Who: Lyra (open to Thanatos?) When: Saturday morning Where: Lyra and Thanato's apartment What: finally the lazy parents parents pay a visit to the boyfriend's house
For Lyra, Saturdays were a precious commodity. In the last year of her grueling studies, she felt like the weekends were further and further apart and during the week she felt like she was no fun at all for Thanatos or anyone else, too busy with her head in a book.
But Saturday? Saturday was sleep in and bad TV and eating whatever took zero effort from the fridge.
When she finally decided to get out of bed and stop dozing, the clock beside her read 11.15 - which seemed a perfectly respectable time, and Thanatos would even be home from work in a few hours. So she pulled on a robe to keep off the slight chill in the air and headed out toward the shower.
But she didn't make it there, instead catching sight of someone in the living room out of the corner of her eye. She turned quickly, prepared to react (sharply) and possibly fight (poorly) but she could never have predicted who would be standing there, and even looking at the two of them Lyra found she couldn't process it.
For a second she stood frozen, unblinking, trying to convince herself she wasn't crazy. Lyra had never seen her parent's bodies after the car accident that killed them. She had been taken to the hospital unconscious and by the time she'd woken up, they had already been buried.
But now as she looked at the two wavering opaque figures standing in the middle of the room, she knew what they would have looked like: wretched, bloody and broken. Her father's face was horrible, one side caved in and gory, the eye missing, the hair torn away. Her mother's arm was bent violently, a bone jutting out from the skin, her neck at an angle that was clearly wrong.
"Mom?" Lyra whispered, stepping so slowly towards the figures, expecting that they would disappear or become more solid. They did neither, just continued to shimmer in the air while she could slightly see the bookshelves behind them straight through their bodies. "Dad?"
The ghosts - Lyra knew they could only be ghosts or a manifestation of a full mental breakdown - didn't say anything, but just continued to watch her silently.
"Are you really here?" She reached out carefully but then thought better of it, dropping her hand. "I've-" her voice cracked. "I miss you."
Still the ghosts were silent and Lyra felt crushed under their gaze. They wouldn't move or speak and Lyra was starting to feel like she couldn't do those things either. So she just stood in front of them, breathing too quickly, heart feeling weak.
Eventually she sat down on the carpet heavily, and their eyes followed her down.
And that was where Lyra remained, pinned in place by their unmoving gaze.