had been sent there to get a necklace for someone named Katie."
Similar to folkloric vampires, they often returned to haunt their family, friends and neighbors.
"Turned out an artist had been murdered in the building. In the hall actually. It was... pretty bad, even after the clean up. You could see where he'd been dragged into his apartment."
Those that rose as this undead monsters were wrongdoers in life, wicked and vain. They spread death and disease in their unlife.
"Blood stains, there was scorch mark shaped like an elongated hand and the place reeked of fear. Tasted like creamed oranges and summer air mixed with rot and blight and burned skin."
To banish a revenant the body needed to be dug up, decapitated, its heart removed, then burned.
Daniel remembered the way the taste of rotten meat and blood had settled into his stomach. Daniel closed the book and looked up with the same calm smile as before. A little off putting considering what he had just been talking about.
"Sorry, wasn't really thinking. You probably don't want to hear about some of the stuff. I hope I didn't upset you."
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Folding her arms across her chest as she listened, the Nix looked between Daniel and the book he was looking at as he spoke. She found the lack of eye contact curious, though not off putting or irritating; simply, interesting. The reappearance of his smile made her tilt her head slightly, the corner of her mouth barely curled. What did those smiles mean, really? Maybe she was reading into nothing, just another odd duck in a row of equally strange fowl. She'd have to wait and see. "It's alright, don't worry about it. I'm sorry for the death, and can't say I'd like to see it, but I prefer knowing. Please continue." So far they were still in the range of things she knew, though she found the details he chose to include quite interesting.
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Daniel tilted his head slightly, as if considering Ava in a new light.
"Alright," he said with a slight uncertainty but he sensed that she did indeed want to know. The mists of his mantle took on a scent as if they had just come off a still pool.
"There was a police line that we crossed to get to the apartment. Inside was even more glamour but it was different. Lots of emotions and snippets of memory. The place was full of pictures and paintings and sketches and other art. They were of changelings from what I could see. I mean, he could have just been a surrealist but I don't think so. If you're interested, I have a pretty good memory and can describe them if you'd like. Funny thing is that Ramona said Katie hadn't mentioned anything about enscorcelment.
"Honestly, I have my doubts about Katie's motives. She had apparently been by earlier and tried to get the necklace but had been chased off by the ghost. She wanted to get the necklace back before the police gave his stuff back to the family.
"We fanned out in the apartment to look for the jewelry. Thao found a silver locket with a blue edging. Looked really expensive. There was also a wedding ring, old and worn. Might have been heirlooms. They looked out of an artist's price range and he obviously hadn't been wearing the ring when he died. Or he could have been cheating on someone. I don't know.
"Anyhow, the Doctor picked up the locket and that's when things really started to really go downhill. It looked like he was trying to say something but couldn't. Then his head started to jerk. There was a shadow on him. It was hard to see but it was moving. It was attached to his shoulder like a puppet string. It led up to the ceiling. Probably why we didn't notice it before but the ghost was there. He looked like ink and shadow and was only vaguely human. There was a sort of skeleton underneath you could see sometimes but then the black oil would boil over that before dripping off again. It was.. sad actually. Whatever he looked like he had been alive and then had become that.
"The ghost was reaching for the necklace and seemed to be choking Ngoc. I tried talking with the artist. He let Thao go and the doctor ran out of the apartment. The ghost came down the wall and seemed to be trying to speak but I couldn't hear him say anything, even with my contract. I thought I might be getting through to him because he held out his hand but then he attacked and did a howling retreat to the ceiling and things started floating. Luckily no one was hurt.
"Talking wasn't working and I wasn't sure if we could have hurt him. I might have been able to make him physical but the clause takes time. I made the choice for us to leave. We left the necklace there, since that's what seemed to upset him in the first place."
Finishing his story Daniel smiled again. "So, any questions? I can give even more details if you'd like but I might start asking for a discount," he said jokingly. Well, half-jokingly. This was Autumn's Fallen Fair after all and the Leaden mirror valued knowledge. If he could get a lower price, he'd take it.
Trying to shrug off the vaguely disconcerting feeling of being measured, she missed the subtle shift in his mantle. Instead, she sat back and listened with a keen ear as familiar names were mentioned, coupled with an unfamiliar 'Katie', and the story unfolded. The artist was certainly of interest to her, and the locket as well; her first instinct, whenever an object did something or evoked a response she wasn't expecting, was that it was a token, but did ghosts connect themselves to tokens? Well, she supposed it wasn't outside the realm of possibility, but maybe not wholly relevant.
Her mouth, pressed into a thoughtful line, broke into a crooked smile at his quip. "Describe some of those paintings to me and you've got yourself a deal. I don't suppose you caught the artist's name, by any chance? Might be worth looking into. And, I admit, I'm a little intrigued by how you described the ghost; is there a sort of norm for how ghosts manifest? I-"
She returned Aaren Eloi 's wave with a smile before focusing back on Daniel, the expression taking on a rueful bent. "Sorry for grilling you, I'm just curious. I spend a lot of time thinking about things that come out of the Hedge, ghosts don't cross my radar very often. Unless... do they have something to do with the Hedge too?" Her tone suggested that the thought hadn't crossed her mind before.
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Daniel instinctively glanced over his shoulder as Ava acknowledged someone behind but he quickly turned back.
"Don't worry about it. It's a nice change of pace actually. Most people don't like talking about this stuff. It's part of the reason I'm trying to learn more. I don't have a lot of practical experience aside from my time over There. I couldn't say if there's a norm for ghosts."
He considered her question about ghosts and the Hedge. He didn't have any direct experience but he could make some deductions.
"There's probably at least some connection. Like you said there's fairytales and dream stuff with the unquiet dead. I have my contracts with the shades and spirits. And I mean, my kith wouldn't be around if there wasn't some sorta link between Death and Fairie. Right?" he let the question hang before moving on.
"No, I didn't catch his name," though he wished he had thought to ask now. "As for pictures," he though back to the flat and its walls covered with painting, photos and sketches "there were a lot of them. They covered nearly everything and there were stacks on the table. Some had people in normal settings but they had Meins. There was...a man with horns on his head at a coffee shop; a man with cat eyes and tufts of fur sleeping in an alley; a goblin with long fingers and a trench coat sitting in a park; there were a lot of photos in some park with a white monument in the background organized by season; a screaming woman in a flowing dress with hair that floated like she was underwater; a woman wearing a red shawl at a bus stop across from a playground; in the bedroom was a vicar deep in shadows or made of shadows, couldn't quite tell; a girl serving drinks with sharp teeth and fangs; and a man in a pinstripe business suit with old style armor over it. Those were some of the more striking anyway."
At his assertion about death and Faerie she made a 'good point' expression; it was interesting, though, that in that reasoning (or at least that wording), ghosts were assumed to be an intrinsic part of death. And maybe they were. Still, it seemed to her that it was safer to assume ghosts could be entrapped in the Hedge just the same as people, instead of the Hedge being part of producing them.
Of the images he described, the only one that sounded like it might be someone in the Freehold currently was the vicar; admittedly, she didn't know enough about religious positions to know if the Summer Sovereign was a vicar, a priest, or something else. What was a vicar, anyway?
"Certainly sounds like miens. You mentioned that Katie hadn't said anything about him being ensorcelled, but was there a chance he was a Lost? Do Lost- do we leave ghosts?" It wasn't a question whose answer she really expected him to have, but there was no harm in asking, was there? A slight shift in her body language betrayed a change in the intensity of her curiosity, though she tried to remain nonchalant.
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