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Ghost Meetings

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. Rivener brings home a raevan he met at one of the lab events for an exclusive encounter with Eiry. Problem is, Eiry's not in the mood to deal with others, let alone Ghost Meetings. .

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The Break-Up

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.Unseen, but unconsciously realized, the break up between Aphismet and Chloe finally comes about. With Aphismet drowning in woe, a worried Isi and Riv try to make comfort food to console their moping family member..

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Mud Pies
Conclusion of Eiry's Growth Quest

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"Eeeeeeiiiirryyyy!"

With the flick of his grey pointed ear, a curled up mint colored frei blearily opened his red red eyes. Weariness had settled in his body so much that even trying to open his eyes was difficult, but he opened them all the same. He had heard something faint, something torn away by the wind or muffled out by the musty walls of the basement that he had begun to call his home in the past few months. Eiry hadn't eaten in weeks, not enough to keep him healthy at any rate. Little heartless nibbles at the moss around him, sometimes he sneaked outside to take the essence of the small plants and even the bitter tasting weeds that were close by. At any rate, he had just enough energy to coax his weak limbs back into motion. Giving a small push to the cardboard box he was lying on, Eiry lifted his head as if it were the heaviest part of his body and glanced towards the small dust-smeared window leading out of the basement. It provided the only light in the basement, a murky yellow light that looked sick and convoluted with dust and rot. Eiry turned his head to that light, squeezing his tired eyes and pinching his face to the brightness.

He heard it again.

"Eeeeeeiiiirrrrryyyy!!"

Lifting himself up gently from the heavy dark of the basement, Eiry dragged himself up to the small dusty window, its glass yellow from age. He tried to peer through it from the safety of the basement, but there was nothing to see. The view outside was simplified into sickly looking shapes and smudges, but Eiry could tell, even though that grime, that there was something outside, something moving.

Slightly furrowing his brows, the raevan slowly pushed himself through the solid window and wall, pulling himself out of matter as if he were clawing his way through jello. The bright blare of the day met him and the minty frei almost shrunk back into the basement. Even though that it was late afternoon and there were clouds in the sky, the light in the atmosphere was enough to make Eiry's sensitive red eyes tear up and he wiped his blood-freckled face against his bracers.

He heard it again, this time more clear.

"Eeeiiirrry!"

He lifted his head to blearily stare at the world before him, waiting for it to force itself back into focus. There was something before him, something that didn't belong in the yard. Squinting his gaze, Eiry began making out plant-like shapes, something dark and earth-colored, and...Something coming closer?

A speeding object flew through Eiry's intangible head and splattered behind him against the house wall. The frei was suddenly snapped back into awareness and he snapped his head behind him to stare at the wall to see what had been thrown. It was slushy and earthy and it almost looked like the remains of a juicy bug that had thrown itself on a wild suicide charge into a speeding car window. It was mud.

Turning back around, Eiry turned his now-focused gaze upon the figure standing in the center of the backyard anomaly. It was his young guardian, standing without his crutches in the center of a large pile of mud. His pants were rolled up past his knee and his legs were already covered with dirt. Mud was dripping from his hands and he had his signature scowl pulled taut upon his freckled cheeks. Around the mud was an audience of wilting flowers and plants still in their grimy pots, all dried and dead, a feast if Eiry ever saw one. Eiry felt his chest tighten with the emptiness of hunger and he bit his lower lip. There was a part of him that screamed at him to return into the impenetrable basement, despite his raging hunger, but he couldn't move, not underneath his guardian's disapproving gaze. He knew that once his guardian opened his mouth, he was going to get an ear full, and fear proved him right because Isikoro was taking a breath. Eiry tensed his body and bowed his head, ready to take whatever reprimanding he was about to receive.

"Now that wasn't fair, was it?" Isi announced irritatedly.

Fair? Eiry opened one eye to look at his guardian.

The boy continued again, gesturing with his arms helplessly, "That wasn't fair at all. You were intangible. I wanted to see that mud pie splatter against your face and into your hair, see you cough and flail to get it off. It would've been funny. But you just had to be intangible, huh? That's not fair at all."

The minty frei relaxed from his tense posture and he knitted his brows in confusion at Isikoro, quite sure that the boy had lost his mind and all reason.

Isikoro relaxed, letting the side of his mouth quirk in a sad smile. He leaned down to the mud and dug his fingers into it, hefting a good chuck of it into his hands. "Eirdirsceol," he said, "It isn't worth it if you don't experience it." He paused and corrected himself, "Life isn't worth it if you don't experience it.

"Sure, it's terrible. I mean, look around you. Look at us, your family! We've been through horrible times, we've been through terrors that the average family dreads, we've been through s**t that script writers would sell their souls to write into movies," As Isikoro spoke, he patted and molded the mud in his hands, "But Eiry...The truth is that life is dirty, it's messy, it's a horror...But that doesn't mean its all bad. You can still have fun with it. You can even make it into what you want, whatever you want! And yes," he took a moment to gaze down at the mud that he held crafted in his hands, the brown earthy glop that oozed between the cracks of his fingers, "It ends. All things end, the rain stops, the trees die, houses fall into decay, and people get put into graves. When I was gathering your soul, the will-o-wisp that you now keep so close to your heart, that died, too. But the secret is, Eirdirsceol...

"That life continues regardless, things are reborn, born anew, born again, born into something entirely different! Your soul didn't die, Eiry, you just went from shape to shape. You were born into a different body, but you, the important part of you is still there. It will always be. So stop hiding, Eirdirsceol, stop being afraid. Because not experiencing life isn't life at all, but a thing worse than death. Come out and feel the world."

Eiry felt something die within him.

