WHO: Hecate, Luna, open to Hermes and Peitho if they're in! WHEN: Around midnight WHERE: Astoria, Peitho and Hermes' place WHAT: Well shit? WARNINGS: GHOSTS
Hecate would have liked to state, for the record, if the fates were indeed keeping one, that pulling herself from her mortal body was deeply unpleasant. Her hands broke free from her flesh-and-blood hands first, clawing at the wet ground for a grip that wasn’t there. She had to focus to remember how to move, as the dead, how to interact with the world around her, how to get up.
The palms of her hands pressed into the earth, slipping an inch or so in, before she found the memory of solid ground and could use memory as a brace, and push herself off the ground. She cried out as her chest ripped away from her other chest, a sensation that reminded her of nothing if not velcro, and, hunched over herself, staggered to her feet in time to watch the last shudder of life run through her body.
The people in the park had scattered and dropped, and many had disappeared even after the car, with a roar of the engine, had taken off around the corner. Others lingered, and one woman dropped to her knees beside Hecate’s body, calling for an ambulance. Well – between Hecate’s bodies – the woman crouched over Hecate’s broken one, the woman crouched below Hecate’s whole, ghostly, but bloody form.
Hecate reached down to touch the woman’s shoulder and she yelped like she’d been frozen.
I’m sorry she said, and thunder cracked overhead.
Careful, Hecate thought to herself.
It had been so long since she’d last been dead.
She could feel the pull of the underworld tugging, but the anchor of her own magic was stronger. She could hold herself here, in this world, for a time.
Hecuba? she called, and another roll of thunder rumbled through the air. Hecuba was nowhere to be seen, but Serene cowered beneath a parked car a little way off. Hecate started to move toward her and found herself there in an instant – or longer? - flashing lights from an ambulance now lit up the area.
Careful, she thought to herself again. Time moved differently for the dead.
Serene she tried to keep her voice gentle, coaxing the young dog out from beneath the car. Come out. She touched the car and the headlights and radio sprang to life, and Serene darted across the road. Hecate swore and the streetlight overhead exploded in a shower of sparks, cascading down through her body. Someone nearby screamed, the sound followed by shouted orders from police who had hauled themselves out of the broken stream of time and appeared in the park with the ambulance.
But Hecate’s attention was on her dog. Hecuba would know her, like this. Hecuba would trust her, follow her, but Serene was not an immortal queen in the body of a dog, and Hecate did not blame her that she ran.
She would need help. A caring hand – and – she thought, as she turned back to watch two paramedics pack her into the back of their ambulance – she would need to get that body back before anyone decided to do anything so foolish as burn or bury her.
And then… Well, her mind would turn to ‘and then’ soon enough.
She turned south and westward and – and a crashing twist of a moment – found herself across the East River, across half of Manhatten, and in the living room of Peitho and Hermes’ place, where every single light suddenly went out, and the apartment was plunged into darkness.
Shit Hecate said, and her voice did not entirely sound like her voice, but carried with it echoes of other voices, distant wordless cries and howls. My bad.