[Moscow] Why is it so cold? [Alla]

It was cold. Why was it so cold? Aylanmaa Galsanovna's thoughts were slow and fuzzy, as if she were suffering the after effects of too much wine. Had there been a party last night?

Slowly she opened her eyes, expecting to be in her own bed. What she saw was not reassuring in the least. It was dark, though not so black that she couldn't make out shapes and shadows, and nothing was familiar. There was no headache, so that at least ruled out the possibility of a hangover, but why was she in someone else's house? And why hadn't they bothered with any heating spells? It was the middle of winter.

And slowly the memories began to return. She'd finished school for the year; she'd been shopping in Moscow for gifts for her family. Chocolates for her mother, handmade ones from an artisan boutique down a tiny sidestreet; each one individually wrapped and carefully nestled into shiny gold paper inside the box, she knew they were going to be delicious, the ancient witch who owned the shop had allowed her to try one to be sure she'd be satisfied with her purchase. Nothing for her father yet; he was notoriously difficult to buy gifts for and she feared she'd have to resort to socks. Again. And for Kara-Kys...

The memories returned in a rush. She'd wandered into a muggle area without realising. There had been an automobile, and it was going too fast...

So this was the hospital? Aylanmaa shuddered, wondering where all the people were. "Hello..?" she called, a little tentatively, surprised at how much her voice echoed given the apparent size of the room (ward?) she was in. She took a careful step forward, frowning. Nothing hurt, so why was she in hospital, unless she'd been given a potion to numb the pain. Or was she dreaming? Aylanmaa couldn't recall ever being cold in a dream before.

Now her eyes were adjusting to the darkness she could see someone else, lying on a bed in the centre of the room. A high bed, almost waist height, narrow and with only a single, white sheet. And there wasn't a pillow, either - so they had a back injury, perhaps? That would make sense, but why were there no restraints around the bed? Perhaps the patient was restrained by magical means - the body bind curse did have it's place in medical treatments if the patient was allergic to some potion ingredients. Aylanmaa remembered reading about such a case only a couple of months earlier and couldn't resist taking a closer look, hopefully the patient would be asleep.

Slowly, she approached the bed, until she could see that the sheet wasn't just covering the body. It was covering the head as well, and that was when Aylanmaa realised for the first time that despite her growing fear, she couldn't feel her heart pounding. At all.

As an aspiring necromancer and employee at a funeral parlour Alla was not afraid of death. It surrounded her all the time and with her necromancy experiments the border between life and death was blurred. Reanimating corpses at least made the impression of the dead being revived. The young witch also enjoyed keeping a pet skeleton as a servant. Alive or dead? Where was the difference. However, there were moments when the presence of death shocked her again.

One such moment was when a new corpse was was brought to the funeral parlour and Alla recognised the dead witch at once. They had been at school together! The lifeless body belonged to Aylanmaa Galsanovna Tumat, a girl barely older than Alla. They had even been in the same house at Durmstrang. While they had never been close because they had quite different interests, the blonde girl remembered far too well how Aylanmaa had been when she had last seen her. Now she was pale, stiff, cold, lifeless.

Alla's boss, a middle aged man who had seen so many dead people that nothing really got to him anymore, was oblivious to the connection and asked his employee to prepare Aylanmaa's body for the funeral. Alla had also been present when Aylanmaa's family had spoken about what they wanted the funeral to be like and when they had brought a dress for her to be buried in.

Death could come so unexpectedly... It was strange to think that from one moment to the next a healthy young person could be dead. Gone forever. Alla imagined how it had to be for the family. She had observed them while the arrangements were discussed and the pain and sorrow had been so intense that they'd filled the entire room with these feelings. It was not unusual for this business she worked in, of course. However, this seemed different anyway. Maybe it was because Alla knew the dead girl as well.

One member of Aylanmaa's family had said that they didn't get a chance to say goodbye and had broken into tears. Well, this was true, of course. Alla had almost offered to animate the corpse so they could say goodbye in a way. However, she had felt the look of her boss when she had opened her mouth to speak and kept the thought to herself. Nonetheless the girl thought that this could be something that helped relatives with their sorrow.

She now stepped into the morgue and approached the table on which the corpse lay hidden underneath a white sheet. Alla thought she might have heard a voice earlier but blamed it on the strange feelings she was experiencing. Now she only focused on the corpse, not even realising that there was a ghost floating nearby. She put away the sheet from the young woman's face and looked at it for a moment. "I'm sorry," she whispered and pulled out her wand to remove the bruises that were blemishing the otherwise pretty face.

