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Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn.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]

Bella and Angela are soon also friends.

Bella doesn't talk about her mom much. (She writes about her, constantly: she was halfway through a fucking crossword puzzle or she was dating that baseball player and maybe they would have been happy or if she were here she'd tell me to cheer up, that it's all part of life. Angela doesn't peek, Darren doesn't; Savannah peeps once and gets a glare and then defends the notebook like it's her own from others' attention.)

She catches up on the schoolwork. She makes dinner for Charlie. She writes and writes and cries sometimes, alone, and writes.

One day she is in the grocery store, dropped off while Charlie gets a haircut, looking for lemons.

And she thinks she sees Renée.

She knows it is not Renée. She knows Renée is dead. The funeral was open casket. She knows there is no reason to follow this person in the long - is that a rain poncho? that'd make sense - just because they walk the same and have the same chin and same height.

She also knows she's not going to get arrested for trying to get a closer look at a person in a grocery store, and that it's going to bother her if she doesn't. The bother will take longer to dig out than the check will take to make. If she circles around the stand with the avocados -

The lady with the poncho drops a necklace. Bella picks it up (it gives her a little static shock); that's a better excuse than she expected to have to get a look at her, convince the animal parts of her brain that it's not Renée. "Ma'am?"

And then the lady rounds the endcap with the Mountain Dew and Bella walks as briskly as she dares and the lady's gone, and Bella's still holding the necklace.

"Ma'am?"

But she's nowhere in the entire store, to collect her necklace or to satisfy Bella's botheredness.

Well, it's not such a huge surprise that someone could outpace Bella, even indoors. She considers giving the necklace to Lost and Found, but - no. She likes the necklace. She's going to keep it.

Charlie picks her up and takes her home.

It's a nice day. They're rare. She goes out, necklace 'round her neck. Finds a clearing in the wood.

And passes out.

[castmyown]

From where he's perched at the window in his house, Darren flinches.

.... What the hell was that?

[morethanimaginary]

His sister is nearby and notices the flinch, and the way he's looking out the window like there's something that could kill him on the other side of it.

"What's that, Darren? Is Timmy stuck in a well?"

[castmyown]

He snorts. "No. But there was a - thing. A magic thing."

[morethanimaginary]

"A magic thing," says Savannah. "Specific."

[castmyown]

"Vana, this is important," sighs Darren. "It came from the woods and I don't know what it is. Help me look for it?"

[morethanimaginary]

"Sure," she shrugs.

They inform their dad, who is confused, but it's not like he can help with it at all, so he wishes them luck, tells them to be safe, and off they go.

After a brief talk, they split up to find it as fast as possible, with cellphones at the ready if something goes wrong. Darren is jittery about staying in fullform while this close to people, but Savannah isn't. She keeps to the skies - it's about the only advantage she gets, since her brother's the one who sensed it.

[castmyown]

Even on foot as a human, though - Darren's the one to find the 'magic thing.'

When he does, he stares.

[shesepankh]

Bella is already awake when he finds her, but hasn't been for long.

"AAAAAAAAAH!" she says, staring at her paws. She cranes her neck around for a look at her wings. "AAAAAAAAAH!" She looks at Darren. "Hi welcome to my freaky transformation dream?" She trips over her tail and goes over like a sack of potatoes. "YIPE!"

[castmyown]

Darren is still staring. He recognizes the voice. "Bella? What...? You must have just- this isn't a dream," he says, some mixture of stunned and in awe. "You're a sphinx."

[shesepankh]

"Thank you, Obviously Figment Of My Imagination Darren," says Bella, attempting to get all her feet under her, "as you know I never read old plays -" She fails at the "feet" project. "This dream would be more fun if I just magically knew how to operate a sphinx."

[castmyown]

"Nope, you've got the real one, promise. Er - remember when I mentioned the apartment complex instead of a box?"

[shesepankh]

"What in the world does that have to do with anything?" She manages to stand up on all fours and starts experimenting with moving one foot at a time, carefully supporting herself on the other three. She unfolds and folds her wings.

[castmyown]

"Welcome outside of the box. Do you want help with - um, learning how to walk in your natural form?"

[shesepankh]

"There is nothing natural about this! I'm a fucking sphinx!"

[castmyown]

"Yes, you're a sphinx."

He glances around, reflexively, because he is paranoid. Seeing no one, he then shifts.

He is then a lovely grey-blue winged stag. Cloven hooves, antlers - the whole deal.

"And I'm a peryton. Um. Do you want help with walking or explanations first? I'm a little nervous about being here in fullform but I can wait a little while because this is probably a lot to handle right now."

[shesepankh]

"What the hell kind of dream is this?" She seems to have the hang of her feet well enough to take cautious steps toward him, circling around. "Why am I a sphinx and you a peryton? Is Angela a dragon, is Savannah a unicorn?"

[castmyown]

"Unicorns don't exist, dragons are extinct, and my sister is also a peryton," he informs her. "As far as I know Angela's just a normal human. But I thought you were, too, so I could be entirely wrong. Also, not a dream."

[shesepankh]

"How did this happen? Do people just randomly turn into mythological quadrupeds all the time and nobody happened to mention it?"

[castmyown]

"Er - kind of? Though we go through some trouble to make sure it's not mentioned. Okay, in the past - day or so, did you touch any weird amulet necklace things? Did it feel like it gave you some kind of shock? Like an electric shock, that's usually what it feels like."

[shesepankh]

"A lady in the grocery store dropped it and I couldn't catch her to return it, and it shocked me."

[castmyown]

Darren is confused! "She just - dropped it? Wh- you know what, nevermind, that is not the thing to focus on right now. We'll figure whatever that is later. Keep the amulet safe, please, you'll really, really regret it if you don't. They're really old magic, they let - people like us look and feel like humans."

[shesepankh]

Bella facepaws. "Okay, I'm going to pretend that this isn't a dream for a while. Within the parameters of this magic system - I need the necklace and it'll let me be human-shaped again?"

[castmyown]

"Yes. Did you lose it or drop it or - something? I can go get it if-" He spots the necklaces around her neck. "Oh, no, it's right there. Okay, er- so, a sphinx gets a medallion that lets them be a false human."

He looks a little uncomfortable, pawing the ground a bit and flexing his wings.

"So um - that sphinx has a child with a normal human. You don't get a hybrid, you get another sphinx, except - the medallion's spell transfers to the kid, too. They don't need a medallion, it's just - on them. But the spell can be disrupted, it's not perfect and if they get a medallion that's - basically - the right frequency, meant for that kind of creature, it tries to turn them human. Except it can't, because you're already turned human, and the spell - breaks. Then you are a sphinx."

[shesepankh]

"So you're saying one of my parents is - or was - a sphinx."