The Peculiar Alchemist

75 || Acceptance

The woman laughed at him once he was done asking his question, and she tilted her head at him as if he was a strange boy asking strange questions.

"What do you mean am I tired of sewing? I have been doing it for four centuries!" She told him proudly, with a needle in her hand and a piece of cloth in the other. It was clear that she was happy, and she was content in sitting there in the same place he always found her in, sewing the same piece of cloth over and over again.

He still wasn't satisfied with her answer. "Don't you ever feel bored?"

"Bored? Nonsense." She laughed again with her hands moving skillfully, yet she still made a few clumsy mistakes every once in a while. For someone who has been sewing for four centuries, she was a lot less adept at it than she's supposed to. "I can't seem to get this stitch right..."

Sammy had been going back to her for years and she never figured out how to do it.

That's the thing with ghosts, they remain the same person they were when they died. They never change, they never improve, and they never get bored or feel desire the way Sammy does. Maybe this is what Kellen meant when he said he wasn't supposed to be dead, he is still acting like a living person even when he's a spirit. It's very odd indeed.

"If you could be alive again, would you choose to be?" He asked her, curious to what her answer might be.

The woman hummed thoughtfully before shaking her head. "No, I'd like to keep sewing. The world is so different now."

"I would think so after four centuries." Sammy sighed already knowing what his decision would be, he finally knew what to tell Kellen, but he wasn't very hasty about it. "I don't like being ignored."

"Silly boy. The living cannot see us." The woman laughed not looking at him anymore, she was very focused on the stitch she was attempting.

What she said was only the truth, and Sammy knew already that he was always so focused on the living and never really paid much attention to the dead who could actually see him. He always found them to be frozen in time, stuck at a certain period in their life and refusing to leave it behind. That made him lose interest in them very quickly.

He didn't even say his goodbyes when he left her because she'd barely miss him before he came back to her again. Sammy was somewhat jealous of her and other ghosts similar to her, they'd always be happy just doing what they're doing without feeling anything but contentment.

On one hand it seemed like a nightmare to be doing the same thing forever without realizing it or getting bored of it, but on the other they're actually free of any worries so maybe it wasn't so bad.

Sammy found himself going towards the school again chasing after Van before he was startled by the sudden appearance of someone he did not expect before he watched them laugh as they looked at their hand.

"I can't believe it, he was right."

At this point he didn't know if he should be surprised that Aubrey seemingly appeared from thin air as if he was always there, or go with the flow and pretend that's something completely normal even when it wasn't.

"Yay?" Sammy was confused, but still happy about his friend's happiness. "What was he right about?"

"I can go anywhere I want."

"Aubrey, are you drunk?"

The frown he got told him that Aubrey was not drunk. "I shouldn't have come to you after all."

"No, no, no. A sudden visit from you is always welcome. I always do that to you, so I can't really say anything about you suddenly popping up – No, seriously, you really did just pop up." Sammy told him awkwardly, still not sure what happened. "And speaking of being drunk, people might think you are since you're talking to air. You know they can't see me, right?"