Maybe she should bring pet skeleton, Burmin, to the morgue again so he could keep the remains of Aylanmaa some company, the young witch mused. Burmin always gave her comfort anyway. "Alright then," Alla said to break the silence. "Let's make you pretty..." Her voice echoed in the more or less empty room. She usually talked to the corpses although she did not expect them to reply, of course.

Perhaps she shouldn't be here. Partial amnesia, that could account for it. She'd just wandered from the hospital ward where she'd woken up from and found her way here, and really ought to try and find her way back before she was missed. So Aylanmaa told herself firmly as she backed away, swallowing hard and feeling a prickle of fear that her throat didn't feel any less dry. It was dark in here, that was why she couldn't see her feet properly when she looked down; and she should really just find a way out. Nobody was going to blame her for sleepwalking or confusion or whatever had happened. She hadn't yet worked her way up to any kind of intern work, just the usual second year observations, but she couldn't remember anyone ever being upset with a patient for wandering off the ward.

But there didn't seem to be a door. Strangely, the only door seemed to be the one through the new healer now approached, and Aylanmaa knew she'd be seen if she stepped any closer. Illogical though it was, she felt afraid of being seen here, instead hovering in the shadows and watching with a sort of horrified fascination as the figure - a young woman like herself, one who looked somehow familiar - lifted the sheet away from the face of the prone body and whispered what sounded like an apology. Aylanmaa shuddered. There was something in the other girl's tone that made her feel cold right through...cold, as if she would never be warm again. And the wand...

You didn't ever bring your wand that close to your patient's face. Even the clumsiest first year medical student knew that. Unless you were removing a grape from a kid's nostril or healing an injured eye, you didn't want your patient to see what you were doing. It tended to frighten people who were already upset or in pain, and everyone knew that fear and pain were a terrible combination. The mental rehashing of her earliest lectures helped quell her own galloping, undirected fears even as her mind was screaming that this was no healing spell. She didn't recognise it, but the nuances of the words, the wand movement...none of it resembled anything she had yet learned. So was this woman...an imposter? Something in the back of the Tyvan's mind told her she was grasping at straws, desperately trying to find a rational explanation that would mean everything was fine, but she ignored it completely.

"Let's make you pretty..."

"What are you doing?" she demanded, coming forward out of the shadows and finding that she seemed to move several feet in a single step. A step that brought her almost up to the figure on the narrow bed, which really wasn't a bed at all... "What have you done? Are you a...kidnapper? This is no hospital..." her voice sounded thin and echoing in the strange room. Aylanmaa brought up one hand as if to shield her eyes, as one might ward off an imaginary blow.

Alla startled and spun around. She gasped as she saw the ghost approaching her and a cold shiver ran down her spine. She was doing this job for a while now but never before had she been in such a situation. It didn't take the blonde witch long to realise that this ghost belonged to the corpse she was working on. That the ghost was in fact the ghost of her former school mate. The girl stared at translucent Aylanmaa and chewed on her lower lip nervously. From what the ghost said she was unaware of her current and now eternal 'state'.

How did you tell someone that they were dead?

The Necromancer took her time with the reply. She was not scared of the ghost who looked at her accusingly and yet she felt more than a little uncomfortable. Death was not generally scary. It was just natural. Life ended with death. Even if there was dark magic that could bring back the dead, death could never be fully reversed. Naturally the young witch had seen ghosts before and knew a bit about them. They were trapped between life and death. They could exist for all eternity but how was it to exist rather than to live?

Alla opened her mouth to speak but shut it again then. She was not good with people. Her boss always told her to show more sympathy with those mourning their deceased relatives and she wondered how he'd deal with the situation at hand. He was a calm and collected man. No matter how people around him acted, no matter what they said, he remained calm and commiserative and could always keep eye-contact.

"I'm no kidnapper," Alla said, her voice sounding hoarse. She cleared her throat nervously, the cough echoing through the morgue. "You're right, this is not a hospital. We are at a funeral parlour here..." She looked at the ghost with a sympathetic expression, feeling quite uneasy herself.  "I..." her voice trailed off. She could hardly tell the girl that she was preparing her body for the funeral, could she? It was the truth and yet it felt like something horrible to tell a person who was yet unaware of her fate.

