Do You Wish That You Were Something Else

[missrecalled_mods]

Wishes Come True, Not Free

Finally able to get out of the school, there would be small shining things in the filthy slush that remained. The shining things glittered in any scrap of light they could, like fragments of bright metal. Or dark glass. If someone dared to pick one up they looked like small twisted warped versions of lamps. They had no names, no patterns, but what they did have were sharp edges. Where a lamp ought not have edges. The spout, the top and bottom of the handle, the base. All had small protrusions; as though the lamps were made of twisted entangled thorns of glass.

Bleeding on a lamp will unlock its power - once per lamp - and grant a wish. Sort of. For every wish will be twisted. People can have as many wishes as they can find - and bleed on - lamps. But the more wishes, the more twisted, and the worse things will get for the person who made the wish. For that person... and perhaps for everyone around them.

Comments

Elianne | OTA | Lots of Trigger Warnings - see post text

[elianne]

CWS: Death, blood, gore, child death, PTSD.

The scream that shattered night.

Eli had found one of the little lamps. She didn't know what it was - no such thing existed in her culture - but it was sharp and small enough that no one would know she had it if she was careful. So she kept it. She found a place to hide in one of the classrooms and put it into her pocket carefully.

Everything was fine for a while. But when she was ready to sleep she was afraid to lose it. Besides, even with no evidence of ferals all this time, sleeping at night with only a broken door to hide behind scared her enough that she usually slept clutching the leg of a chair or something. This time she had a small sharp thing. She doubted it would do spit to a feral, but she clung to it anyway as she fell asleep.

The nightmares came, of course. They did every night. But she'd learned to stifle her own cries. Morse had no ocean walled patience for weakness of any kind.

When Eli woke up from the nightmare, her wish was visceral and resonated within every bit of her. Clutching her fists tightly, she didn't even notice the sharp pain of the lamp cutting her, drawing blood.

"I wish they were here..." she whispered in a shaking voice. "Jade, Steffi. I want them back... I wish they were here."

Her scream a minute later when she saw her wish granted could have woken the dead. Except it didn't, because they were there, dead, before her.

Two girls, one less than two years younger than Eli, one about a year younger than that. The older one looked like a doll if a doll could be half starved but still pretty. But her blond hair was now lank. Her eyes glassy and staring, her mouth twisted in shock or pain. Her fair skin even paler with blood loss. The other was darker skinned, shorter hair. Her face and arms were scarred badly. But those weren't the wounds that killed her.

Both girls had their throats slit. A small cut each. But so much blood. It was pooling on the floor under them, under Eli. Their mismatched patched ill fitting clothes were soaked in it. their hair stiff with it.

and Eli, paler than she'd ever been while on the Isle was backing away from them, pressing into a wall like she could pass through it. She heard screaming. Was only dimly aware that they were her screams...

[mist_the_point]

Foulques heard the young girl screaming and had come running, spear drawn. When he came upon the gruesome scene, his first thought was that some beast had managed to get in, but no; the two children lying dead on the floor had been killed by a blade, not an animal, as became obvious when he stepped into the room properly. He didn't immediately put away his spear, in case their killer was still about, but there was no one else in the room save for Eli, screaming and near hysterical.

Making a decision, he scooped Eli up in one arm, intending to bring her out into the hall and away from the sight of the two dead children. Perhaps then she might calm enough that she could speak.

[elianne]

"NO!!!!!" she shrieked, reaching weakly for them, her body wracked by sobs and screams. She had their blood on her, and she was paler than he'd ever have seen her


"STEFFI! JADE!!!!" she screamed through the sobs, desperate.

But desperate to do what, she didn't know.

[mist_the_point]

So the dead girls were people she knew. And by all appearances, loved. Foulques didn't consider himself especially compassionate, but even at his worst, he suspected that he wouldn't have been so stonehearted as to have been unmoved by such cries.

But though he felt for the girls, both living and dead, he was, above all, a practical man. And whatever Eli hoped to do, the two other children were well beyond her aid now. He didn't stop until they were out in the hall and a short distance down it, far enough away that they could no longer see into the room where the girls' bodies lay. Only then did he set Eli down on the floor, crouching beside her and blocking her path back to the room.

Though he was admittedly unsure of what to do next. How did one go about comforting a child in such a state? Was it even possible? He couldn't have her fleeing without knowing what had happened, yet he also didn't wish to drive her to further hysterics with his ineptitude. In the end he opted to grip her nearer shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion. If nothing else, perhaps his presence would be grounding?

[elianne]

As soon as he set her down she crumpled, sobbing into her bloody hands. The shard of lamp thankfully fell to the floor before her hands hit her eyes or they might have had a bigger problem to deal with.

