GHOSTS

The spirits came as they always did, even when she was too sound asleep to sense them. They crowded around her bed, their whispery babble like the rustling of curtains in air currents. The tomb cat glared at them from the foot of the bed, his ears flat and whiskers erect.

Their stories made her restless this night, and she rolled over many times, burying her head in her pillow. The spirits became agitated when she would not listen, became more aggressive, prodding her through her blankets, and moaning. One used all its energy to move a book one inch on her desk before dissipating in a twist of smoke. The tomb cat growled.

Suddenly she sat up. “Leave me,” she commanded in a voice that was perhaps not entirely her own. The spirits obeyed and vanished, and the cat leaped away in fright. She sat dazed and puzzled for a moment before flopping back into her pillow with a sigh, and quickly fell into undisturbed sleep.

Though all the others fled, one ghost remained behind, but he did not tell Karigan G’ladheon stories. He did not prod her. They had met before, she and he, though the death god would have obscured her memory of it. He’d been her counterpart in a long ago time, a Green Rider. He had worn the brooch she now wore. As he had once been, she was an avatar of Westrion.

She had commanded the ghosts, and they obeyed.

The tomb cat came out of hiding from beneath the bed and sat on his haunches, watching the spirit with the particular disdain only cats could muster. The ghost of Siris Kiltyre laughed before he turned and vanished.