"My job is to prepare dead bodies for their funeral," she said, keeping the information general. "I restore their original looks, wash them, dress them..." Then out of a sudden instinct, Alla flicked her wand so the sheet shifted over the face of Aylanmaa's corpse again and hid it. The girl wasn't sure if the ghost had recognised her body yet. If she hadn't then there had to be a careful way to confront her with the truth.

"Do you remember what you have done before you... came here?" Alla enquired. For all she knew the other girl had been hit by one of these dangerous muggle transport machines. She wondered if Aylanmaa had any recollection of that.

She shivered and didn't shiver at the same time. The cold seemed to rush through and envelop her, but there was no sensation of gooseflesh on her arms, no shudder running up her spine. This cold came from somewhere deep within, feeling as if she was shivering from the inside but it was a personal form of reaction, invisible to the rest of the world.

She stared at her hand. It looked perfect and completely wrong at the same time. Her freshly-manicured nails were in perfect ovals and yet they were…wrong. Almost translucent, and she imagined she could see through her own skin. But there was no muscle structure, no bone like she'd seen in her anatomy manuals. Not even those strange muggle photographs - what were they called? - the ones that they made with bizarre machines that looked like torture devices…she'd eagerly signed up to visit an exhibition where they had some displayed. Black and white pictures of peoples' bones, that was how muggles knew if something was broken. Quite clever, really, the way they coped without magic. Aylanmaa stared at her hand again, hoping that if she stared long enough and hard enough, she'd be able to block out the figure in the room with her, the figure who looked vaguely familiar though she had no idea why…

The figure who was clearly up to no good, or else why would she be sounding so nervous, her voice as if she were recovering from a cold. Aylanmaa started to say she knew a remedy for that, the potion just needed lemon juice, honey and three leech spleens and then the bottom fell out of her world, and in the same moment she firmly and vehemently started denying what she'd just heard with every fibre of her being. Because if this was a funeral home, and she was here, and her hand looked scarily transparent then…

She was dreaming. The worst, most lucid nightmare of her life, to be sure, but a dream. She'd wake up in a cold sweat with soaked sheets…must have drunk too much last night…and now the quasi-familiar figure was asking what she'd done before being there…

"I have no idea. It must have been one hell of a party…" she said, trying to sound humorous. Of course, embracing a dream once you'd become aware you were actually dreaming wasn't the best plan - she'd never quite got the hang of the technique and usually ended up going from one scary situation to a worse one until she finally woke up - but she wasn't quite sure what else to do. "I was shopping in the muggle district…or was that a dream as well?" she looked around expectantly, and as there fifteen pairs of bright green shoes didn't come marching towards her out of thin air decided that the shopping had probably been real. "And then I…" it was blank after that. "…I drank too much. Oh Merlin, please tell me I'm not in my parent's house? They're going to be so annoyed with me…"

Her dream-companion was still looking at her strangely, somehow pitying and sad and like she wanted to care for her at the same time. This strange person she'd dreamed up who prepared dead bodies for funerals…the dream was a warning. Not to drink to much, or stay out late, or go to parties where she barely knew anyone…to accept that she would marry someone she liked but didn't love, would never be attracted to… "At least I get to have kids…" she murmured, though the thought of never truly falling in love was a crushing disappointment. "Things'll be different when I wake up" she told the figure, suddenly remembering where she'd seen her. A girl from school, maybe a year or two her junior. Anna, Alla…something like that.

How weird that she should dream of someone she barely remembered.

Alla felt like calling her boss for help. She was surrounded by death all the time and didn't usually mind it. However, this was different. She felt an overwhelming sadness and couldn't quite understand why this affected her so much. She was not usually a very empathetic person. However, seeing the ghost of a girl who was about her age and who was yet unaware that her life had come to a sudden end was shocking. She wanted Aylanmaa to know that she had died but she couldn't bring herself to telling her what she knew would be devastating news.

Life was strange. You lived for a undetermined amount of time and then all of a sudden it could all be over. For some unexpectedly, for others less surprisingly. There was only one certainty in life - that it would end with the death sooner or later. However, drifting from living into the endless existence as a ghost was rare and nobody could really tell how it happened. So far Alla had been aware of the existence of ghosts but had never really bothered to think about them much.

A party. Aylanmaa either was still unaware of her fate or she was in denial. She seemed to think that she had drunk too much last night, was hallucinating, dreaming or whatever. Alla shuddered. Why was she in the undoubtedly unpleasant situation of explaining the other girl that she was dead, that she was a ghost now? When Aylanmaa spoke of her shopping trip, Alla nodded. She remembered that there had been shopping bags among the dead girl's belongings. However, Aylanmaa's thoughts on what she had done after she went shopping weren't quite so accurate.

