Mount Everfall wanting things from people who don't want to give them to me.

he should be back home.

instead he stuck around. magda (@Magnolia) may have picked up on it, but he did not glue himself to her. instead he drifted down from the plateau, along the waters in the floodland to the base of a sheer mountain. he gathered up some things along the way.

he also looked for poppy seeds. something to give to magda after she had lost them.

maybe they would grow along the base of the mountain.

the mountain's shadow covered him.

something smaller, sharper, moved about the hills; he caught it with his one eye, followed the flash of cream when the veiled sun could light the way.

he watched a while. he followed too, a spectre on his long limbs, a stick-man, frayed at the edges. he drifted.

along the edge of the world he saw clusters of red, orange, and the murk that threatened to swallow them up. the ghost neared them and drew a breath, familiar with these.

he almost missed the...thing.

man, he thought, but remained uncertain. it seemed near ghastly. haunted. wicked. pale with dark points — although almost the same could be said for veran.

this body haunted flowers.

and flowers were promising for seeds.

do you know what these are? a question poised from a safe distance away, almost waiting for the figure to vanish into thin air.

the petals fell as he breathed their scent. if they held any scent. everything was the same here: sloppy mud and clinging, hanging moss. it was a surprise the stooped figure did not carry his own invasive layer of it. his fur was hanging, weeping from him, as a willow's heavy bough; tangled where it had dragged among the green.

there was a voice. blue eyes. the man turned slowly and turned, and turned, and then had his eye glowing luminous and eerie upon them. not a word spoken - only a deep nod, unblinking.

then he seemed to fade back, swaying, settling. come look, the movement said.

it had to be a ghost.

a vision. something unreal. maybe the mountainside was haunted, such a thought did not feel so impossible. he had lived among the spiritual before.

yet he felt compelled. he drifted closer and closer. then he was there.

he breathed in the flowers too. not yet confirming or denying that they might be what he needed.

his gaze turned to his scarred ghost.

the boy was black-capped, blue-eyed, and maybe afraid. he knew what he saw, though. he recognized those buds the same way the ghost did. the spirit lingered a moment there and stepped further away, to another cluster; these looked to be on their last legs.

he grabbed softly for those bulbs, entire rounds, one and then two and then three, and pulled away to chew on them; almost deer-like. as he chewed bits of plant matter came away and fell from his lips. some, unchewed.

the ghost meandered, soundless.

somewhere between the man grabbing them and a few remaining unchewed upon lips, veran had the realization.

these were indeed the very thing he had been looking for.

now the man seemed to devour them like some sort of brain-dead herbivore. soundless. devoid of any life. yet veran knew if he ate too many, that the man would truly become devoid of life.

um, you...really shouldn't.

his heart raced.

maybe he could get the man to eat another plant. yarrow came to mind. he could make the man throw up anything bad he ate.

the sudden intensity of veran's gaze upon the plant-eating man was enough for his tail to tremble nervously in suit too.

he cast his head to one side, then another, as if he were a dowsing-rod seeking precious treasure. that wasn't far from the truth - but as he moved to snap at more buds, he came up short. this was before the boy spoke; during, and after, the ghost gave a long, slow blink and looked over again.

shh. he softly hissed. quiet, black-head. quiet spirit. quiet, quiet, too loud for me.

only some of those bulbs would be efficacious. the ghost could tolerate a lot; there was no telling how much he'd found and devoured before the boy came. he coughed, lifted his lip - but only to work some plant matter from his gums, and let it ball against his tongue, to drop.

what he'd eaten was dulling so much. why would the boy say no to that?

shh.

the man may as well have clamped his muzzle for it.

veran quickly stiffened, but not out of aggression. more with nerves rattling around in his small frame, no where to go and so they compacted upon one another.

just as he thought of the yarrow to make the man purge;

he also thought of the seeds the man consumed. he thought of seeing it first hand. he thought of giving instead of taking.

it was a horrible thought, but he could not help it as he watched the one-eyed man.

wondering when (if) the poppy seeds became noticeable outwardly.

the ghost lived in the liminal spaces at the best of times.

the more he ate, the longer he waited, the more reality bled around him.

the forest was composed of shadows; hard ones, soft ones. the boy was shadow-capped; his eyes were the sky, and when the ghost looked at the face they were set inside, he saw them slowly proliferate.

