The next morning found them rising to the light salty breeze drifting in from the sea through the gossamer red curtain Alene had pulled back over the skull orifices the night before after their fire had burned out. She didn’t necessarily get cold, but she loved the rosy light that shone through the fabric in the morning, shrouding everything in the skull with a soft pink hue, almost womb-like, as if each morning was a new birth. Ceit was still a lump in her bedding, breathing a soothing cadence, reasonably exhausted from her travels yesterday, but Alene woke up early, excited at the prospect of showing her first human friend her home. She wasn’t entirely sure what the proper custom was for a new friendship, but her cat had brought her gifts, brightly colored snail shells and live lizards, so she decided that seemed a good place to start. She quietly slipped out to gather some edibles for Ceit, finding some more berries, as well as some mushrooms, greens, and nuts. She decided to stir fry them, using the cast iron pan Ceit had revealed, showing her how to use the new device with enthusiasm the night before, when she had turned the berries Alene had given her into a sauce for the gammy monkey she had shot down earlier that day, to the dutifully impressed and newly named Alene, proudly demonstrating her hunting prowess with the small crossbow, the unfletched bolts flying true to mark.

Ceit was still asleep when she returned, sprawled messily under her blanket, her white eyelashes blush colored in the morning light stretching across her face, just beginning to flutter as she stirred with Alene’s return. She sat up and stretched with a huge yawn, her curls a messy mass on her head, obscuring her face completely, dandelion-like. ‘Mmm, what are you making, it smells sooo good.’ She mumbled, her voice still raspy with sleep, a smile creeping across her face, dimpling her cheeks.

‘I found some wild arugula and dandelion leaves, and some wild barley we can make for dinner.’ Alene responded, attentive to the hot pan. ‘You’re awfully good at cooking for someone who doesn’t eat.’ Ceit teased, appreciative, as she came over to look into the pan. ‘I can sort of feel how it tastes if I hold it, kind of like how you smell food but don’t get the full flavor unless you eat. But mostly it’s just nice to cook for someone.’ The wooden spoon paused in her hand as she tried to explain the strange synesthetic sensation that was tasting through touch. She had some memory of taste, she realized, some sense of what she was missing. She tried to hold onto the thought, what exactly it was that she remembered eating that had left such an impression, but the memory faded before she could grasp its shape. She returned to the pan, tempering down the faint tempered frustration. If the memory arose once, it could happen again. Hopefully. And in the meantime she was pleased that Ceit was so impressed with her cooking skills, she blushed happily, turning bashfully to hide it from Ceit.

Alene’s cat friend had deigned to allow the two to follow him on an excursion in the city, huffing as he led them from the skull, leading them to a swampy area he had never brought Alene to before. It seemed like during its height, the city wasn’t all benevolent prosperity. Drums of toxic refuse littered the swamp, half submerged and oozing.

Alene wondered if he was punishing her for last night, there was so much toxic waste she was worried about the effect on living beings like Ceit. She nervously watched several mutated creatures scurrying about in the long grasses, as well as some very intimidating looking snails with toxic bright coloring and iridescent shells oozing about on a fallen tree trunk, the slime trailing behind them faintly sizzling with an acidic burn. The cat stopped to investigate the snails, batting at their antennae, but she and Ceit carried on further into the swamp. Ceit seemed enthralled by everything, and was delighted to see the mutated creatures, pulling out a worn journal to sketch their likenesses, annotating in delicate cursive glyphs, her hand whipping across the page to get all her observations out, as she periodically looked up, holding her pencil up for scale. Outlandish looking creatures with more legs than they were supposed to have or curiously morphed facial features. It gave Alene a strange uncomfortable feeling, an itch she couldn’t quite reach. It felt…wrong. Very very wrong. Like she shouldn’t be here, like something bad would happen if she stayed. She shifted feet anxiously, a hand winding her hair around a ghostly finger.

