[color=bc8dbf][b]Stormy[/b][/color]

The oncoming train had been a falling star in the corner of her eye. 

Tristan lay there still. 

It was an odd sensation, knowing how you were going to die. You can come to terms with death itself, but knowing how, and when… it’s an unwelcome revelation. The Ghost  Girl’s words did little in the way of comfort. Stormy’s lantern watched from the bench. The candle had sputtered out, now a cooling puddle of black wax. The station grew brighter. A girl was running towards them. Stormy looked down at her feet. They weren’t moving. 

[color=bc8dbf]“Huh,”[/color] she tilted her head to the side, [color=bc8dbf]“I guess this is it then.” [/color]

She closed her eyes.

During her more youthful years Stormy had known a man that had rather haplessly fashioned himself as a poet, Howard, his name was. He was prone to diatribe and mournful ruminations. One thing he said that Stormy would have remembered, in that window after the train struck, if only she could, was this: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents”. It was quite true; had she been able to recall the passage, her mind would have snapped easier than the driest of frail twigs. 

So it came to be that a lazy breeze bumped into and over Stormy. 

She opened her eyes.

Gradually, her senses would return. Above was an expansive pool of furtive blue, stretching from horizon to horizon to horizon. The sun chased idle clouds across the sky. She lay there watching for a time, a little stunned. Underneath her she felt the soft bed of grass, damp still from morning’s dew. It stretched off in a sea of shimmering emerald, with dirt brown surf breaking the waves as the path wound away out of sight. 

A deep breath entered her lungs. A grin split her face. Tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes. She rubbed the earth with her hands, feeling the sodden clay and delicate blades, and then brought her grass-stained hands up to her face and inhaled again deeply. It was late-spring sweetness and loam eager to grow new life. She sighed, and stretched her branches, splaying her fingers and toes wide in the meadow. 

[color=bc8dbf][i]What a joy it is to live.[/i][/color]

Other voices cropped into life, and suddenly she noticed the figure silhouetted in the sunny day. The Ghost Girl’s painfully singular in her meagre and dispassionate way. Stormy nodded slowly to herself, lying there in the grass, only a little way from them. It was obvious she had just been privy to some rather powerful pixie magic, but it was far more charnel than had been expected; toadstool rings and waystones were more her speed.  

Rolling onto her side, away from the kerfuffle, Stormy frowned as something dug into her hip. It was the gift, the deep-blue mask. Her hand snatched it up, and held it close to her chest as her gaze flitted to a flower. It was a dark and bold damsel, flecked with white-bright stars from the night sky.

[color=bc8dbf]“M’lady,”[/color] Stormy curtseyed as best she could, given she was lying on her side, [color=bc8dbf]“You are a looker, aren’t you just?”[/color] She reached forward, touching the petals, and then trailing her thumb and finger to its lower stem. [color=bc8dbf]“Excuse me.”[/color] And with that, she snipped the flower between two nails. [color=bc8dbf]“There.”[/color] She put the flower in her hair, by her right ear. [color=bc8dbf]“Now, we’ll see this new world together.”[/color] Stormy beamed. 

Retching from somebody in the orbit of the main group drew Stormy’s dream-dazed attention. She saw a man, sitting, clutching his stomach. Rolling to her feet, she began to make her way over.

[color=bc8dbf]“How now, brown cow?”[/color] But as she sauntered closer, she saw the red puddle spreading at his knees. She closed the last few steps with uncharacteristic haste, mask in hand. She crouched at his side, but was careful not to touch him.

[color=bc8dbf]“There there Sugar, it’s alright,”[/color] she poured her words slow and soft and sweet, like crystal honey, [color=bc8dbf]“Just try to take deep breaths, it’s alright now darling.”[/color] It was then she noticed the tendrils of oily black smoke rising from him. She looked at the others, to each of the main group, still caught in posturing, to the brazen boy, to Tristan, and then, slowly, to the Ghost Girl, impassive as ever.

[color=bc8dbf]“Hey buttercup,”[/color] She called, waving a hand curtly at her from her crouching position, [color=bc8dbf]“Do you know what’s wrong with him? It’s not quite right that he’s got blood in his sick, y’know?” 
[/color]