She floated in a gray mist. She drifted along a grounded surface her toes could barely feel. Mostly, she just dreamed. The Whispered World this was and that she was certain. It was more peaceful than she expected it to be.

One dreadful thing would interrupt the peace. A voice would briefly enter her thoughts.

"Brietess, why do you merely dream? You were never so passive when you lived."

Yet, in spite of the discordance in her thoughts the interruption caused, Brietess would feel in those brief moments temporal again when the voice interceded her peace.

Is this what she most desired, to be again? Most of all, to be with Leresai again? Yes, she wanted to be if only to fulfill what she so desired.

Leresai would come again to her on a fetching night. They would hold each other and dance beneath the panorama of a moonless sky, for a respite of time that seemed enough to satiate Brietess' longing soul.

Her faded self content for the fortnightly rapt of their hearts when Leresai would come to her to the cemetery gardens in accord to Rhoethella's promise.

Then the voice began to intercede in all that was rightful. Cruelly intelligent, but honeyed in feminine charm.

"Brietess, what do you see over there?"

Brietess ignored the voice at first. There was nothing to see in the Whispered World but the faint impressions of other shades manifesting their own longings.

"If you have the will to imagine it, you can see it."

"Go away. Only Leresai matters," she answered the voice.

"Who do you think I want you to see, insolent girl? Lovely, lovely girl who died well before her time."

Timelessness, it felt as if a hundred years perhaps passed by or not even a flicker of an eyelid. She could not be certain. No. Time was divided by two interventions. The fortnightly visit by her beloved and that voice.

"Do you feel the passage of time?"

The voice intruded once more.

"Only as measured by your disturbance of my peace of mind," Brietess answered back.

"Every moment is an infinity, an unbroken cycle, until something interrupts it.

"Leave me in peace," Brietess insisted.

"Do you not even imagine the Moon, Brietess, in your longings to know when she'll be back to call on you?"

It never occurred to Brietess to imagine the Moon. If she did so, would she see it as it truly was? She fretted as much as it was possible for a shade to fret. Finally, the circuitous patterns of her thought borne out a suggestion: what would it cost her to make the attempt? Why not try?

Brietess focused her intention upon seeing the moon as it would appear above the cemetery gate. The moon was in a westward crescent marking four nights before Leresai would be returning to her.

"Did you see the Moon?"

"Yes," Brietess answered, "but how do I know what I imagine is real?"

"Ah, Brietess, now you are truly thinking once more and you are not just drifting about the Whispered World. In four days your answer will be confirmed. Then you will know and with that germ of knowledge you actually have a chance."

Now that she longed for certitude, Brietess focused on the Moon. It disappeared into the daylight sky becoming a barely discernible whisk. It once more became well defined by night. A thinner crescent like the shimmer of a d'jestre's scimitar in torch light.

"Brietess, your focus grows. Go see where Leresai is presently."

It had not occurred to her that she could. She focused her attention on finding her belovéd Sgoëthe.

Earth terrain reeled by and slowed to a stop. Resting on a trail above a mountain village, Leresai was curiously dressed as an elven spearmaiden. She fed a beautiful horse who possessed a caramel colored mane in contrast to its dark haired body. Leresai teased the beast with admonishing words. Emotion wailed through Brietess' shade. Her Leresai ventured forth through the world without her.

"Do not despair, Brietess. There's a sickness in your mutual souls, that of yourself and Leresai. We must do something about it."

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"Who are you?"

"Focus your intention on me with all the sincerity with which you imagined the moon before, and I will help you find where I make my residence in a lovely old chateau where we can chat about your future over a cup of tea. I can make this happen but you must do your part."

Brietess hesitated.

"What do you need of me? This sickness in my soul? Do you mean my love for Leresai? If that is indeed what you mean I have no use for you."

"Oh dear, trust the wisdom of one who has lived eleven hundred years. Both of your beautiful souls have use of what I can give you. Brietess, ask yourself, what do you really want - this demi-existence you have no control over or real being?"

She thought of the winter violets Leresai made a wreath of and fastened into her hair on her last visit. It felt as real as anything she could ever care to want. Did this visitor want to end that? She wanted to see Leresai again.