She didn't notice it fall, didn't hear it hit the ground. Even with her hands over her eyes, her eyes closed, even being in another room... she saw them. She still saw them.

How could she not? She saw them every night when she tried to sleep. In her nightmares every time when sleep finally came. Constantly when she was awake chasing sleep away.

Steffi. Jade. Their girls. her girls.

[mist_the_point]

If she was even aware of his presence, she gave no sign of it. She merely crumpled into a sobbing heap on the floor. Th shard of metal that fell from her hand made him suspect that there was more to this than there first appeared to be. That, plus the sudden appearance of the two previously unseen dead girls led him to believe that perhaps they weren't truly there at all. This place had already showed itself to be overly fond of illusions, after all...

But trying to discuss any of this with the girl in her present state would be a useless endeavor. Instead he simply kicked the shard of metal out of her reach, then sat down on the floor next to her, leaning back against the stone wall, his lance resting at an angle across his bent knees. He could provide no real comfort. But he could provide something solid on which to lean that was marginally warmer than stone. And he could provide a tacit warning against any who might think to disturb the girl with ill intent. That would have to be enough.

[elianne]

She curled into a tight ball on the ground, sobbing heavily. Alternating sobs with dry heaves. If she had actually managed to eat anything that day this would have been a mess. Well worse of a mess. Her hand was still bleeding freely, but she seemed to neither notice nor care, as she sobbed.


River had come to see what all the noise was and stopped seeing the two of them. Having come from outside, she had some idea what might be behind this. At least in part.

"Should I guess?" River asked softly.

Eli didn't seem to even notice she was there.

[mist_the_point]

Foulques looked up at River. His eyes narrowed briefly, but even she seemed to understand that this was no time for games. "There are the corpses of two little girls in that room," he said solemnly, indicating the room they'd come from. "Or what appears to be such. Killed with a blade, by all appearances. They were apparently very dear to her in life."

He glanced at the sobbing child and sighed. "I don't know how to comfort her, if such is even possible at present," he admitted. "But neither can I leave her alone. So here I sit, as useless as a sword to a shroud hare. I don't even have anything with which to bind her injured hand."

[professorsong]

"Yeah. Saw them before I saw you. I can take care of them. And..." she leaned down and ripped a strip out of the hem of the pants she had been wearing. "Use this."

[mist_the_point]

He nodded his thanks as he accepted the scrap of cloth. "Have care when you do," he said. "This place is overly fond of tricks and illusions, and all may not be as it seems."

Quite willing to leave her to her grim work, he turned back to the sobbing girl. "Eli," he said, hoping she was cognizant enough to respond. "Give me your hand; the injured one."

[elianne]

River nodded. Nothing here that tricked her wasn't getting worse of it than she did.


Sobbing, Eli held up her hand limply. She didn't fight or argue. She didn't have anything left with which to do so.

[mist_the_point]

Foulques was no healer, but he at least knew how to do a simple field dressing. Taking her injured hand, he bound it carefully, but firmly. Thankfully the cut looked rather shallow; cut too deeply into the palm, he knew, and one risked severing the tendons of the hand. "There," he said as he finished. "The cut is rather shallow, so it should heal well enough. But don't be tempted to remove the bandage until you're certain that it has; this isn't the sort of place one wants to be running about with an open wound."

After a moment, he added, "River Song is dealing with the bodies, if they are indeed true bodies. I do not know who they were to you, but I trust that she will treat them with due respect."

[elianne]

"Th..." she fought back a gag. It took a while before she could speak. "Mine..." she whispered in a voice shaking as badly as the rest of her.

[mist_the_point]

"I understand your desire," he said, "but you're in no state to assist. Best to let her do her work." After a moment, he added, "Do your people have any rituals surrounding death and mourning? We have very little here, but proper observances can at least be attempted..."

[elianne]

She shuddered, looked away. "The dead don't care, the living still gotta eat..." she mumbled. Something her mother had said to her a lot in the days before she died. She hunched in as tight as she could. Miserable.

[mist_the_point]

"Perhaps," he said, "and perhaps not. But regardless of whether or not they care, you clearly care very much. Yours is the harder path, for while their burdens have been laid down, yours have only been added to. And it is not wrong to grieve, nor to take time to adjust to that weight."

He considered for a moment, before continuing, "I don't consider myself an especially religious man. But my mother was, and as a child, she spoke to me of the Heaven of Earth where the goddess Nophica dwells. I can share what she told me with you, if you wish."

[elianne]

She shrugged. What she wished had never mattered had it. Her girls were dead. And she hadn't avenged them.