Phantom Recall

27 || mors fidei

I can't bring myself to leave the park.

Though the echoes of him are long gone now, it would seem as though the essence of Noir still lingers along the insides of my eyelids. Afterimages. I don't feel right staying or leaving. I just don't feel right at all.

As I notice Wisp straining to look up at me, I sink to my knees to let her stand on the ground on her own feet. And I give in to the urge to rub my finger against her soft ear. Her eyes have grown much heavier since I last looked at them so directly.

It's so cold here. I can only hope her flames warm her enough that that doesn't matter.

"You gotta snap some sense into me," I plead with her. "Hit me upside my head, push me down those stairs or something... I can't just stay here. I want to get out of this place more than anything but I can't leave Noir, I won't leave him..."

"You're not leaving him by taking a second to breathe, Will," she says sweetly. "You'll only be hurting yourself if you go. I won't let you do that."

Her message is stern, but kind all the same. She's right. I know that she's right, and so against my stubborn nature I allow myself to breathe. Deeply. Wisp demonstrates. Drawing air into her lungs, holding it there in her chest for a few seconds, then gradually letting it go. She does this several times until I start to do the same. A bit of her usual sparkle returns to her eyes.

"Okay, good! Good, good!"

"Yeah, fantastic..."

Wisp gives a brief nod, then lets her head roll to one side before reaching out to touch my knee.

It slipped my mind before, but she used to do this all the time when she was alive, too. I always thought it was a strange habit, even for a cat. Not to mention how attentive she was to me, rubbing against my leg whenever I seemed to be dragging my feet miserably through the house.

Where would I have been then without her...if only I could have had her for longer.

"I maybe should have mentioned this before," Wisp says after a short while, "but technically, I could get you out of here at this very moment. As in, you wouldn't have to go all the way back to where you entered the border realm."

It seems out of nowhere. I crane my neck to peer even closer at Wisp's face. "What??"

"I can! Here, watch this."

It's hardly an adequate warning, I would argue, but nonetheless Wisp provides me no time to prepare myself. Throwing out one of her front paws in another direction, glowing spheres gather like swarms of insects, crashing together and then expanding until they form the likeness of an archway. I didn't even blink and it's suddenly there. Through it, the hazy image of the spirit lounge hallway ripples gently as the surface of a calm lake. The archway continues to radiate light; however, as Wisp turns around again to face me proudly, its brilliance dims a little so as not to blind me.

"Ta-da!" She exclaims.

"Ta-da?!" I repeat, a cough crawling up my throat. "How the—?!"

"Perks of being a spirit guide." Wisp chuckles. And what a melodious sound it is, too. She walks quickly in a circle as her sweet laughter continues. "Cats were and have always been sacred deities! The Egyptians were right!!"

"Okay, that's great and all, but please calm down. You're gonna make me dizzy..."

"Okay!" She stops at my command. "I was only kidding. But this portal is safe, I promise. This is the place you entered the border realm, correct? Does it look familiar?"

I take a moment just to squint over her little head at the arch she just willed into existence. It isn't perfectly in focus, but again, I could recognize it at a glance. Even the faint outline of the stage located at the back of the lounge is visible from the end of the hallway.