Cuckoos and Chalk Marks

Not for the first time, I skidded to a halt.

This time, however, I spun around to stare at him. "Sorenson's not your birth name?"

It was hypocritical for me to be so surprised, seeing that Skull wasn't my birth name, either. But still. He hadn't exactly brought it up when I mentioned Skull wasn't the name my parents gave me.

"No. It doesn't sound very elvish, does it?" he asked in concern. "It was mean to sound more human."

Sorenson had mentioned elves earlier, back when we first both woke up in this place. I still didn't know what elves were supposed to be like, but I did know that they probably looked more like Sorenson than they looked like me.

"I don't know what's supposed to sound Elvish," I pointed out. "You're the first elf I've met."

"Oh?" He smiled. "Then you've met the worst elf in Faerun. Are there no elves on your plane?"

"As far as I know," I said, shrugging. "There could be some somewhere in Arium, but I haven't met them yet. They weren't any elves on my Earth, at least."

"Oh, you're not missing much, I assure you. Some unique music and culture, to be sure, but we're all rather stuck-up and set in our ways."

I smirked.

"I've met a lot of people like that before," I noted. Many of the clients Lockwood and Co. (and Lucy, back during her little solo agency days) got were on the richer side. It was easier hiring ghost hunters when you had the extra funds to do it. Lockwood and Co., admittedly, hadn't charged the highest rates in the area and still got their fair share of poorer clients, but the majority of them tended to be rich and snobby.

"Then you know why I quit."

"I do," I said. I stretched a little as we walked. We had to be nearing the end of this hallway soon, even though I couldn't actually see an exit in front of me yet. "I'm not usually a fan of high society. Never participated in it myself, but."

I shrugged.

"Might be the street urchin in me," I guessed.

"Oh, you were a street urchin?" His eyebrows shot up; he was delighted. "That's charming! What was it like?"

I gave him a look.

"Not charming," I said. I joked about it every so often because I could, but it was different when someone else was romanticizing a life they hadn't actually lived. "Lots of hunger and cold, and being sick was the worst. I was lucky when I got a good bite to eat."

That was actually why I ate so much now. Even though I knew that I wasn't at risk of running out of food any time soon, my brain still wanted to prepare for what it saw as inevitable. I also did have to make up for some lost time.

"That's the way it is." He nodded gravely, but there was still a glint in his eyes. "Waterdeep is filled with urchins. It's fascinating. Of course, I donate money. That's no life to be lived forever. But it does build character, doesn't it?"

Not for the first time in the conversation in this hallway, I stopped and looked back at Sorenson.

"You don't realize what it's like to live on the streets, do you?" I asked. "It's not fascinating. It's Hell on Earth. I don't know if I'll ever actually go to the real Hell, but living on the streets was close. That's what killed me. Not some great, big fight. Not a lasting effect of my time with a cult, or even the beginnings of the Problem. I died on a cold winter's night after not having enough food for weeks. You can't tell it now because whatever brought me back to life was nice, but I came across as fourteen when I was actually seventeen because I hadn't had been able to get a constant source of food for years."

Sorenson stared at him for a moment, shocked. That hadn't been expected at all. "Did...did nobody take you in?"

"Sickly, orphaned street kids weren't exactly a commodity back then," I said.

I paused.

I turned my back to Sorenson.

"...There was someone," I said. "The man who had the mirror that made me such a strong ghost. He wasn't a...good person. He said he saw my potential and thought I'd good be a good pair of extra hands to have around. I realized a year into working with him that I really didn't want to be a part of what he was doing, so I left."

It was...weirdly therapeutic to admit that. I hadn't ever told someone the full story about my time with Bickerstaff before. Lucy and her little group of ghost hunters knew that I had ties to him, but I always hammed them up and pretended that I had been all for everything he had done. It was easier that way. It fit the persona I had been going for back then.

But that felt like an eternity ago at this point. I could have brought it up with Natty boy or Asmira, but that just felt...too revealing. It was easier telling this to someone who barely knew me. I didn't want my friends to give me their pity.