mostly ghostly

There was never much light in this place, Eriadon preferred it as such. The circus was too noisy, too congested, too bright. He could never sleep, but here he never wanted to leave bed. Her voice is soothing, whispered by his ear in the black of night. He hasn’t heard those words in so long, he never thought he would again. They immediately make him feel alive, full of fire. Like he won’t disappear at the softest puff of breath like a flickering, weak flame. She made him feel strong, desirable. Wanted. 

there’s something very wrong about it all. the field lays full of mines ——— where bombs are filled with domestication in the place of gunpowder or anything remotely nuclear. still, the damage remains catastrophically evident. when the crack of a whip resounds somewhere nearby, adalinda shifts uncomfortably in their seat. people quickly fill up the observation area, and only few vacant seats remain when they rise from their place. when she finally finds eriadon both relief and concern take hold of her. she takes his face in her lithe fingers, searching his eyes for all the painful memories she wants to free him from. a thumb softly ghosts over his cupid’s bow absentmindedly. ❝ i will be here for every moment of it. no more of this poor charlatan’s game. never again. ❞

Eriadon wishes he could go away, just drift into the nothingness that often threatens to consume him. But then where would he go? There was no life without her, no purpose. This, what he was doing now, this gave him purpose. He was going to be a part of something big, something meaningful and buried-Adalinda’s death would mean something. When she finds him, he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. His skin was buzzing, his heart beating so fast he thought it was going to break out of his chest. But her touch slowed everything, her touch was the antidote to the poisoning effects of his fear. Never again, she says. And he believes her. His mouth catches hers without thinking of their current company, but no one bats an eye. No one is even watching.

Though they never really spoke much, Gideon felt a kinship toward Eriadon. They were both suffering under the thumb of the ringmaster and the leaders of the circus. He appreciated the concern and nodded back at the ghostly figure, “Thanks. Stay safe as well, mate. Do not let the ringmaster scare you.” Mentioning him made Gideon wonder if the ringmaster ever stole blood from Eriadon too. He thought to ask, but the booming voice of the announcer broke his train of thought. “Oh… yes. Well there is our cue.”

Eriadon doesn’t want to say how terrified he is of the ringmaster, but it’s clear. He was afraid of everything though, and especially without the protection of Adalinda... “That it is,” he mutters back, disappearing in front of Gideon. He reappears on stage, his image flickering. The crowd gasps in fear, parents gripping their children tight. But like the announcer had said, they had no fear because Gideon was up next. 

As soon as Charles entered the big top tent, he reached out to Eriadon from the crowd. “Don’t be nervous, Eriadon. You’re doing great, and I am proud of you.” What Charles had planned for the evening was sure to set the world ablaze, but with the mistreatment of the mutants in this place had to stop. If everything went according to plan, no one would miss the mutants he intended to rescue.

Eriadon never had a good relationship with his parents. His father would rather him have died as an infant than to have been forced to raise him. And he thinks maybe he would have died without his buried-sister’s love. Several times in his life actually. So meeting Charles, and feeling his paternal warmth in everything he did and said, was one of the better things to come into his life. “I don’t know how big of a help I’ll be,” he whispers, still not quite grasping the idea that he doesn’t have to speak out loud. 

After he’d been caught shifting by a scoundrel, Gideon was abducted and dragged into the circus with promises to keep his secret as long as he remained with them. Tonight marked the sixth month he’d been here, but all he wanted was to go home. Maybe his life wasn’t so great with his Pa dead, and his mother institutionalized, but he missed his cousin. Getting ready for the show, Gideon passed by the performer and tried to offer words of encouragement, “Just like any other night, right mate?” Gideon wasn’t aware of the plans he or anyone else had, he just assumed the ghost was similar to himself. Every night he told himself just one more.

Eriadon tries not to appear startled by Gideon’s voice, swallowing hard. He wanted to go back to the manor, lay beside his not-sister and stare at each other through the night. He missed her terribly, not as terribly as his buried-sister but he didn’t want to be apart for fear that something would happen and tear them apart forever. Again. He looks to Gideon, trying to smile at him but he was always under the impression that people were just patient with his existence. “Right...” After a beat, he thinks he might as well add a warning. “Be careful tonight, though, yeah?”

“I’m able to become non-corporeal, it’s not the same as dying so yes, I can die.”

It’s hard to look directly at her. Eriadon finds himself always looking at the corner of her mouth or a random item just behind or over her head. Her adjacent. She was too everything. Too thin, too tall, too pale, too sharp, too ghastly. Too perfect. When he looked at her, he could only do so in her sleep, when she seemed more real. More within his reach. Even when she took him to bed he couldn’t face her, in denial even while trapped in the web of her body.

He wasn’t worthy.

Her words make his breath stick to his throat, and he thinks maybe he really is dead this time. Like her words are spindly fingers, spreading his rib cage and snapping his sternum like the taut string of a violin. Wrapping their sticky grip around his heart and easing it out of his body, careful not to rip or tear their harvest. 

He touches his own face, feels the sharpness of his bones and the hollow gouge of his cheeks. How did she see him when he failed to exist? Failed to live. He could never be as enthralling as a winter’s night, as deafening. She was like endless depth of powdery snow and he was nothing but a flurry melting before it hit her tongue. 

“Um... Yeah, one person.”