Of Soul And Spirit

Chapter 6: Ghosts in the Woods

Ariad wasn't quite certain what she thought of this new family she had been placed with. They didn't seem as bad as the last, but she could still see that she bothered them in the slight frowns and whispered words. Likely, they thought they could "fix" her. They always did. Ariad wondered how long this one would last before she would have to once again flee. Likely not long, but the spirits would tell her when she would need to. 

They had no children, which was a good thing. Younger children weren't bad, but the older children.....the older children gave Ariad hell. The foster parents would keep their uncomfortableness to quiet whispers, but the kids had no such reservation. Ariad would of course do her best to avoid them, but they would find a way to corner her.

They hated her, for her strange hair, for her strange eyes, for her strange personality, and for the strange things that happened around her. It's not her fault the spirits knocked things over sometimes or that the angels blessed her with extreme maturity, or at least that's what the spirits told her.

Most people didn't even believe she saw spirits, they thought her mind was addled. They diagnosed her with a range of things, from schizophrenia to synesthesia to apophenia. They even thought that she knocked the things down herself to prove that the spirits weren't part of her imagination. At first they wanted to fix help Ariad, but in the end they either got rid of her, or she left.

Her room was nice, a decent size with walls a nice shade of a pale golden color with grey accents. The walls were bare, and Ariad didn't own anything personal to decorate the room with besides the gemstone the ghosts claimed her mother had given her. Ariad had a tendency to believe them, they had never led her wrong before. Though they refused to to tell her anything else about her parents.

A few spirits flitted about the room as she unpacked. She recognized two of them, Scrym and Darket, who usually accompanied her travels. Scrym was a scrawny boy who appeared to be fifteen and Darket appeared to be in his late thirties. Both them and the other ghosts were translucent apparitions. These weren't their real names, they couldn't remember much of their lives from before, so Ariad made them up. Ariad liked making up names.

The other two wraiths were unfamiliar to her. One was a little girl drifting about and flitting into things and the other was the ghost of a cat. She didn't see the spirits of animals as often, but they still appeared occasionally.

She began to put more clothes in the drawer. "Mistress!" a feminine voice shouted, making Ariad jump a bit. She turned around and saw her third spirit companion, Raya. "You're back," she responded to the flighty spirit.

"Yes Mistress, we must leave now," the spirit replied earnestly. She created a bag with spirit-haze and began putting imaginary items in. "Pack up, hit the road, field trip time!" Ghosts could create little projections with their mind made of the same translucent mist that they were made of, called spirit-haze.

"We have to leave, now of all times Raya? We literally just got here. You've never had me leave this early....." Ariad trailed off.

Raya shrugged. "This is different Mistress. There's whispers around, they urge us......we must go." Ariad sighed but did as the spirit asked. Raya had never led her astray before.

Escaping this time might be hard, Ariad thought as she began putting her clothes back into the bag. Someone had most likely told her foster family of her constant fleeing, and they were no doubt keeping watch for more attempts.

At the age of twelve, Ariad had already lived in more places with different families than most kids five years older than her.

She grabbed her bag and slipped out of the room and down the stairs, and Scrym, Darket and Raya followed her. They drifted across the floor silently, slightly illuminating the dark hallway. Once Ariad reached the kitchen, she began pack food and water from the cupboards. Faintly in the background she heard people moving about upstairs, and she gestured for Scrym to go distract them. He flew off silently, and the sound of things falling and cursing replaced the footsteps she had heard previously.