The Heartwood [BOO] I know delusion when I see it in the mirror

It feels as if she has been asleep for too long. The kind of heady, weighted disorientation when you go down for a quick nap and find that when you wake, the clock tells you it has been eight hours or more.

She's  curled in a tight ball. The air is much colder than what Ibis expects as she unfurls, and when she reaches out with her forelegs for a back-arching stretch, her splayed toes drag through misted grass. With her eyes half-lidded, they close again and she draws in a long breath. It too is cold; refreshing, and tasting of—autumn?

As Ibis rises, she shakes some leaf-litter from her coat and observes the clustering gray of the clouds overhead, peeking through the canopy. Where is she? The Heartwood, yes, she knows this place. What was she doing here? As awareness and wakefulness creep through her Ibis ponders what adventure brought her this far, but she cannot be certain. She doesn't remember. In that absence there is softness, and she is unafraid of the blank space in her memory.

There is no hunger within her body, and she is well rested (if a bit disoriented). The overcast sky gave the impression that rain was on the way—although with the chill in the air, perhaps snow—and that would no doubt make the Heartwood look very pretty.

The woman follows a short trail from her sleeping place to a spacious section of the woods where the ground was lined with reds, golds, and the browns of leaves; there, she investigates the rich smell of the earth and with a darting look to her surroundings (as if someone might see her) Ibis lowered in to a play-bow of sorts, and with a frisk of her tail, made a mad leap in to the biggest pile.

Her laughter flowed, filling the Heartwood.

Ever since her return, Wraen had harboured a quiet hope of meeting either of her brother again. She had known of his demise, when still alive. There were some matters that had never been settled between them. She had accepted that life was never perfect as stories. More often than not there were no happy endings, no "I am sorry"s and "I forgive you"s, no closures. Relationships poisoned by bitter arguments. And sometimes they simply ran out of material and people, who had once been very close, now stood before each other feeling indifferent. Worse than strangers. 

Being a ghost - free of worries for survival and fear of death - gave inexhaustible amounts of time to think things through, reminisce and make some conclusions. Wraen wished and hoped that in this big universe, where billions of souls from all the creatures that had walked this Earth lived, she would run into a familiar or rather a very specific couples of souls. Therefore, when she sensed a pull to yet another person, who had known her during life, she did not hesitate to respond. Full of hope she appeared in Heartwood - another place she had frequented as a young wolf, but which had not left any lasting impression. "Terance?" she called out to her siblings, her voice echoing in the forest. 

She met neither, but someone different. Another child she first seen as an infant and then grow up and reach those milestones that Wraen never had achieved - a mateship and family. Again with sadness she realized that this girl too had been taken from the world far too early. That they should have encountered each other not as two ghosts, but as a ghost and a middle-aged woman, who was still going strong and taking everything life had to offer. "I am glad to meet you," she told the girl, stepping out of the shadows to make her presence known. "I did not expect to see you here so soon though."

Needed to edit this post, because Wraen has, in fact, met Sarah.

Ibis' head popped up from the pile of leaves and despite being mostly noncorporeal, the leaves were trapped against her head and cheeks, giving her a brief mane until she heard the approach of someone - and as she turned her head, the leaves fluttered around her as if caught by a gust of wind.

Hello! She called to the woman, giving no indication that she recognized them. Her tail waved like a lazy windmill, and the leaves flurried there.

Do you want to play a game with me?

Ibis did not seem to recognize Wraen, which made her pause a bit. Could it be that she had mistaken this ghost for someone else? Something told her though that it did not happen to ghosts. She could not explain, why and how, but she just knew this. Call it a bloodline or connection formed early on that had lasted even beyond the veil. 

"Sure, looks like fun!" Wraen agreed, gliding closer to the leaf pile and testing it with her paw. Up until then she had been quite confident that being a ghost meant not being able to touch anything belonging to the material world. At least she had not been able to do it in her earlier encounters, however, here in Ibis's presence... it worked!

