Oh, he is everything she could have hoped for. He is kind, and he is strong, and he is humble. It is no surprise a man such as this has fallen for her daughter.
“A strong medium, yes! One of the strongest our people have ever known. But even then, to be able to seize the thread that anchors her here, to give it even the barest tug…It is not done. You are extraordinary.” The admiration in her eyes is potent, has been used in past lives to rally men’s hearts to her cause, to make them fight and die for her. The force of it lies in its truthfulness, its guilelessness.
“Perhaps I can help you,” she breaths, excitement humming beneath the words. “We can help each other. What if I told you there is a way to get back? Not for me…but perhaps for you? If we can only reach her…”
He reaches out to her, and she grasps his hand. There is strength yet in her graceful fingers, persuasion yet in the silk of her skin, the press of her flesh. And how long has he been without touch? The relief he must feel, she thinks, starving as he is, to feel connection. To feel real. It is why he reaches for Electra, across worlds, but here he need only stretch to arm’s length.
“Don’t you see? You already have. You already found her, you precious man. You are a gift to this realm, a gift…” If ghosts could cry, tears would be shimmering in her eyes – there is an echo of that glimmer, as she gazes up at him with a smile full of eagerness. It is a strange smile, hope tempered by want, sorrow and burning. It flashes with something unnamable. “And as you know, she is quite unforgettable.”
She maintains a tight grip on him, and it is somehow inexorable, as if there is a magic in her that prevents escape. But her voice is soothing, beautiful as summer rain. It calls to mind memories of every pleasure, haunting and nostalgic, an ache of pain that demands to be soothed. With her free hand, she pulls back the hood, and her loose curls fall about her shoulders, twisting beneath a pair of elegantly curved horns.
“I have been dead a long time, Jack. A long time. Though not so long in the realm of the living, I think. Our lives dilate here, stretch to fill the space afforded them…which, as you have learned, is infinite. A second for them can be an hour for us, or a month, or a year. When time does not flow, it eddies.” Her voice drifts off, its music sounding far away. “You must know so little about me. About her.”
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