Working it out with a pencil. (open)

[Liam Farrell]

It had been a few days since his chat with Kuma-kun, and Liam was putting the finishing touches on his Frankenstein essay. As he flipped back to the first page to go through it and proofread, Eve spoke up, her voice hesitant.

/Hey, Liam? I’ve been thinking… how exactly do you plan on getting me out of your head? And what if it doesn’t work?/

Liam sighed, then pulled a blank sheet of paper toward him. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching before writing out his answer.

That’s what we came here to figure out. But first we need to find out who to talk to. I don’t think we should plan too far ahead just yet, this is only our second week here.

/Well, I think it might be good to have a few ideas going into this. And a backup plan would come in handy, wouldn’t it?/

True. Liam tapped his pencil on the paper. I dunno, though… what we do to get you out all depends on what kind of body we can get you into, I think. Whether that be a real human body or something like Sally the Ragdoll or Edward Scissorhands.

/Well, I’d prefer a real human body to a homunculus any day. I do want to have kids someday, eventually. But where the hell are we going to find one? Graverobbing is all kinds of wrong and gross, and I can’t see anyone being willing to give their body to me. And I wouldn’t ask them to go through what you’re going through./

Liam shuddered. Aye. But there are necromancers and enchanters here, for a start. I’m sure they can help us think of something. Maybe they can make you a new body that looks like your old one. I do have a piece of your hair they could use. He reached up to the locket hidden under his shirt. Though that would present its own set of problems when we want to go back home…

/No kidding. “Hi Mum, I’m back from the dead! Please don’t freak out!” That’s bound to go over well./

Well, we have a way to contact them from here, so we can at least tell them what we’re doing in advance – assuming they’ll believe it at all. But the rest of Tralee, that’s an issue. A lot of people went to your funeral and burial, and I doubt many of them believe in magic.

/Okay, but what if the new body doesn’t look like mine? I could have a new name, a new identity… You could introduce me as a friend you met at school who doesn’t have anywhere else to stay./

I dunno… Liam ran a hand over his face. It would be so strange to me, knowing it was you and yet not seeing or hearing the Eve I know. And either way you’d still be stuck not being able to act like yourself, like Mum and Da’s kid.

/Not in public, no, but at home… If Mum and Da believe it, that’s good enough for me./

There’d still be legal issues, though. You’d have no ID, no passport, no school transcripts aside from Dunehelden. Just saying you were homeschooled or raised off the grid wouldn’t be enough. You’d need to make up your entire backstory from scratch.

Eve sighed. /Point taken./

Liam chewed on his lower lip. I wonder… maybe you could stay here in Lakeshore while I went back home by myself, took another year of public school in Tralee, then came back to enroll in the university and be with you when I move out? That’d give you time to adjust to being in a new body, give Mum and Da time to wrap their heads around this, and give me some sort of closure in the real mortal world. And we’d still be able to talk to each other without having to worry about awkward time things.

/True… but we’ve never been apart for more than a few days at a time. Could we both handle it?/

If you can, I think I can. Like I said, we’d still have communication. Plus, we have friends here, and we’ll probably have more by the end of the year. You won’t be totally alone. You could spend the summer with Romi and Ezem and Odol, or find your own place.

/Fair enough. But what if it doesn’t work? What if I’m stuck inside you forever?/ She paused. /I wonder if it would be okay if I borrowed your body sometimes to make my own identity… You could say you’re genderfluid and I’m your female side. Give me another name, something close to my own but not right on the nose. An anagram of my middle name, maybe. Eleanor?/

That’s Mum’s name. Might be a bit suspicious. And not to impose on your right to a separate identity, but I think it might be disrespectful to actual genderfluid people. And probably transgender people.

/Eleanor’s a perfectly common name, thank you. You have a point, but I just…/

I know. I don’t blame you, but this is a really tricky issue and we have to look at it from every side. We’ll find people to talk to about it and work through it one step at a time. He sat back and stretched his arms above his head.

[Odol Xhyl]

Odol had intended to say hello and pass on by.  Check on the lad who had stayed with them at the Loa.

But then he had glanced at the writing.  His brow furrowed in confusion, and he squinted a bit to read each line as it was written without moving close enough to alert Liam.  He was... it looked like he was conversing with someone.  When no one else was around.  Those were clearly responses to... something.

He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again when Liam stretched and leaned back.  Odol decided he didn't want to call attention to it, and took a step forward, intentionally making a noise by shifting his backpack higher on his shoulder as he came closer.

"Hey Liam.  How're you settling in?"  He moved slower than usual, giving Liam time to hide the paper if he so wished.  He leaned his hip against the table and hooked his thumbs into his pockets.

[Liam Farrell]

Liam looked up at a noise behind him, and smiled up at Odol. "Pretty well so far, all things considered. Thanks for asking." He didn't bother to hide the paper he'd been writing on, but figured he might as well get a start on that asking-for-help thing. It was just a matter of putting his and Eve's thoughts into words. But Odol was welcome to read while he figured that out.

