Syl waited until they were a good distance from the girl before speaking. "H-hey! Why are you in my friend's body. They wouldn't appreciate it. They don't like being possessed!" Syl was about to cry, his eyes watering quite a bit. "They told me so!"
Eli blinked and stared at their friend. Why was Syl saying that? Better yet, Syl was actually alive-er, dead. But it wasn't just a dream! Syl was really here, even if he didn't know it was them right now.
"Syl, please don't cry!" Eli begged. "I'm going to start crying if you start crying, and then I won't be able to say anything."
It took Syl a moment to realize how the man inside of Eli knew his name. "But... You were... Are you a mystery?" He looked confused as all hell. "Was that the secret you were hiding?"
Syl hummed a bit. "So... are you dead then?" He knew Eli also could have also just received the powers somehow, and that was more likely given the fact that he hadn't heard anything about his friend, but he figured he'd ask anyway.
The thought that someone might guess they were dead hadn't even crossed their mind - Eli was just so used to accepting that they had an apparition form and a human form that they forgot it wasn't the normal way apparitions and mysteries worked.
They frantically shook their head.
"I'm not!" they reassured Syl. "I'm alive. I just have apparition powers now. It's temporary - just until I graduate - but, uh, yeah. I have them. I got them from one of the Clock Keepers. He saw me in trouble, and offered me his powers..."
They faltered.
They didn't want to mention how they almost died, and didn't want to mention what happened to the Clock Keeper that had made the sacrifice. Eli had barely come to terms with both of those things themselves, and they weren't ready to deal with Syl's reaction to it.
"There is a lot of details," they agreed. They sat down next to Syl. They were torn between staying as their human self or switching to their apparition self - now that Syl knew the truth, did it really matter what form they chose?
"It gave me a headache," Syl rubbed his forehead, massaging it almost, and then proceeded to flop backward in the grass, laying on his back now.
"Got a new roommate yet?" He asks, laying on his side and looking up at Eli. He rested his hand on one of his arms and pulled his cloak around himself, a bit cold.
Eli followed Syl's lead a second later: they laid down on the ground next to him, rolled over onto their side, and looked right into Syl's face. "I haven't," they admitted. "They were supposed to give me one, but it just never worked out. I don't know why."
They thought for a moment.
"I don't spend a lot of time there, anyways," they hurriedly added. They didn't want Syl to feel sad about their lack of a roommate. Syl had been their roommate, after all. With him gone, Eli was all alone in their room. "I'm usually up in the clock tower."
"...She's doing as okay as she could be doing," they replied. They glanced over at Syl, watching as he picked at the grass. "Things have changed a lot since you were gone-"
An idea suddenly came to them.
Eli shot up to their feet, their form shifting from human to apparition. There weren't any classes today, and they knew exactly where Ruth would be.
"We should go see Ruth," Eli said. "She'd be so happy!"
