Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

Prologue - Give us a song, Ursula - Part 1

a/n: time to check in on the ghosts on the other side

There is nothing to look forward to.

Nothing worth remembering.

Time heals all wounds, we used to say when we lived.

This too shall pass, we used to believe, and that was the last comfort when nothing else could comfort.

Live in the present, we urged each other; for time, the present moment, was a precious commodity that would one day run out like sand between the hands of paupers.

I suppose we are emperors now.

The emperors of time.

We hold beaches and beaches in the creases of our skin, we drown and suffocate under the weight of the rough, relentless crush of the uncountable grains, we inhale the sandpaper air and fall apart at the knowledge that we cannot drown, no, cannot suffocate.

What's left for us?

Words and feelings, that's all.

This soul of mine is a trap I can't shake, a trap for worthless words and feelings that come and go and stay too long ...

I chatter and complain with the best of them. Sometimes my comrades listen. Sometimes I'm sure they don't. What do I have to complain about? I drift in and out of attention, too. How long have we been talking? I've heard it all before.

I like this worm.

Resignation, despair, hopelessness.

They taste almost like comfort, especially when you've forgotten the taste of comfort.

It's been curled under the vineyards for months now, and I've been almost happy to feed it. I look forward to a long and fruitless – haha, get it? – alliance with the ugly little thing.

"Found you. Giant one in the two-five tunnels, heading east," a sharp voice intrudes on my musings.

Kiki.

He comes into sight from far away, floating over the vineyards under the powder-blue skies.

Kiki used to like to pop in and out of the lovely curls of vines, to surprise me. He gave up that game at least a century ago. I mourn the loss of the bubbliness of his personality, but what else could have happened. You lose shit. The edges of your personality. The sands erode them away.

"It wants fear and it's already shoved several others out of its way," Kiki spits. "It caught thousands yesterday. Ah, bastard, despair?"

Evidently Kiki is still one of the most active among us. An active mind, a good memory. Here he is, remembering me, come to warn me. He's a good one. It won't last, but I feel a useless spark of appreciation all the same.

"If you don't like it, go somewhere else," I tell him. My voice comes out slurred. "You been feeding anger?"

"Yeah, or something like it," my good friend mutters. "How long have you been here?"

"Whatever."

"Dammit, Ursula, did you hear me? Last I saw you you wouldn't shut up about how long ago you shook fear."

When I say nothing, he jabs his finger into my shoulder. "Come on, let's get out of here," he goes. "Girl, you don't do well with fear."

"What, like you do?"

"No, I hate fear."

"Ooh, hate."

"Come on, Ursula, come with me. Let's go to Taverna. I heard Adelaide's back."