Brietess imagined the moon once more. It was late in the day, the silver lady glimmered above. Brietess searched for Leresai below on the far side of a field above another town where Leresai watched in the distance the comings and goings of a life not hers. She sat against a tree drinking from a yard.

"What is to come of this," Leresai spoke with her chin tilted to the Moon. "Rhoethella, what is this but the holding pattern of an eagle over desert emptiness? You allow me my ghoul girl until I am willing to accept an ultimate purpose to which I have little understanding. Rhoethella, I am no sweet young thing anymore. My womb is barren and of want to flower any seed planted as it ever has been. How long will you indulge me before you nudge me onward, and forward to what?"

Leresai grew silent for a moment before she began to hum a tune.

Florets of quarter leaves

Oil 'nointed crest of wreaths

Rose petals drape her thighs

Ruby in her navel lies.

Her breast tipped in honey dew

Lips glazed in a dusted tone

Her eyes covered in opals blue

Her hair set in herringbone.

On a slate of grey she takes her leave,

Adorned forsoth so prettily.

Lady May takes her leave,

Adorned forsoth so prettily.

Leresai grew quiet. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

For Brietess the world reeled once more and faded away.

"Are you all right, young Solugarr?" Her confident asked.

"Ghoul girl that is what I am. I see so clearly now my utter futility."

"I am so sorry Brietess, I brought this to you. Knowledge like the gift of a serpent, but without your attention being focused, you cannot know much of anything beyond the most simplistic of personal sentiments."

"I'm not angry with you, visitor. You showed me a glimpse of the truth. Now I need to know much more. What do you see when you gaze into the Whispered World and focus on me?"

There was a pause Brietess could detect in the innate nature of passing time before her confident spoke once more.

"In ancient days, there was another word for shade. Tortedenyi, a broken vessel. I see a shattered mind like a thousand thousand spikes obscuring the light at its center.

"I see a fractured heart like dozens of ruby marbles pummelled by a cruel hammer and gathered in a pile. Your sex and guts if you do not mind, I shall not describe, but all of you, your viscerial parts, have been gathered in a thin, brittle sheen like rock candy sugar. It cannot be sustained."

To this Brietess asked, "cannot be sustained? Can a shade know of decay and entropy? How is that possible?"

"The cruel truth, Brietess?"

"Yes, visitor, tell me."

"You are a sacrifice. Tortedenyis were the food of the gods of the elder world lost to us long before scribed memory just as the communion of blood and sex sustains the gods of our times. The Elder Gods are not so active as they once were. It may be a hundred years and maybe a thousand, oh, but they will at some point in time come to devour your soul.

"It was the only way Rhoethella could carry out the bargain she made Leresai to bring you back every fortnight in the body of a near senseless ghoul."

"Perhaps, I should just … fade off into eventual nothingness."

"There is another way, Brietess. I have no interest in deceiving you. Hence, why I've pushed you to see this. Come to me."

"You should at least tell me who you are, visitor."

She sensed another pause in time.

"They say mine is the saddest story ever told. To even repeat it grays the very sky above."

"Alright, then, I believe I know who you are. I will come to you."

"Brietess, the path to me is not without its perils. You have a great deal of wit and good sense even if in life you hid it so well. I know you can overcome what lies ahead. I will be waiting."

Brietess concentrated her intent until she felt air enter her lungs for the first time since plague driven pneumonia claimed them. The absence of breath she had not noticed until now.

There was no longer a gray mist surrounding her. No sign of other shades. She could see a dark blue late dusk sky. She could make out a few stars in the outline of a slate gray mountain to her right. She recognized the iconic shape of Mount Despumate from the many paintings of the Usuül Craig's unreachable peak.

No expedition of man had ever discovered the entrance way to the gorge beneath. It was said that in the times before the Negation, shades expelled from Oblivion were delivered to her path to have the shit accumulated over the course of their lives cleansed from their souls as they ascended towards the peak.

Brietess looked down at her immediate surroundings. Leafless thorn shrubs and tangled vines followed the concourse of a mud brown path. The soil was cold beneath her naked feet. The breeze on her face made her smile.