"You're not at your parents' house," Alla said quietly, her own voice sounding strangely hollow to her. Aylanmaa was worried that her parents would be annoyed with her when they were, in fact, mourning her death. The blonde witch felt how tears were watering her eyes and she got mad at herself for that. Blinking she hoped that the other girl had not noticed anything. She was not compassionate! Alla liked to think of herself as a cool person. She didn't want to be emotional. She was an aspiring necromancer for Merlin's sake! Not a whiny little girl who was easily influenced by other people's fate.

She'd get to have kids? Where did this thought come from? Alla looked at her feet, unable to keep eye contact anymore. Aylanmaa thought she'd wake up from this nightmare when she was actually trapped in a never ending nightmare... Maybe it would be the best to tell her now that she would not wake up. Maybe she should try and get help somewhere; find someone who knew how to deal with such a situation. Yet, did anyone know how to deal with something like this?

"I'm afraid you won't... wake up. I'm really sorry but this is not a dream. Believe me, I wish it was..." She looked up again, realising that if Aylanmaa thought that she was dreaming she'd consider her to be a part of the dream. She felt like asking the girl to sit down but a ghost could not fall anyway. A ghost could not lose conscience. A ghost was always the same.

When I wake up.

When I wake up.

WHEN I WAKE UP Aylanmaa clung to that thought with every fibre of her being because as long as those four words were galloping desperately through her mind, there was no room for anything else. Not the semi-remembered girl before her, not her strange and unsettling surroundings, definitely not the disturbing gap in her memory that wasn't really a gap at all; she knew there hadn't been a party, not unless she counted the end of term when most of the students and interns at Gunhilda Gorsemoor had skipped merrily from club to bar, lost a few galleons at the gaming tables and even then she'd only had three glasses of wine and a couple of cocktails…

"You're not at your parents' house," crept through her self-imposed mental exile and brought no sense of relief that they wouldn't be angry at finding her sickly and hungover. She made the mistake of looking up and saw tears in the other woman's eyes and was horrified all over again because…

She mentally retreated again, and now she wasn't looking anywhere, unless one counted staring fixedly at the floor, and now ignoring her surroundings wasn't enough, because she was terrified enough to know that her heart should be pounding, her palms clammy, she should be feeling lightheaded and yet her heart wasn't racing, wasn't trying to leap out of her chest might as well not be… NO, I am not going to THINK that coincided with more words, and because she'd allowed herself to think something other than

When I wake up

she heard what the other woman said. Their eyes met, and she knew that Alla/Anna/Anya? was telling the truth. Doesn't matter, it's only a dream but it did matter, because in her innermost core, the part she might once have called her soul, Aylanmaa knew she wasn't really dreaming, deny it though she may. She wasn't prone to hysteria but all she could think of was to fight, to flee, and before she realised what she was doing she let out a shriek (a thin, reedy shriek as if she hadn't drawn a full breath first) and flew at the girl who had tears in her eyes, arms outstretched, hands hooked into claws…

…and she kept flying, there was the momentary sensation of being wrapped in something warm and pleasant and comforting and then it was gone, and she wasn't facing the girl, hadn't crashed into her, hadn't done anything. Nothing. They hadn't even touched.

Aylanmaa resumed her former posture, telling herself she was going to wake up, staring down at the floor which seemed strangely closer now. Because it wasn't the floor, it was a…and she was…and a terrified whimper slipped from her throat as she took in the scene where she was now standing - hovering - on a chair, but the chair somehow passed through her legs without causing pain, she could still see the chair, still see her legs and see the chair through them, legs and chair were occupying the same space which as every student of intermediate transfiguration knew was impossible, no two tangible objects could share a space and the sound happened again, as if it was coming from someone else, somewhere else...

and she couldn't deny it anymore.

The shriek sounded horrible, frightening and strange. Alla shuddered, feeling that Aylanmaa had understood now that she was not alive anymore, that her life had ended and her existence as a ghost had started. Before the blonde witch could react, say anything calming or do anything at all, the ghost flew at her, her formerly manicured hands hooked into claws as if she wanted to hurt her. As the ghost drifted through her, he young necromancer shivered, feeling as though she had been showered coldly from inside. She felt somewhat petrified and unable to even make a sound.

