ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[shesepankh]

"Um, sure, but the neck thing was an accident. I'm going to need to practice before school. Lucky it's a Friday and I already did the shopping."

[castmyown]

"That's rather lucky. A few days should be enough to stop absently slipping a bit if you're paying attention, if you work at it."

She is then wrapped in feathery grey-blue wings. It's actually quite soft and comfy.

[shesepankh]

Mmmm.

"Thanks. ...But I don't want to be near the magic neon sign if there might be demons after me, let's keep walking."

[castmyown]

"Yeah, but you needed a hug."

Away go the wings, and he releases her from the embrace. Back to walking!

(He is mercifully not embarrassed by hugs. She needed one, he gave it, all is well. Completely normal.)

[shesepankh]

(She is not embarrassed either.)

"I wonder which of my parents it was. I don't think Charlie'd like to be a sphinx, so I guess either way he won't be disappointed about the lack of medallions."

[castmyown]

"Yeah. I don't know of a way to check without chucking a medallion at him, though, so - it might be a mystery. Maybe there's a way to figure out through magic without disrupting the spell if he's a sphinx."

[shesepankh]

"...The lady who dropped the medallion at the store looked like my mom. I was actually trying to get a better look at her so I could convince my brain it wasn't really. But I didn't wind up seeing more than - her chin, how she walked, how tall she was."

[castmyown]

Darren thinks.

"... Could be a relative? A sister or cousin who knew that she was a sphinx or - something? Was one, herself, knew about your mom and knew she'd had you? Then she found you, got you a medallion so you could sphinx it up?"

[shesepankh]

"Mom was an only child, as far as I know. She had cousins, I suppose, none she was close with, but my grandparents are all four dead, have been for a while, so if it was a cousin they'd have to know an awful lot without much to go on about what side of the family it's from."

[castmyown]

"True. I'm not sure, it was an idea. The mysterious woman who looks like your mom and conveniently dropped the exact medallion for you is kind of suspicious, to me. It could be one of the creatures that can shape-shift, being cruel about what shape they pick to get your attention. Or I could be over-thinking it and you could just be incredibly lucky."

[shesepankh]

"Yeah, I don't know what to make of it, but I thought I'd mention it in case it was important."

[castmyown]

"It seems like it, but I don't know what it means. Sadly enough, I don't know everything. Yet."

[shesepankh]

"Let me know if you get there, I'll want to mooch."

[castmyown]

"Yup. I think my opinion on people mooching off of things I know is pretty well known."

(In that he doesn't mind at all, if it's innocent. If it's not, then that changes things.)

[shesepankh]

"Yes, I know, that's why I'm asking nicely instead of nefariously plotting to put a keylogger on your computer."

[castmyown]

"Thanks," he says, brightly. "for not doing that. It would upset me."

[shesepankh]

"Only if I were terrible at subterfuge."

[castmyown]

Darren snorts with laughter. "Well, yes, but if you obviously used what I know without any obvious help from me, I'd figure it out. And then it would upset me."

[shesepankh]

"And I suppose in this hypothetical you know everything, such as how to detect keyloggers. Oh well. I'll just have to be friends instead."

[castmyown]

"That too. Besides, being friends gets you more. Like, for example, magic lessons. I don't put those on my computer."

[shesepankh]

"I'm looking forward to that. What am I gonna learn to do?"

[castmyown]

"Well, I'm trying to learn stuff about transfiguration illusions because - medallions, so probably a lot of, 'Lets turn this thing into this other thing a lot and try to make sure the spell doesn't break' but there's some stuff involving control of water, air, finding people - so on. I don't know what a sphinx is good at, so you may or may not turn to be fantastic at one of them and barely need any tutoring in it at all. If that happens I will ask you for lessons."

[shesepankh]

"If I can do something without any tutoring at all how will that make me competent to teach it?"

[castmyown]

"Because you will have an inside look on how it works, which is better than where I'm at. I've got an outside look on it that is earned by stubbornly clawing my way through all magic ever. So. It couldn't hurt!"

[shesepankh]

"Perytons don't have special magical affinities?" Pause. "Also, weren't perytons invented in the fifties? It's not, like, ancient myth the way sphinxes or dragons are."