Hallowe'en

[inanhour]

The Sebastian who enters the bar is dressed in plain black -- for a step.

Then he startles, his clothing completely replaced by a suit of Messaline finery, like he wore once. Mayhap the same suit, even, though logic dictates otherwise.

The whole room is done in finery, mostly of a kind he has not seen, and there's laughter, and plates set out with foods, and --

"I've no stomach for it," Sebastian murmurs. He acquires a wineskin, and goes to explore this outdoors he has heard of.

A few steps out into the mid-afternoon, he catches the scent of the sea. Giving the lake a considered stare, he turns and instead heads to the relative safety of the trees.

Comments

[livinginmyglass]

Viola laughs, too. She isn't crying-- she never cries when Sebastian does, out of some subconscious inner logic that insists only one of them can be crying at a time. She takes another step closer.

"Art thou-- well?" She doesn't know how else to ask it. At peace?

[inanhour]

Sebastian shrugs, and looks down himself. "As well as I may be, given --" he hesitates. Likely it is best not to touch on the after effects surviving drowning has left him with.

"I am," he says, and smiles at her, though his eyes are still wet. "Art-- art thou?"

Should he walk to her? No, she can come at her own pace, as close as she'd like. He's heard -- tales, of ghosts grown shy.

[livinginmyglass]

She laughs a little and nods. Oh, if he knew what she was doing now!

"Ay, I am well indeed, better protected than ever I have been." There, that should please him.

She takes a hesitant step closer-- they're something like a normal distance for conversation now-- but does not reach out to him. She doesn't think she could stand the thought of seeing him fade away, or her hand pass through him, were she to try.

[inanhour]

Is there a fog rising? How strange. Sebastian doesn't notice it, curling gentle fronds around his ankles.

Sebastian glances side long at her. "Thou needs much protecting, for all of thy claims to sense."

[livinginmyglass]

She wrinkles her nose. "I have found the surest way to keep myself, I do assure thee."

Viola doesn't have her eyes on the ground, doesn't notice the fog either. Her gaze is fixed on Sebastian's face.

"But hast-- hast been here long?"

[inanhour]

"In this forest? An hour, no more," he looks away from her to his tree, which has disappeared into the fog.

He already knows, with a sinking feeling, before he looks back -- she's gone, with only thick fog in front of him.

"Viola?" he asks, urgent, sound muffled.

[livinginmyglass]

"Here, brother!" She advances a few more steps. The fog, so sudden and thick, casts the eerie pall over the whole scene that was missing before. "Sebastian? Art gone?"

[inanhour]

He hears her voice, weirdly distorted, and distantly to the right of where he's standing. He looks there, and peers, but sees nothing.

"Stay still! I will find thee," he calls, as carrying as he can manage, and puts a hand out in front of himself as he makes his way towards where he heard her. If she is not yet disappeared, he won't leave her.

[livinginmyglass]

"Here, brother! I am just here." But as she moves forward towards where he was a moment ago, she finds that he is gone. She makes a small circle through the fog, to see if he simply stepped aside, but to no avail. But she was so certain this was where his voice had come from.

[inanhour]

Sebastian is a few dozen feet out when he realizes this was likely a bad idea. He cannot see his feet. He cannot tell if this is where she is though now and then he is certain he hears her -- to the left, to the right, and occasionally behind.

"Viola?" he calls, as he has at regular intervals, this time far more uncertain.

But then there is a noise, again, ahead of him -- and he steps, and trips across a root, and goes crashing down a hill.

[livinginmyglass]

Viola jumps at the sound, but distorted through the trees and the fog, it sounds distinctly like something she should run from, not towards.

So she does.