She hugged herself, feeling tense and hoping to warm, protect, comfort herself. This was the most strange and awkward situation the girl had ever experienced and Alla had already seen quite a few strange things in her young life.

The sight of a chair being kind of inside the ghost's body that was not a real body anymore was odd, if the scene hadn't been so dramatic and traumatic, it would have been amusing. However, as it was there was nothing funny about this. Alla averted her gaze, not wanting to stare at the other girl who was still in the process of realising what she was. Alla would have liked to offer Aylanmaa a drink or something but that would just make things worse. A ghost couldn't drink. A ghost was just a ghost. As they had both learned already, a ghost couldn't even sit on a chair.

The girl swallowed as Aylanmaa shrieked again. She paled and made a step backwards. While death surrounded her every day and she really enjoyed animating dead beings, Alla found this to be more than a little unpleasant. She could understand the other girl in a way though. She had just found out that everything was over. That she was not able to participate in the life surrounding her anymore. Her despair was natural. Her wish to hurt someone was also comprehensible. She had been degraded, she was just a spectator from this moment onward. However, it was not Alla's fault. She had not done anything to hurt the other girl and she didn't deserve to be haunted.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered again. "If you want to talk..." her voice trailed off. Talking was the only thing she could offer, even if that wouldn't change a thing.

She wasn't going to wake up. This was her life...her existence from now on and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she could do about the growing terror inside her that had no outlet, because she couldn't run, couldn't hide, couldn't drink herself into oblivion, couldn't even die, because she'd done that already and not realised. Where had she been since then...how long had it been since she'd...did her parents know? Had they been to see her? Had they found the shoes for Kara-Kys...no, wait, had she actually bought the shoes or just been crossing the road to look at them? She couldn't remember, why couldn't she remember? There was a gap in her memory from when she'd been shopping until now, and it was the most terrifying thing of all because she didn't know how she'd come to be here.

She was also unaware that this was coming out in a stream-of-consciousness babble, the words veering between a quiet muttering to a high pitched panicky gasp when she thought of the missing days in her memory. She reached up to her face, and with a shock realised that she could touch herself, after a fashion, there was resistance when she put her hands on her cheeks, but she couldn't exactly feel the tips of her fingers against her skin. It felt just like when they'd been studying anaesthetic charms and one had misfired and hit Aylanmaa in the forehead. She'd spent two days unable to frown, and touching her brow had been like touching the face of another person. Strangely, this discovery made her feel very slightly calmer, because she could analyse her new state in a scientific way. "I can touch myself, I but I can't feel..." she repeated thoughtfully, and for a few seconds she felt calm enough to look up at the living woman in front of her, before the panic consumed her again and she resumed the babbling about what had happened and why she couldn't remember.

At some point she realised that she was in the chair and tried taking a step forward, experimenting until she floated out of the chair again. Still the words flowed from her mouth, but then a slightly calming thought occurred and she though she might try sitting on the chair. She bent her legs, expecting to fall to the ground at any moment but gravity had no effect on her noncorporeal form and she continued to bend until she actually appeared to be sitting. The relief that she could still do something normal, even if she was simply floating in a slightly different position, was so great that she let out a great heaving sob, though her eyes remained dry. She put her head in her hands and sobbed loudly, almost enjoying the relief it brought. Because so long as she did that, she didn't have to think about what was going to happen next. Because the truth was, she had absolutely no idea.

Alla could not avert her gaze for long. While she felt awkward and uncomfortable watching how Aylanmaa slwoly began to understand what she was from now on and forever, the necromancer could hardly look away. She needed to find a way to busy herself, to distract herself from the dramatic scene she was witnessing unwillingly. Although the best thing would have been to do her job and prepare the corpse of Aylanmaa for the funeral, she could hardly do that at this very moment. On the one hand she didn't want to reveal the body so that Aylanmaa could see it and on the other hand Alla felt like she couldn't bear the sight of it now either.

The ghost was talking - mostly to herself though - and Alla paced up and down the room, looking for something to busy herself with. Briefly she considered if she should, after all, pull away the sheet and let Aylanmaa see her body. Would it make things better or worse? She wasn't sure and discarded the thought for now. She could also leave her alone for a while but would that change anything? Help her to get used to the fact that she'd be existing in this way for all eternity?

