Naril — Roleplayer Guild

Cat’s bright green eyes darted around the room as each investigator spoke, but the tight lines at their corners relaxed a little as Emmaline spoke. She reached out and took hold of the water Mandy offered, her hand shaking as her fingers wrapped around the cool glass, and she spilled a little as she took a sip. She closed her eyes and took a long moment to swallow, and as Robert spoke his words seemed to wash over her, perhaps even through her, until her throat moved and she opened her eyes again.

“Um,” she said, “I…mean, you guys really believe…?” She shook her head, and looked down at the table, “…Okay. The day she disappeared? Um, do you mean the first time? Because that wasn’t at my apartment, that was…well, we don’t actually know, they found her car out in Bremerton and…oh.” Cat shook her head, scrubbed at her eyes again, “Sorry, sorry. Of course that’s not what you mean.” She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and continued.

“I was putting up the Christmas tree in my apartment, just last night,” she said, “I’d gone out and bought some new Christmas lights because I actually have a little money this year, and I wanted some ones with colour. My tree is this old, crappy one that I got from our parents, all blue aluminum and plastic, from the 60s or 70s, you know? But I like it, and I remember that my sister would always come help me set the stupid thing up. And this year she was there too, but just…she sort of sometimes was standing by me, or sitting on the couch. Her ghost, I mean. I never saw her move, she’d just sort of…fade from one place, fade to another.”

Cat looked down into the water she’d spilled on the conference table, dipped her finger in and fidgeted as she continued, “And the fading got quicker and quicker, like she was…agitated. And I heard…well, not heard, but like how I hear ghosts, you know? I heard this sort of…sound. Like a far-off wail, or a…I don’t know.” She made a fist with her fidgeting hand, tapped her fist on the table, “I”m not explaining this right. But definitely like a sound, or something. Not very long after that, my sister…her ghost…well. I told you all that.” She sniffled.

“The only weird thing other than that was when I came in, there were a couple of men in the alley by my building, by where the fuse boxes are. I didn’t think it was that weird because my building has really crappy power and they’re always replacing breakers down there. When they left, I saw one of them drop something, and I thought it might have been a tool, so I went down there and looked around, but all I could find was this sort of…it was kind of like a carved stick, or something. Like one of those cheesy things you get down at the ghost-hunting tours for dowsing or whatever. I think I still have it, hang on…” 

The woman reached down to a bag, rummaged around inside and withdrew something long and slender. Her hands still trembling, she set the object on the table - a tapered wooden rod, or wand, a little more than a foot long, and about as big around as two of Cat’s fingers. Both ends were ragged and torn, one end flared, twisted and shredded as though the rod had been a branch torn, rather than cut, from a still-living tree. The narrower end looked just as ragged, green fibers having been ground and twisted until they came apart, leaving the rod at whatever length the maker apparently desired. Symbols, sigils, runes and other marks were etched into pale bark, the marks ragged and rough, as though they’d been made in a great hurry by someone who either didn’t have the right tools, or didn’t know what they were. A dark mark near a particularly wide pair of lines suggested that they might even have been made by fingernails, left bloody by the results.

To those with magical senses, the object pulsed, gently, with the remnant of some kind of power - the mystical equivalent of the smell of an expended cartridge. 

Morgan sat up as Cat produced the rod and leaned forward, her crystalline eyes intent on the length of wood. She took a deep breath in through her nose, breathed out slowly. Her fingers rippled along the table, and the woman closed her eyes for a moment. She shivered, almost too subtly to notice, then opened her eyes, only to find Cat looking at her.

“Are…are you okay?” Cat said, her electric-green eyes locked on Morgan.

“Just a chill,” Morgan replied, with a small smile, “You’ve been very helpful, Miss Baker, though I suspect some of my colleagues will have their own questions. I’ll content myself to wait for them, for the moment.”
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Tinker, builder, hacker, thief

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