#pallas and calliope got into when the were younger. they were trying to tear each other APART. normal kids <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[cream-and-tea]

LAY ME DOWN. chapter eight excerpt. unedited. featuring: the shaky next step in agnes’s journey to understand her powers. mentions of death. mentions of violence. ghosts. the not-great aftereffects of dealing with ghosts.

[transcript under the cut]

since the last major bit of writing from lmd i shared had pallas doing magic i figured it was only fair to show off agnes’s spooky ghost bullshit in this one!

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @vellichor-virgo @transmasc-wizard​ @houndmouthed @muddshadow @just-wublrful @corkywantstowrite @shrunkupthejams @andromedaexists @caninemotiff @lungs-and-gills @vampiresdrinkfruitjuice @phantomnations @onomatopiya @deer-in-headlights-stare @redbloodprose @definitelynotclayface @carnivalls @atthenian @dallonwrites

When they were younger and inquired after what it felt like to call a ghost, Fiver had told them to imagine trying to eat something in a dream only to have it start eating you back. Not in a violent way though, he elaborated, as if there was any such thing as magic devoid of violence. Calliope said it was like dunking yourself in fucking ice water, and then proceeded to empty her cup of cold lemonade over their head as a demonstration (they had cracked her tooth for that one, fingers shoved down throat to make him choke). Call it learned bias but they do not trust either of the two to have provided a factual account of the experience.

They’ve watched Agnes attempt this so many times. They know how it will go, best for beat. She will stand there for far too long. Perhaps there will be a faint shimmer in the air before her. Then she will drop her hand and stumble backwards like she’s been shocked and look at them all cringing and apologetic like she’s waiting for them to please help please tell me what I did wrong. And they will (or at least they will try to as best they can because this is not their area of expertise and the Director knew that she had to have known that when she asked this of them), and she will nod and apologize and trust their words and promise to do better next time. And they will both move on to more productive things and pretend the issue is being properly addressed. At this point it’s routine.

So when the space just in front of Agnes begins to warp itself slightly, a waver like one observed on a hot summer day distorting the blackberry bushes beyond it, they do not register it as anything of note. And when a visible shiver runs through her body, rustling the green at her feet and lifting the very ends of her hair and puffed cap sleeves of her blouse, they internally brace for the connection to shatter as it has so many times before.

Instead the emptiness her hand clutches begins to leak, to bleed, to congeal and resolve itself into an unmistakable something. Not so much the form of a human being but the absence of where a human being should be. A palness like fog spreading from the point of contact forming pressed palm and grasping fingers and arm and shoulder spindling into torso and neck until a blank, yawning, hole fills the approximate shape of a man standing in front of a girl in grotesque parody of a handshake, it’s outline futzing tenuously in and out of existence.

“Hello,” Agnes says, and her breath fogs in front of her face, even though the greenhouse is as artificially temperate as ever, even though Pallas’s shirt is currently glued to their back with sweat. What comes after is a sound like nails on a chalkboard, an echoing, rustling, scraping sound that fills the air in a spiral out from the now-visible ghost and washes over Pallas in the first blast of cold air when opening a window in winter that they realize is rendering into a spattering whisper of hello hello hello hello. The dead thing responding to Agnes, or maybe merely echoing her, they do not know enough about the specifics to say, they only know that this is something beyond dragged into the here and now where it should not be, so the way their nails bite into their palms upon hearing it is an entirely reasonable reaction.

Pallas has seen ghosts called by the skilled and unskilled, spoken to them and been spoken to, their experience with their powers equal and opposite has been about as through as it can be, but they’ve still never been able to shake the notion that there is a particular perversion in it. Vita at least deals in the tangible, the real, no matter how much it may warp those things the life they hold in their hands is always at least possible to hold. Perhaps Mortem is just as present to those born with it, just as natural, but Pallas has known enough of the things roaming the Haithwood outside to ever fully set their fear aside. In a world currently occupied by dying the act of brushing so closely with that death should be viewed with the utmost caution and the urge to grab Agnes by her shoulders and drag her back from what she has manifested is a natural byproduct of that caution.

Because they are aware of all of this they are also aware of how what she has done is incorrect, or at least incomplete. There should be features solidifying now, more words audible besides that rasping hello, but Morgan Chase is still as unformed as dough, a shadowless blotch sapping colour from cheeks and air from lungs and green from plant life. Agnes’s hair has fully lifted into a halo of dark, twisting waves around her head, her eyes glazed over almost completely. But still nothing more materialises beyond the unthing emptying itself in front of her.

Just as they’re about to intercede Agnes takes three wobbling, rapid, steps backwards and topples to the ground, the ghost saticing away into invisibility once again, though as Pallas moves they are uncomfortably aware of the fact that invisible is nowhere near gone. All that has happened is that it has been removed once again from their sight and whispered back into that state of being only Gravespeakers can perceive. But the dead man is still here, perhaps watching them right now, and the knowledge of that is a thorn pricking itself into the bottom of their foot.

Pallas forces their lungs to suck in air, then expel it, then they hurry to stand by Agnes. For a second she just lies on her back, limp as a dead animal in a way that will not fit into their mind, before sitting up with a great gasp of air. Pallas can see the grass she was just standing on has browned and withered and gone dead, and that she is shaking uncontrollably. Gooseflesh prickles her skin and her teeth chatter through bloodless lips as she raises her arms up to curl around herself. Pallas’s first thought is she’s going to bite through her tongue if she keeps on like that and their second thought is I can’t believe she actually did it.