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A heavy wet slap like something hitting the surface of the waters echoed from some distance away, causing Ceit to look up from her sketching, just as she was adding some shading to a rodent with unusually large eyes, facing backward. ‘That sounded kind of big, are there a lot of large animals around?’ Ceit asked, apprehensive, the pencil in her hand drooping over the page. ‘There are a couple larger animals, maybe a deer or a wild dog got caught in the muck? There are jaguars and wild pigs too…’ Ceit closed her notebook and they crept towards the sound warily, failing to find any creature that could have produced it. ‘What if it was something in the water, what if something large lives down there?’ Alene worried. ‘I can’t see anything, it's too murky.’ Ceit replied, trying to peer through the sludge. Though Ceit seemed intrigued by the idea of some large mutant just out of sight, Alene was becoming more and more nervous. This was her first human friend, she didn’t want anything to happen to her. And this whole area felt very off. ‘Maybe we should go before it comes back.’ Ceit seemed a bit reluctant to leave without finding out the source of the sound, but agreed nonetheless, packing up her journal into her satchel, slipping the pencil along with its trimming knife into a side pocket, clipping it all shut and throwing it over her shoulder, fluffing out the curls that got caught under the strap.

As they left the swamp behind, Ceit remarked ‘I’ve heard some weird stories about this whole area. I was kind of surprised there was a city here at all.’ ‘Oh?’ Alene inquired, curious for any insight into her city and its mysteries. ‘I heard that long ago there was a god-king that started growing himself an army. Like, literally. He was such a powerful god that he tried to animate the entire forest into demi-gods at his command. I’m not exactly sure what he wanted to actually do with them. Probably some weird inter-god war or something.’ She waved her hands gesturing to the vegetation around them as she spoke. The trees were already intimidating as they were, tall and thick, Alene couldn’t imagine if they were able to move. An army of mutated tree giants sounded terrifying. ‘But the whole process was such a drain on his godhood that it corrupted him, and through him the whole forest he had managed to bring to life kind of imploded, like melted the whole area into some sort of toxic primordial ooze. I had kind of written it off as a myth, but maybe there is some truth to it?’

‘Didn’t you see those waste drums? That looked entirely human made to me.’ Alene countered, rather reticent to indulge the idea that her city was the site for such a horror. ‘That’s true, but they didn’t look like they could be responsible for all of it, it was a swamp, after all. In the middle of a city. Maybe they built the city on top of the god-kings’s tomb and it seeped up. Maybe that’s why the city was destroyed.’ Ceit seemed to be more and more enthusiastic on the idea as she speculated, though Alene remained privately unconvinced. ‘The city was ruined by the bird, right, it caused all the damage we’ve seen when it fell,’ she insisted. ‘But why are there no people then, no human remains?’ There was that. Why there were no people had been a longstanding question for Alene, one she didn’t have any theories on, let alone answers.

‘Speaking of people and mysteries, you are a ghost, right? I mean, you seem very different from other ghosts I’ve met, Lurkers usually have something keeping them tethered, like lingering resentment or strong emotion or unfinished business, you know? But if you don’t remember then why would you remain…it just seems strange. Sorry! That wasn’t rude was it?’ She said with a sudden concern, as if she had just been thinking out loud and only just realized it might be impolite. ‘No no!’ Alene rushed to reassure her. ‘I wish I had answers. Lots of things come naturally to me, like how to talk and what eating is supposed to feel like, and random trivia about flower meanings and properties. But I don’t have any idea what happened here, or who I am, or why I’m still here. I feel so, so out of place.’ She finished hesitantly. It felt like a lot to reveal to someone who she had only just met. Too vulnerable and too soon.

‘Hm. I understand feeling out of place. The longer I travel for Oongx, the less I feel like I have a home on the earth. I feel…out of phase. I suppose I feel a bit like a ghost too.’ She looked at Alene, trying to bump her shoulder gently in camaraderie, only to phase right through her and fall on the ground. They both froze for a beat, surprised, before bursting out laughing. ‘Here we are talking about ghosts and I completely forgot the intangibility!’ Ceit got out, wheezing, palms on the ground behind her, a brilliant smile lighting up her already lovely face. Alene was leaning over, her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. ‘I can’t believe you just fell through me! You were so shocked!’ Ceit’s ears flushed a rosy pink as she picked herself up from the ground.