"Huh! That's some magic," she said to herself, beamed at her niece and threw some leaves up with her muzzle. They rained down on and around her, she stood in the middle of it, remembering that autumn had always been one of her favourite seasons. Because of the combination of colours, smells, temperature, the angle of light - everything.g 

"What game have you got in mind?" she then asked, mirroring Ibis's carefree and playful body-language. 

She laughed; or, the laughter seemed to be ever-present. Maybe she was laughing or maybe the sound came from the woods, from some fey influence. She was happy though - happier still to have company!

We could play tag, was one option or if we find a puddle, maybe we could read fortunes with the leaves! Although what fortunes could a ghost have? Their lives expended, their futures awash. Ibis seemed fond of the idea and was already looking for such a place to do these readings - following the earthen scents of the forest floor.

She did not seem to notice as her paws shifted through the leaves rather than on top of them, weightless and nearly transparent, as she hunted. Denial held a strong grip upon her.

Convincing people of realities of life was for the living. The ghosts - Wraen decided - had the freedom to choose, what they did with their ethereal existence. Therefore she readily agreed to Ibis's suggestion and followed her, looking for that perfect puddle to do leaf reading as keenly as her niece did. She became aware of, how easy it was for her to move as quickly or as slowly as she wanted now. The memory of how difficult had the last weeks of her life been was not as vivid. She rather remembered some details, facts, but not the exact feeling itself. Such as shortness of breath, constant headaches, heaviness of limbs and how even the shortest distances felt like thousand miles long. Now... as kind of a compensation for all that suffering, she could exist with ease again. 

It was also nice to feel as giddy as a child again! The passage of time is like an eternity, when you are a kid, because the amount you learn against the proportion of life lived is huge. Then over years you reach a point, where very few things surprise you, and there are even fewer that incite excitement. There are events that appear to repeat themselves over and over again. And - unbeknownst to you - you grow boring and somewhat cynical too. Now, however, having had a long break from the world, Wraen saw it with new eyes and without knowledge of, when her tenure here would end, she wanted to embrace the experience to the fullest. 

"Any luck?" she asked Ibis, who during Wraen's moment of contemplation had walked ahead. 

The world was buried by autumn. The leaves obscured so much. Ibis was vaguely aware that the scents she caught were thin and reedy things, barely comprehending that she was not truly capable of seeking the living as she wished. While the sun shafts led the way through the forest Ibis could not detect the warm earthen scent of the dirt, or the myriad of animal scents that typically lined a forest floor. Fortunate then, that she sought water and nothing else.

There were a few muddy segments beneath clusters of leaves, and when she moved to swipe those leaves with a paw, the motion led to nothing. Her ghostly limb passed through them. Not to be dissuaded by this, she bypassed those shallow puddles and looked further, for something larger and more exposed.

Eventually, yes! There was one depression in the earth as wide as she needed, with water suspended within it and not too many bits of leaf-litter. There! She skipped over to it, ethereal tail wagging at her hips.

Find your favorite leaves of the woods, and toss them in! We can take turns reading your fortune from the shapes that they make. Putting aside her own inability to affect change to her surroundings, Ibis presumed the other woman was much more capable.

Wraen followed after her niece in the woods, noting, how much happier and more cheerful she looked now than she ever had seen her as a living wolf. There were foggy memories of Ibis's childhood, fragments of a little, very beautiful girl, who took after her mother in her looks, and whose innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and people in it had not yet been shattered. Then came Seabreeze's decision to leave and her brother's choice to stay. And to this day Wraen could not understand, why had loyalty to Sunspire and Rannoch had been more important to her brother than keeping his young family together? Did he ever regret it? She would never find out now. 