And as Isi finished those last few powerful statements, he took the handful of mud that he was shaping with his hands and reeled it back with the roll of his arm. He leaned himself forward, his arm following behind in a heavy swing, and flung the mud with all his might towards his frei, looking up just in time to watch as Eiry caught the full of the mud with his face.

He was no longer intangible.

Startled by the explosion of wet and grime against the cold skin of his face, Eiry hardly paid attention to the force of the impact against his body and the glass jar slipped out of his hands onto spongy grass, unnoticed. What he did feel, though, the first spine-tingling wave of sensation that rippled through his entire body, was the mud. It was cold as it slid down his face and onto his collar bone and chest, soaking his skin and meager clothes with its wetness. He could feel where the mud was chunkier with globs of clay and dirt, he could feel it change and ooze, and he could feel it cling to his cheekbones creating a mask of earth upon his features. The disgusting sensation, the smell, the heaviness of that chunky slab of wet dirt...Eiry felt it all and a slow smile blossomed beneath the dirt.

Eirdirsceol began to laugh.

It was a soft laugh at first, tired and forlorn. It was the kind of chuckle that remained in the throat, weak and helpless. But with time, it grew, bubbling until it expanded into an open mouthed laugh. Louder and louder still, it bloomed until Eiry's shoulders began to shake and thick globs of mud slid off of his face. Helpless tears made streaks down Eiry's dirt-covered cheeks, and he threw back his head to release his laughing voice into the air.

Isi watched with a brow furrowed in worry. He wasn't exactly sure if he had just knocked his frei's mind out of orbit or what, but when the laugh took on a familiar eerie quality, Isi's chest expanded with hope. Like a dead child's giggle and the maniac guffaw of a normal person gone psycho, that's how Eiry's laugh sounded. That's when Isi knew that he had done something right, because at that moment, his frei came barreling towards him, his arms outstretched. The crippled boy, already having enough trouble standing on his own legs for so long, but determined to hold his ground, gave a great laugh and threw open his arms, ready to catch his giggling ward.

Eiry collided into his guardian, throwing his grey arms around Isi's neck as he bore his meager weight against the other, pressing himself as tight to Isikoro as he could manage. His ethereal wings fluttered wildly behind him, spluttering like flames as he rubbed his dirt covered face into Isi's hair. Isikoro was warm. Warm and Eiry could feel the pounding of Isi's heart against his own cold self, a heart swollen with relief. Isi was alive! And so was he! He could feel Isi shaking underneath him, laughing and blurting half-formed phrases of tearful gratitude, and before he knew it, Isi lost his balance in his weakening legs and the two fell down with an unceremonious plop into the puddle of mud.

Eiry took that moment to snuggle close to Isi, using the false ruse to get close enough to free his arms so he could gather piles of mud against Isi's back and rub it all into Isi's hair. The boy gave a startled yelp and furrowed his thick brows at his ward before he, too, took several handfuls of dirt and shoved it back, returning the favor.

With his mouth stretched into an ear to ear smile, the minty frei whispered, "You have my gratitude, Isi." He buried his face tightly to the soaked fabric of his guardian's shoulder, holding him as tight as his wimpy arms could manage, and felt a hot moisture rim the corners of his closed eyes. He was ready to live again.

Overcome with relief, Isi would've held Eiry's small body in his arms like that for some time, just sinking into the cold mud and feeling the dirt drip out of his matted hair, when he opened his eyes and remembered the circle of dead plants surrounding the mud pile. Eiry hadn't eaten for some time, he was sure, and as happy as he was about Eirdirsceol's epiphany, he couldn't help but worry at the sight of Eiry's dim and hardly glowing rune as well as the blood red stains and spots freckling his grey skin. He gave a slight jostle to the minty raevan and gestured towards the audience of dead verdure, prying the other body's vice-like grip loose. "Eirdirsceol," he said softly, "Come on, now. Show me you want to live. Eat."

Loosening his grip around the other's shoulders, Eiry arced his head back to scan the plants that his guardian refered to. He could feel death seeping from them, like a deathly rotten honey saturating the once proud stems and curled up leaves, delicious and thick. Those plants were quite dead...And they were just what Eiry hungered for. Even as he stared at them, he felt the emptiness in his being sag and ache at the sight of such a feast. So, grinning and lifting himself away from Isi, Eiry gave a strenuous pump to his ethereal wings, but as weary as he was, he brought himself up. He rolled his shoulders back, and held out his arms to either side of his body, looking as if he might just blink out of existence right then and there, gaining a soft fiery glow of ephemeral light. He let his head loll back on his shoulders, his minty bangs falling into his eyes, and as he did so, he gave a great inhale, filling his chest with more than just air...But strength, life and essence as well. The dead plants crackled, shaping their dried skin back to moist stalks and leaves unfurled themselves like opening hands.

A few yards away, nestled into the grass, was the smudged jar of Eiry's obsession, his dead will-o-wisp body curled up in the bottommost corner, forgotten...and catching and reflecting the growing light of the raevan's strengthening rune.

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Dust

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.Eiry's attic adventures.

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April Showers...Hey! I brought flowers!

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.Isi nearly busts a blood vessel as well as Eiry's head when Josh and his new raevan come to the Delaran home to express their gratitude for their help with capturing Lulu's soul. How does the day end during April Showers...Hey I brought flowers!.

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The Aftermath

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.After spending a day worrying for Aphismet, who had gone on a field trip with Ebony, Isikoro and Rivener are enraged to discover what happened in The Aftermath of their adventure...even though it yields surprising results .

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Haunting

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.Isi's trip to the Asylum.

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Wine turns sour when bad news strikes

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.Invited guests of Ethan Blake and sweet Vyn, the Delaran family finds themselves at dinner with the fellow raevan owner when they receive a terrible phone call announcing the death of Gage. Wine turns sour when bad news strikes, and the group is left in utter disrepair and shock.

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