Oracion's POV

"Hey!" I try to call to the figure after quickly picking up the amulet.

She hurriedly puts on a hood, covering her luminous green hair and walking away from me without a further glance.

"I know you can hear me!" I shout, trying desperately to get her attention as her white dress glides along the air behind her. This began with me wanting to return the necklace, but...the forest is making way for her. Whether she's doing it intentionally or not, I thank her for it.

We both turn into what seems to be grove, ducking under the short entrance and crawling forward through the light ridden twigs and leaves. After a gruelling time on my hands and knees, I feel the air hit my neck, showing I'm on the other side. I look up, seeing the figure standing there, again still not facing me.

She inhales, silencing the environment as if stealing the breath from everyone and every sound, "Return from where you came from".

My body turns stiff as my neck attempts to turn on its own, forcing me to gaze at the silently running river to the left of us. Her head turns slightly as if she's trying to check if I'm still here. "I don't know what species you are to be speaking this tongue so fluently, but I cannot let you be within the same space as me. Leave." She orders again, strengthening the control over my body but nonetheless I find myself still being able to resist it.

I take a step forward, startling her as she gasps, quickly jumping forward but still refusing to look at me. Her fingers bundle together into a fist as she digs her nails into her skin, "Please." She asks, returning the sound to the environment.

I take another step forward, becoming startled when her body flicks around to face me. Her pure white irises pierce me, freezing me in place with a simple glare. An expression I couldn't ever consider to be human. Her mouth opens, causing my ears to embrace a deafening ring as she speaks her next words.

I didn't hear what she said next, but I can feel my body wanting to react to her lips moving, it wants to fall, it wants to crumble...it wants to die.

Birds fall from the terraced wood pattern above us, the ground beneath her rots and the grape fruit vines curl up into black. Whatever she just said, it was something that nothing of this world could handle.

I notice her chest lower as she exhales, giving sound back to us. I try to croak out something but blood forces its way out of my mouth first. I hear her step back as I wipe my face and try to clear this empty feeling from my body, meeting eyes with her once again. "You...why are you outside the Veil." She comments.

"They've found me...haven't they?" She ponders to herself as I bash my chest, trying to gather air inside myself. "No, you are without a doubt, human." She eases her face of fear, walking towards me with sudden confidence but clear anxiety about something.

She extends her hand out to me, clicking behind my ear and waiting for a response as if to check something. "You're...not deaf?". Her eyes widen as she her body falls to the floor the inch I move a hand towards her.

"...it's...you." Her mouth shakes with worry and doubt. "I saw them, watching you. Only once. But once was enough for me to understand why they do it."

Confusion begins to settle in me, causing her face to ease more. "Oracion, that's you. Isn't it?". I offer her my hand which she accepts with hesitation, dropping the amulet into her hand which she apparently didn't expect.

"Human." She says again, completely bewildered. Eyeing me up and down as if trying to get a different angle on me to see in a different light.

"I-am, what abo-ut it?" I mutter, feeling my voice clear up.

"You can still speak...Oracion, just who are you?" She asks.

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"I could ask the same to you." I point to the necklace.

She holds it up, pointing at the M. "Mousai, I'm afraid I can't tell you much apart from that. Forgive me."

An awkward silence falls between us as I look towards my feet, trying to avoid the dead birds with their skulls smashed in or their stomachs full of rocks. "Sit with me?" She says nonchalantly, opening her arm towards the river's side.

I accept her offer, heading there first and taking a seat where the water looks cleanest. I avoid eye contact, instead focusing my eyes on the reflection of her sitting down next to me. "Why are you out here?" She asks me.

"I found something under my home, and it's slowly leading me to somewhere north." I state with simplicity.

"I see." She awkwardly confirms.

We wait a bit, letting the river take over the conversation for a while as I regather my thoughts on what just happened. But just as I begin to piece together the things I already know, she informs me of something new. "Eragon." She states.

"Who?" I ask.

"Through the land of whispering white, there's a castle that preforms the unintended. Him and his people are within it, I'm sure you'll find what you want in there." She adds.

"What about Mael?"

"His brother? The prince?" She asks back.

"Prince...that I killed?" I answer with another question.

"You...killed." Her expression glows as she bursts into laughter abruptly.

"What did I say!?" I panic, not understanding why she's suddenly so happy.

Through the laughter she barely manages to stop, wiping away a tear before trying to speak again. "Oracion." She comments, looking at the corpses of the birds and the rotten ground once more before looking back at me. "You really don't understand how amazing you are, do you?"

Her words hit me for some reason. It didn't feel like an exaggerated round of applause from my village, it didn't feel like a simple praise for risking my life. It felt. Genuine. "What do you mean?" I ask her.

"The older they are, the stronger they are. And you...killed him." She mentions.

"He had a screw lose or two, in all honesty." I joke, still not fully understanding the weight of what she's saying.

She shakes her head silently, "That's not the only thing, Oracion." She holds her hand up to the water, "Pirouette, dance, swirl. Express to me what the heavens cannot." She sings, pointing her fingers down at each different note, gradually erupting the water with each press.

And surely enough, the water responds to her voice. Twisting at every changing interval, spinning and overlapping. At some point, you could barely make out two faces. A man and a woman, helping each other to preform for the amusement of us. The sounds slosh and plop like water would, but the imagery is almost like...it's alive.

I stare at her new posture, having her arms folded around her legs as she watches them preform with an intensive gaze. "There's something like this down in the un-...oh." She looks back at me as if wanting to answer something else instead. "Music's heard by the souls of everything, Oracion. Whether it be the tiniest of life within the volcanic pit of lava, the howling winds or the heavy beating of rain. It's all sound, it's all music to me." She smiles for a bit, but it gradually fades as if she comes to the realisation of something.

"The things back there, they're dead because they listened to my demand." She leans closer to me, trying to look through my eyes. "I sang to you as well, Oracion." She comments. "It's not like you weren't listening, or that you were ignoring it. You heard it loud and clear...so why are you alive."

I back off, immediately jumping to my feet and becoming defensive. "You look human, you sound human, you speak like one but...this?" I point at the water. "What are you?" I finally ask her.

"You're right, but I can't answer you just yet. Again, I'm sorry." She puts her hands up.

I kiss my teeth in annoyance, "What realistically stopped me from killing you right from that point on?" The words leave my chest, repeating the once hollow sensation I briefly felt before.

I look away, knowing what I just said wasn't my own voice. I didn't mean to. It just felt like a reflex, the easiest solution in the moment.

"Be still and speak to me." She demands, presumably freezing the limbs on my body.

"No." I deny.

"Oracion, who are you?" She walks closer to me with confidence.

"I'm a man who wants to know, that's all." I answer.

"Know what?" She walks too close to me.

I grab her, holding her arms closely together and affirming that she can't escape it. "I want to know who the fuck you think you are, Mousai."

Our eyes meet again, not a single moment of relief or momentary blink as we gauge each other. Her expression changes into one of joy, hysterically laughing to herself which eases my grasp on her. She flops away, swaying back and forth with barely any control over her body.

"You...are absolutely amazing. I don't think you understand what you just did, Human. I guess the first time was the only chance I had, huh? That...or something changed right then." Her laughter turns into seriousness as she circles back to me.

"Have you ever thought of death, Oracion?" She asks.

"I guess?" I answer quickly.

"How's it feel?" She hums.

"What do you mean?"

"Oracion, I'm pretty sure that you just died. If not part of you, something surely did. The part of your soul that just heard me." She places her finger on my chest, poking between each pause. "How. Does. It. Feel. To be dead?" She ends with a still face, disguising something more than what she wants to express...or can express.