Given her job and her being a necromancer, Alla was used to being surrounded by death and yet this was a shock and an entirely unexpected situation. Aylanmaa had been alive and just a moment later everything had changed. She had ceased to be what she used to be and had started this existence as a ghost which, to Alla at least, was worse than being properly gone. She felt how a single tear made its way down her cheek and decided to go through the other girl's belongings. Her family would take most of them but Alla thought that it would be better to take a look first. Maybe there was something that wasn't meant for Aylanmaa's parents' eyes. She opened a bag and looked at neatly wrapped things in there.

Alla took a deep breath. These were presents that Aylanmaa had never got the chance to give to anyone. How sad was that? The other girl had been killed when she had been buying things that were meant to bring a little joy into the lives of those dear to her and instead... instead her family now had to face the horrible truth that their beloved daughter and sister had died in an accident. They had not been able to prepare for this. Nobody expected a healthy young witch to die from one moment to the next.

"Do you mind?" Alla asked but didn't wait for a reply. She took the things out of the bag and carefully unwrapped the box, finding delicate chocolates each wrapped in golden paper and a weak smile appeared on her face as she saw that there were her favourite chocolates in the box. It felt like she was stealing something from the dead girl, something that was meant for someone else, for someone who had mattered to the living Aylanmaa. However, Alla didn't believe that the deceased girl's family would want these sweets anymore now and even if they did, there'd still be something left. After all, Aylanmaa had bought a nice choice of fine pralines. Nonetheless the necromancer put the box with all its content down again.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she whispered and finally dared to look at the pitiful semitransparent shape again.

As she sobbed, she felt a sense of relief, something that wasn't yet calm but for the moment would do. Somewhere in her mind the thought materialised that, as she wasn't entirely human now, not entirely alive, she could cry all she wanted and she wouldn't get red eyes. Never. She would look exactly as she was now, never growing older...she took her hands from her face and turned them over, slowly. They were shaking, but if she concentrated, they stilled. But what she wanted to see were her nails - freshly manicured the previous day; or rather, they day before...no, the last day she remembered, yes, that was a better way of thinking about things. The colour was beautiful, now appearing slightly frosted as, she supposed, her whole body did. "Thank Merlin's arse I remembered to put clean knickers on" she muttered to herself, and didn't even bother to worry whether the other girl had heard.

She shook her head slightly when she realised her bag was being looked through. She'd already found that she wasn't able to do it herself; at least with someone else examining the contents it would spare her family the pain of... wait. Could she see them? Meet them, talk to them? Was that allowed, or was there a law about it? Was she expected to hide away now, or could she actually talk with people, reassure then that she was okay, that she was going to...

Wait, what was she thinking? With a wail that might have been frustration or might have been something else entirely she buried her face in her hands again. She didn't cry this time, but remained perfectly still, not responding to anything until she realised words were once again being spoken. A question, barely above a whisper. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Oh, there were a thousand things she wanted, none of which she could have. "Make me whole again; turn back the clock; tell my parents I love them" were the first that sprung to mind, but all that came out was a muffled, croaky-sounding "Yes..." followed by a pause. It didn't matter, she had all the time in the world now. She raised her head again and the first thing she asked wasn't at all what was probably expected, but "We were at school together, weren't we?", though it didn't sound so much a question but as if she was just seeking confirmation of what she already knew. As for what she wanted... "A mirror" and then, after a pause long enough to make her companion think that was all she was going to say "the chocolates were for mother", and then, after another pause "Yes..."

There was something she wanted, but the thought was so new she didn't know how to put it into words just yet, nor if she even wanted to.

The tension in the room was almost unbearable. Even though she tried it, Alla could hardly imagine how it had to be for Aylanmaa to realise that she was a ghost now. She wanted the dead girl to make peace with her new way of existence but at the same time knew that it would take ages for her to accept her condition if she ever managed it at all. Was it better to be completely gone when dead? Alla wasn't sure. For her as a necromancer the line between life and death was blurred but for herself she wished no such existence that Aylanmaa was facing now. It was like being trapped in an endless play that one had to watch without a chance of leaving the theatre ever again.

It surprised her when the ghost actually took up on her offer to do something for her. Astonishment clearly visible on her face, Alla looked at Aylanmaa and waited for what the other girl wanted. Even though it took a while until the ghost told her about her wish, the necromancer waited patiently. She wondered what the dead witch wanted. What kind of things still mattered to a person that was dead? Alla thought that she would want to see her sister again if she was in Aylanmaa's situation but then again she knew that it would most likely freak Lyuda out to see her as a ghost. It was probably better if family and friends never found out about a dear one existing as a ghost for all eternity.

