Young Writers Society

I kept my arms crossed and kept watching him from atop my rock. Eyes narrow, I asked, "What kind of mistakes?"

Sorenson turned his glare to Skull. "Listen. I'm not in the habit of telling stories about myself, particularly not in that vein. If you want to know something, you're going to have to give a little too."

I groaned.

"You already know a little about me." The crystals glowed at that, which proved my point. Unfortunately, I could also see Sorenson's point. It was an eye for an eye, or in this case it was a painfully revealing truth for another.

I sighed and looked away.

"Fine," I relented, studying a spot on the ground. "You already know about Bickerstaff and the mirror, so there's no use elaborating on that. But there was a...time I haunted my own skull. I was in a jar and couldn't do a whole lot, so I got in the habit of making snide comments to keep myself occupied. No one could hear me. No one had that strong of a Listening ability."

I faltered.

"...but then someone did," I admitted. "She worked for the agency that had my skull, and she heard me one day while in the room my skull was being kept in. I started talking to her a lot. I was snide, and rude, and did my very best to come across as the terrifying ghost I knew she thought I was."

The crystals glowed to all of that, though they seemed slightly less certain at the very end. Maybe Lucy hadn't thought I was that terrifying after all.

I still kept my gaze away from Sorenson. "And then I heroically sacrificed myself to save her and her little boyfriend, and ended up getting a second chance at life on another world. So now she's always going to think of me is as that gruesome ghost, and I won't ever be able to show her I'm more than that."

Sorenson listened to all this with fascination, holding back a chuckle as he imagined Skull as a skull in a jar. It was absurd--morbidly comical. He wished he could have been around to see it. "That's utterly amazing," he said finally.

I shot him a look. I wasn't a fan of how much he mocked the things I kept bringing up. Maybe I was being a bit of a hypocrite, seeing that I had done that with Lucy all the time. But I was a changed ghost now, and I liked to think that I was better with not giving such poor reactions to such personal things.

"It's not amazing," I corrected. "It's tragic. Not that I'd ever call it that outside of this conversation."

"I mean--it's a little amazing," he said hesitantly. "Being a skull in a jar and all, that's got to give a new perspective, right? It'd be boring, certainly, but at least you had something to haunt."

I faltered. That, though I didn't want to admit it, was a very good point.

"At least there was that," I reluctantly replied, my voice more of a mutter than anything else.

"So this Lucy," he mused. "Are you in love with her?"

My face contorted into a look of disgust. I nearly fell off of my rock at the question. It wasn't the first time someone had assumed that about me and Lucy, and it probably wasn't going to be the last.

"No," I quickly said, and hated how the light glowing from the crystals was suspiciously dim. "Okay, fine. Not like the way I know you're thinking. Lucy's like..."

I struggled to come up with a way to describe her.

"...a kid sister," I finally decided. That was how I saw Nikko, wasn't it? I was the better version of her older brother. I teased the both of them and hadn't always been a fan of either of their crushes, so it just seemed right. "I'd never fall in love with her in a romantic kind of way. I'd never fall in love with someone in that kind of way."

The crystals glowed brightly there.

"No?" He raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "Well, to each his own. Love isn't for everybody."

I paused, then glanced over at him.

"Do you have someone like that?" I asked. It was a genuinely curious question. He had mentioned kids earlier, so I assumed there was someone else involved—unless elves could have kids all on their own, which wouldn't have been all that surprising. I knew close to nothing about elves.

Sorenson chuckled. "Goodness, no. Not anymore. She got tired of me real quick. Left me behind centuries ago." Not that he minded; he'd always been a fair-weather lover anyway and marriage had been an unnecessary stone tied to his ankle. He enjoyed having the freedom to explore whomever he wished.

"Huh," I said, my tone noncommittal. I couldn't imagine being in a relationship, much less losing one.

Then my brain finally did the math.

"Wait," I said, sitting up straighter, "if you have kids and your wife left you centuries ago, just how old are your kids?"

"A few hundred years old, now. I'm a bit over half a millennium old." He glanced at Skull in amusement. "Elves live a good long time."