[Odol Xhyl]

Odol chewed on his lower lip and looked over the paper again. He grumbled and raised one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes momentarily. "Who're you talking to, Liam?"

He hoped being in a new place wasn't stressing the boy out. When he had been exiled (violently) from the Wakeling territories, he had spent more than a few days wandering through the edges of Arcadia, delirious with pain and anger. He had heard voices then. Angry voices.

At the very least, whatever voice(s) Liam was conversing with seemed reasonable and not campaigning for him to shred the flesh from every living thing he came across.

Ahem.

[Liam Farrell]

Liam looked at the paper, then back at Odol. "My sister. I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding completely crazy." Then again, Kuma had been pretty open-minded about it. "Long story short, she... died not long before I found Lakeshore. Her soul's stuck in my head. We don't know how or why, but we want to get her out. That's actually the main reason I enrolled here."

[Odol Xhyl]

Odol gave a relieved sigh and pressed his hand to his chest.

"Gods. Okay, that is much less worrying an alternative. I mean." He looked sideways at Liam and tilted his head back. "I'm sorry that happened to you, and her, but having someone's soul in your head isn't the worst thing in the world. That's something that can happen in certain voodoo curses, but from what Romi says it's usually a temporary induction. I haven't heard of permanent case."

Granted, the one time he had thought to ask Romi to elaborate, he had gotten... distracted. And stopped listening. Because Romi was distracting.

Ahem.

"So you're talking with your sister's ghost. Does she remember what she saw or felt or heard before she realized she was in your head?"

[Liam Farrell]

/I do remember. It was scary./

Liam nodded. "She does. D'you want me to relay her words for you? She can hear what we're saying, after all."

[Odol Xhyl]

Odol crossed his arms and nodded. Maybe he'd be able to help Liam and his sister figure things out. Or at least he would be able to know if Romi could help them.

[Liam Farrell]

Liam nodded and licked his lips. He just knew this was going to be its own hell, finding out what death looked like from the victim's point of view. A decent-sized part of him wished he'd brought Kazari's teddy bear with him to he library.

Eve waited for Liam to settle before starting to speak. /For context's sake, we were outside on the lawn with our parents, having a picnic lunch for our birthday. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until this one black car came by. Then there was a gunshot, and.../

Liam's throat and chest tightened at around the same point Eve's voice faltered. He coughed and tried to clear his throat, then shook his head and grabbed the pencil again. He wrote below his words from earlier, his hand shaking. The other crept up to his locket and clutched it in a tight fist.

I didn't realize what had happened until I felt the blood on me. Our parents were screaming... Liam caught me and held me, begged me not to leave him. He said he loved me, and then everything went dark. All I could think was "no, I don't want this, I don't want to die."

Liam paused to wipe the tears from his face with his sleeve, then bent his head over the paper again as Eve spoke on.

/For a while I couldn't feel anything, couldn't see or hear or smell, and it was like I was floating. I thought for sure I'd ended up in hell. But then the senses started coming through, and I realized they were his. Liam's. I tried to talk to him, but I don't think he could hear me at all until after my funeral./

Liam put the pencil down and took a deep breath, then slid the paper over so Odol could see it more easily.

[Odol Xhyl]

Odol read over the paper, skimming over the words until he found the information relevant to what he had asked. He wasn't phased at all by Liam's emotional distress, in fact he didn't seem to even acknowledge it.

"So, nothing then." He set the paper back down and tipped his head back again. He didn't think there was any magic involved here-- not that he was an expert by any means, but it sounded like Liam's sister's spirit must have panicked and latched onto the closest body.

Odol grumbled and rubbed his face with one palm. There were plenty of necromancers around the school, and it couldn't be that hard to handle an intelligent, responsive human spirit.

Or, Liam was grieving and imagining the whole thing. But given the nature of things in Lakeshore, Odol was more inclined to believe the stranger of the two explanations.

It was odd that Liam didn't hear anything until after the funeral, though. Eh.

[Liam Farrell]

Liam dried his face on his sleeve again and slumped at the table, his head on his arms. Odol's lack of reaction was a bit disconcerting. Did the man even believe this?

Eve sighed when Odol summed up what he'd needed to hear in a few words. So she'd said all that about her death for nothing? That wasn't comforting.

/Sorry,/ she whispered to Liam. This must be hurting him most of all.

Liam nodded his head as much as he could, still not sitting up. After a few moments he sighed and got to his feet, speaking to Odol. "I'm gonna grab a drink of water, if that's alright with you."

[Odol Xhyl]

"Hm?" Odol looked down at Liam and his lips parted slightly in an "ah" of understanding.

"See if there are any orange or lemon slices you can put in it. The citrus will help you perk back up." He raked his hair back, only to have it fall right back in his eyes. "D'you want me to come with, or..."

[Liam Farrell]

"If you want, feel free." Liam moved around the table and started for the door, leaving his essay where it was. He didn't intend to leave it there for long, after all.

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