"Yes, we were," Alla confirmed quietly. "We were at school together and even in the same house."

She hadn't really expected Aylanmaa to recognise her anymore. They hadn't been friends or much acquainted at all. How strange it was to have the first proper conversation now that Aylanmaa was dead. It was surreal in a way.

"A mirror?" Alla asked, sounding a little confused. She hadn't been sure what to expect but she didn't believe that she would have ever guessed it right. A mirror... The girl chewed on her lower lip. There was no big mirror at the funeral parlour but she had a little one in her bag.With a few steps she reached the wardrobe where her handbag was hanging together with her coat. She retrieved the tiny mirror and pulled out her wand. "Engorgio," she muttered, enlarging the mirror and leaning it against the wall.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" she asked uncertainly.

The fact that the chocolates were supposed to be for Aylanmaa's mother convinced Alla not to eat any of them. It felt wrong even though Aylanmaa's mother would hardly want the chocolates anymore. How could sweets still matter when her daughter was dead anyway?

"If there's anything else, anything at all..." Alla's voice trailed off. What could she do to help in this situation? It was terribly awkward, especially considering that she would probably have tried to animate the corpse had the ghost not shown up because today Nikolai Daniilovich wasn't around to scold her for doing so. How fortunate that she hadn't been in the process of animating the dead girl's body already...

Her thoughts were less disjointed, like when one awoke from a very deep sleep and only slowly managed to figure out what had been dreamed and what was real. Somehow knowing that she'd been at school with this young woman helped. It was someone from her past, but someone safe someone who wasn't going to weep over her death or mourn her. Her death. Thinking those words didn't feel quite so shocking as it had before. How strange that one could get used to the most appalling truths when there was no alternative. She raised her head and stared at the woman - no, she was barely more than a girl, probably even younger than Aylanmaa herself, and those fuzzy thoughts she'd had upon waking to her new life - she almost smiled at the thought - coalesced into the realisation that she didn't know her companion's name.

Or did she? Had she already asked? She couldn't remember... but there was the mirror, and as frightening as the prospect was, she wanted to see how she looked now. "Yes. Yes, I do. I...have to" she said quietly, but for the first time her voice, altered and thin though it was, sounded almost like herself, like the person she remembered being. Concentrating hard, she stood without floating in an unexpected direction, and then tried to remember how to move now. Last time she had simply had the intention to walk, and then she'd moved. She tried, tentatively at first, and barely shifted more than a few inches. Frustrated, she imagined running across the room to where the mirror was, moved her feet as she would have done when she'd been... before the accident, and then she was hurtling across the room and trying to figure out to stop before she flew straight through the mirror. A high, reedy squeal left her lips and she put her arms up as if to protect her face...and then she stopped, a couple of feet away from where the mirror stood.

Slowly, she lowered her arms, but her eyes were closed. To her relief, she couldn't see anything, so although people could apparently see through her, she wasn't actually able to see through herself. So she could deal with this slowly...she opened her eyes a crack, got used to what she saw, opened them a little further...

And she looked much the same as she had before the accident. Aylanmaa had heard tales of ghosts who appeared covered in blood or with body parts damaged or severed. She knew she'd been hit by a muggle vehicle, and she knew the sort of injuries that could be caused by that. But apparently whatever had happened to her had been so instant she hadn't had time to bleed...was her head at a slight angle, perhaps? She turned to the right and looked - yes, there was a certain tilt to her neck that hadn't been there before. A laugh bubbled up out of nowhere as she realised she was using her medical training to deduce what had happened to her. "Did I break my neck?" she asked in an almost conversational tone, continuing to study her reflection. Her skin looked almost perfect; the one spot she knew she'd had at the side of one cheek concealed by her hair, and she had been wearing one of her favourite outfits. And there were definitely no bloodstains.

She felt better now. Not right, not fine, not good, but better. Better enough that she could begin to think logically about what was to happen next, and she turned to face the other woman. "I'm so sorry, you probably told me already, but I can't remember your name" she said apologetically "though you already know I'm Aylan..." she broke off halfway through her own name with a gasp. You never spoke of the dead by their given names, it was terribly unlucky. She'd grown up with that belief, and now it came back to her with shocking suddenness, and she became silent again.

It felt strange that the first thing Aylanmaa asked for was a mirror. While Alla had no idea what her thoughts would be if she suddenly woke being a ghost, she didn't believe she'd ask for a mirror. Then again seeing with her own eyes how she had become translucent might help with the realisation of what had happened. Yet, given Aylanmaa's behaviour so far, Alla almost feared the ghost's reaction to her reflection.