Then she remembered the angry teenager she had come across, when she had been scouting the lands beyond the Sunspire mountains. Again - the exact details of the argument escaped her and probably no longer mattered. What had been very obvious then... Ibis had not been happy. After that another long break and she had met the girl now very much in love and in hopes of creating a family. And even that gods or fate or both had not placed in her cards. Why was it so that some people got everything and then there were Ibis's of the world, who were being teased by hope of a happy life, have it dangled right above their noses and just withdrawn the moment they reached out to grab it. 

"I think that we need special kinds of leaves for that," Wraen explained, closing the distance between them and having the same trouble of moving the leaves. "What I mean - these leaves are dead. The essence of life - the spirit of them is, what matters, and what would work for us best," she told. "Shall we look for them together?" she asked. "What do you want to ask the oracle about the future?"

There was much about her life that she regretted. These things were far from her mind, now. Ibis had a choice with how she spent her afterlife, and she would choose ignorance and bliss over the truth for as long as she could; in this case, that meant eternity. She no longer had the capacity to pine after people she could not have; she did not miss anyone openly, and chose to forget, or feign forgetting, in pursuit of her own happiness.

Now, her pursuit involved these leaves, and this fortune-telling game. Her fortune in life had been spoiled somehow; in death now, as a spirit, she could decide for herself and exist in this limbo of whimsy.

I think that we need special kinds of leaves for that, advised the woman. It was a little bit of a damper on an otherwise happy moment, and again Ibis chose to ignore this point that she was making. That they needed living leaves, rather than dead ones — dead, like her; dead, and gone, unwanted and spoiled.
It was hard to keep hold of her fantasies sometimes.

What do I want to ask? Hmm, Ibis thought about it as they searched for better leaves. She imagined many things as her body drifted through the ferns, or caught like spider's silk across a tiny sapling; she remained purposefully ignorant to the diaphonous state of her figure. I want to ask about my girls, she answered finally.
I want to ask if my babies are happy, or what might come in their future. I want to be prepared, so I can help them.
Except by now, she knew she couldn't. She still chose bliss, and refused to acknowledge her lack of agency in the living world.

Ibis chose to ignore Wraen's suggestion and she did not insist. She was a guest at her niece's party and it was only polite to respect, what they wanted to do in their afterlife. Truth to be told, Wraen did not know a lot of, what had happened in Terance's daughters life, before she had joined her in Brecheliant, but had she known the details, it would have helped her to understand her actions now. With that lacking, she was left to wonder, if Ibis was trying to escape from something. 

When she mentioned children, it was Wraen's turn to rake through her memory and find the names and the exact number of them. Lilitu - her lookalike as a kid - was the first to come to mind. Then there had been the sister that had gone missing - Arielle? Then two girls and a boy, born shortly before Wraen had died and - sadly - she had felt so bad during that last month, that she had never properly got to know them. It was a shame really, because they were her brother's grandchildren and without her being there to tellt hem stories about Terance, she felt that they had missed an important part of their life-story. Now - they would never find out. 

"Have you tried finding them?" Wraen asked. "I have found that, if they still occasionally think about you, you feel kind of a pull towards them. If lucky, if they wish so, you can talk to them as well," she suggested. "Won't tell much about their future, but - in my opinion - knowing, where they are now and what they are doing, may impact that future a lot," she said. 

Ibis went quiet as the woman spoke, offering options, and then she laughed as if the act of finding her children was a great joke! She had certainly thought to do that; what mother would refuse the chance to see their children? Yet something held her back. Fear, perhaps. Not knowing how she would be perceived. The thought that they'd look different and be different, or would not know her. It was out of the question - better to ask the leaves and play her games.

Her laughter carried until she was out of breath; she was a ghost, yes, but Ibis acted out a version of mimicked life to stave off the obvious.

I'm tired of this game, she answered abruptly. Whether they had found appropriate leaves or not, or could gather them, or had questions to ask, Ibis chose to act the part of a fickle child and gave up pursuit of their goals.

Do you want to race? She asked but did not give time for an answer - taking off at a run again, with girlish laughter filling the space as she went. As a spirit she moved fluidly across the terrain - and away from her worries, just like in life.