the head was eyes, only eyes. spreading eyes winking and blinking and staring.

his own — singular, with a massive pupil now ringed in gold — stared too long at the boy.

his mouth slackened with the rest of him. he had stopped walking at some point and slouched to the ground, let his jaw hang. a dribble of saliva collected behind his front teeth and dripped against the grass.

sleep.

magda had been right about it. for this man seemed to be a sleep walker. although he did soon sink towards the ground, drooling. veran was there every step.

staring, watching. the man's single eye had gone from the sun to a black hole. maybe this was the part of waking dreams.

it was bad to do. it was bad. very, very, very bad.

veran moved to rummage through the flowers. finding one near the others the man had taken.

this was bad. this is bad.

he held the stem of it in his mouth. not yet placing it down, only holding it before the man. could he see it? could he process it?

would he...want it?

the boy sprouted and grew before his eye.

that black head was watching him, all its million eyes. from its mouth grew a flower, and another, and another, refracting in his spiraling imagination until a bouquet stuffed his mouth.

he saw vines climbing up his throat and out.

the ghost reached for one and another; he missed each attempt, dulled. misjudging distances. clipping grass more often than the one bulb held before him - but he didn't see it, he saw proliferation of everything. repetition. mindlessness.

a pitiful sound crawled up the ghost's throat and he sank back, letting it pour out of him as a yawn. he fell back, and became at flowerbed; limbs becoming branches, reaching up, lazy and hazy and unreal.

the man was gone.

he may as well have melted into the earth with each attempt to move. veran watched with wonder and shock. it would have been easy to feed the man more, to see what happened.

the man's sound was noted.

veran still held onto the flower as he sunk down to his own belly. still peering at the man.

are you in there?

he whispered around the flower stem, soft and warm.

there was a snake in the grass. black and white, and blue.

it crept up alongside him and was hot to the touch. it whispered questions for the ghost to hear and to mull over, if he could focus enough to understand.

was he in there? was he anywhere? the shadows crowd the sky. he doesn't know which way is up. his limbs are spiders legs and silver vines.

he's lost now, utterly. he makes little sounds, nonsense. his muscles twitch. those legs fold up slowly until they're tucked to his chest, or hanging limp. that one eye glossed over — his body an empty shell.

alive, yes. breathing. everything running on auto-pilot while the ghost's control fades. his body relaxes in a way that suggests a waking sleep.

he wouldn't give it outright, but he set the flower down.

as if that somehow dissolved him of all responsibility and accountability. if the man managed to grasp it...then so be it. but somehow veran felt the man could not grasp anything right now.

so he laid his head down, examining the man through this...dreamwalking.

you're okay, you know. he whispered still. keeping his voice carefully volumed and soft.

although the reality was that he had no clue if the man would actually be okay or not.

you're okay.

that resonates in his head.

you're okay, you're okay, you're —

know, known, hnn... his jaw flexed. the tongue inside obeyed one instant then felt too heavy the next. that singular eye rolled in his head.

hours passed. aeons. seconds. each breath felt like an earthquake. his heart was a stuttering drum. okay.

[ . . . ]

somewhere along the trip he found real sleep. his eye remained open for half of it, red along the edges, unfocused.

did the snake linger long? did it hope to see him suffocate within himself, to become a meal fit to swallow up? he wouldn't have known — perhaps even welcomed it.

[ . . . ]

when it ended, however long that took, he was alive. he woke in a puddle of saliva-soaked mud, on his belly, stained by grass and decorated with a tangle of red and gold leaves; the embodiment of these wet forests.

veran stayed for most of it.

at one point he had wandered off, sometime when the man slept, searching for other plants. the most important part was he had indeed found poppy.

why would he need to move to garden it when it grew freely here? magda would like it, he felt certain of that. it would be easy for them to come to as they met up randomly about.

and the man seemed to like it too.

for he finally seemed to wake. which meant it had not been enough to kill, only enough for walking dreams that had eventually led into deep sleep. it was good that he had resurfaced, that veran had not given into temptation to supply the man further.

a frog was dropped for the man to consume, if he could, then veran returned back to trying to gather at least one proper flower for proof.

all for magda.