However, Aylanmaa seemed much calmer now. As she approached the mirror though, it seemed like the ghost still had to figure how the new way of moving, i. e. the floating worked. A sad half smile appeared on Alla's face as she watched her. Had it not been such a terrible thing, it would have been almost laughable to see how the ghost sped up and then squealed when she realised that she had not yet thought about how to stop.

Alla looked down when Aylanmaa was in front of the mirror, her eyes closed, trying to gather up the courage to face her new appearance. She felt like an intruder and yet she found this incredibly interesting, even exciting. How many people got the chance to witness how a person reacted when they had just turned into a ghost? For the necromancer death was always present. It was a topic she confronted often and never avoided it and yet this was a different take on the topic. Even if she was able to reanimate a corpse, none of the dead people she faced could tell her anything about how it was to die or to be dead for that matter. A ghost, however, could - at least to some degree - for Aylanmaa did not seem to know what exactly had happened.

While Alla had expected some sort of break down, Aylanmaa looked at her reflection thoughtfully and then asked something that made the necromancer look up again. It was not only what she asked, it was also the way how she asked it that made her face the other girl.

"Yes, you did," she said quietly, wondering if the memories would come back to Aylanmaa or if her memories would always remain the same as they were now just like her appearance would.

"Alla, Alla Artymovna," the girl replied when the ghost asked her about her name. It seeme d like Aylanmaa would introduce herself as well but then she stopped speaking in the middle of her name. "I know..." Alla said anyway. "We've been at school together and... well, I have your papers here."

The necromancer wondered what Aylanmaa would do next. What did ghosts do anyway? Was she going to remain at the funeral parlour? Could she go long distances? How would she spend her endless time now? While some people were scared of death, the necromancer now felt a little terrified thinking of an eternal existence where time would be of no consequence. Maybe a life was short, too short sometimes, but existing forever unchanged and without the chance to touch anything, unable to do 'normal' things such as eating, drinking, sleeping was quite frightening.

So now she knew how she'd died. Aylanmaa The Ghost thought about this as she studied her reflection some more, and decided it was a good thing that she couldn't remember anything about it. Her mind, always active, started wondering whether it was normal for ghosts to remember their passing, and then she firmly told herself not to think about that now. She tried to concentrate on her breathing, knowing that people who were nervous about a complex medical procedure often felt better when they were engaged in a form of meditation that stopped their minds from racing, but of course, there was no need to breathe, and that set off another train of thoughts. She clenched her fists and carried out the motions of a deep breath, staring at herself as she did so. It helped, a little.

"Alla Artymovna. I remember." she frowned as she tried to remember something about the other woman, and then another thought intruded. An odd one, because that thought was of gratitude that this had happened in Alla's presence, and not someone who would have freaked out or talked too much. Having someone scream and run in shock at the sight of her would be just about the worst thing she could imagine, and Aylan she was deeply grateful that she hadn't regained consciousness in front of her sister or someone she loved. Then, she could imagine she would be trying to comfort them, to try and convince then that she felt no pain, that she was alright, when she was just about as far from alright as it was possible to be.

Then, having someone who was fascinated and wanted to ask endless questions before she could even figure out what was happening would have been just as bad. Alla had asked almost nothing, just given her the space to try and deal with what was going on. Ayl She realised she had no idea of how much time had passed. It might have been just a few minutes, but it felt much, much longer, though her companion wasn't showing any signs of impatience or wanting to be somewhere else, so probably it was somewhere in between.

During all these thoughts something else had surfaced. "Necromancy. That was your best subject. I suppose that's why you now work in a funeral home" she said, though she hadn't thought through the implications of that yet. It just seemed logical that someone who felt comfortable with death would be happy to surround herself with it. Though she was willing to bet that Alla had never experienced a day like this before! A small smile crept onto her face. It was merely a movement of the lips and didn't reach her eyes, and so it simply looked sad. Because again, another thought was encroaching. With a new existence, she needed a new persona - or at least part of a new one. She couldn't be Aylanmaa any more. Her beliefs about the dead and bad luck were too deeply engrained, already she had begun to check herself when she used the given name in her own thoughts.

"I need to pick a new name..." she said to herself, though it was quite loud enough to be heard. Already she was running through options in her head. That thought, at least, felt like something positive that she could still have control over.