What is it?

[Seaheart]

Mezzidok lay in a cave, on top of some recently collected moss. Why is he sleeping in a forest...with moss as bedding? OK. Get this now because it's hard to explain. He has a sort of tiger spirit in him, making him have many instincts of a tiger, and sometimes going full on cat. Not becoming one but...well...just attack him, and you'll find out. He's been in dorms, but thinks there too small, and much rather prefers the forest.

He awoke, the same regretful expression that was always on his face, awoke too. He went outside. It was a little cloudy, and a breeze blew. He tuned his senses, awaking from his long sleep.. shaking off drowsiness. It might rain....he'd check later. He had made a bit of a camp for himself.

He was near a river, se he could catch fish for food if needed. There was plenty of other prey around. He took in the air and smelled mouse. He got into a hunter's crouch on all fours, turning into sand to make himself the size of a cat. He treaded slowly, focusing on the prey. Time to catch breakfast. He needed no disturbances....

[Katsumi]

"Yes, I know where I'm going! I don't need your help! I never even asked for your help! Get lost! Bridget, help!" came a voice from the midst of the woods. Stumbling through the bushes, Frigg waved her arms around her head, though it was obviously doing no good. She grumbled angrily, but it seemed that she was trying to avoid nothing at all. She kept mumbling and muttering to some one named Bridget, but it would appear that she was all alone.

Finally, she stood firm and stomped her foot, paying no attention to any one that could be around her. "Curses! You've gotten me even more lost that I already was! I never said I wanted to see anything! Yes, yes, I understand that this place was abandoned! A lot of places are! What did you think I could do about it?" Again, her arms went in a flurry around her head, trying to ward away some unseen enemy. Her auburn hair floated about behind her, the locks following all her her motions.

Huffing in frustration, she plopped herself down on the ground and crossed her arms. "Gee, thanks a lot, Bridget. It's about time, don't you think?" The girl closed her eyes. She seemed to be completely serious about speaking to no one. It was a very odd behavior, but she was very comfortable with it. She didn't notice any one around. Her imaginary playmates were her main concern.

[Seaheart]

The mouse, and all other prey in the vicinity, scampered away. Normally, this girl would have a human with veery angry instincts on her tail right now, but just a few days ago, the same situation occurred, and he couldn't do it. Not that he kenw of the tiger. He thought what he was doing was completely normal. He hardly knew what much was. when he snapped out of his instincts He looked up, sniffing around. He smelled a girl. And....something else. It carried a very faint scent....strange....he located the girl, ifnding a girl talking to herself. Instead of judging her as crazy, not that he knew what that was, he asked "Is anyone else here? Who are you talking to?" He said the regretful expression on his face remaining.

[Katsumi]

Frigg looked up, her arms still crossed as if she had been interrupted in the middle of an argument. The whites of her eyes were a deep red, making the ice-blues of her eyes striking as she stared at the boy who had broken her conversation. Upon seeing him, a smile spread across her face. Her eyes, despite their bloody color, looked apologetic. "Oh, sorry. Some one had convinced me that I could save their final resting place here, but they never explained to me that an entire forest had grown over it! That little detail would have been nice to know before I followed them, right Bridget?" Frigg looked away from Mezzidok, as if she were speaking to some one else. After a moment's pause, she laughed and said, "Right, right, I know what you mean." She nodded a bit, and her eyes returned to Mezzidok.

"But, we finally got them to leave me alone. It's just me and Bridget and... Oh, I forgot. Um, I mean, no: it's just me here. No one else. Just me." Smiling broadly, she laughed a bit more, as if Mezzidok hadn't head anything that she had said before. She treated it like it was suddenly a secret.

[Seaheart]

He looked confused,,,,in a regretful looking sense. He sniffed around, and still detected the faint scent. He squinted his eyes and did see a very faint outline. His extra tiger sight, and the fact he has a spirit inside him, allowed him to see some of it. "No...I smell....and see someone else...I think." He said quietly, and unsurely like always. He didn't understand the resting ground place. "By resting ground, do you mena a place to sleep?" He asked. Oh noy. He just asked one question. A warning: Answering Mezzidok's questions lead to thousands of others. Just thought I'd let you know.

[Katsumi]

Frigg blinked twice, trying to comprehend what Mezzidok was telling her. Then, as if it all became clear instantly, she turned hurriedly and whispered a few things to her invisible companion. And, with that, the spirit was gone. She returned to Mezzidok with a broad, innocent smile. "No, no, it's just me," she told him. It was a rule: no one was to know of Bridget. That was what Frigg had been taught for eighteen years. Now, being confronted about it, she would deny it to her grave.

"But, you don't seem to quite grasp the idea of a final resting place. You know, a place were you sleep if you're never going to wake up. You know, if you're dead." Frigg had a way of making her point. "You see, this was a rather ancient burial ground, but it went unattended for a long time. It's common really: beyond repair and ravaged by nature. Right now, we're having a conversation over piles of dead people! That's something most people who come here wouldn't expect, huh? Probably better that they don't know the difference... Really, it's depressing that so many people who have passed would be disrespected with neglect..."

To ask Frigg for an explanation was like trying to stop a raging waterfall: you just had to let it go it's course. The waterfall would stop when it ran out of water; Frigg would stop when she ran out of things to say.

[Seaheart]

He was more ocnfused now. "What is...dead? Dead people?" He sniffed, and squinted again, but the outline faded, and the already faint smell had faded. He didn't quite udnerstand much, much less death. Well.....he had in a sense, killed people. Not killing them....but if turning them inti mist counts, then yeah, he killed them. He sat down, listening. He was curious, wanted to ask questions, and there was no stopping him. "What is a final resting place?" He said adding another question the the pile.

[Katsumi]

Frigg couldn't help but try to think and understand what this guy was talking about. He didn't know what death was? He didn't understand the concept of not living? She was very confused: didn't every one know that life ended eventually? After all, nothing was eternal, especially fragile human life. Well, this was what Frigg had been trained to do! She was the master of all things dead, so it would be one of her greatest accomplishments if she could make this person comprehend just what it meant to no longer live.

"Alright, so, you're alive right now. You move and breath and talk, and so do I. Those are things that living people do. But, no one can live forever. Every one stops moving and breathing eventually. When they can never do those things ever again, then they are dead. And every one dies eventually. Some people live longer than others, but they will die someday. And when people die, other people who are alive bury those people in the ground... That is, they dig a hole and put the dead person in it. Then, they cover it up so that the dead person is gone. They don't want to see the dead person any more, because they start to look like this."

Frigg looked down at the ground and her hands began to move in an awkward way, as if she was manipulating a marionette puppet. She said some words under her breath, and the ground beneath them began to quiver gently. In the space between Mezzidok and Frigg, a hand broke through the grass and dirt. Frigg bit her bottom lip, mumbling something about this one being very deep. Finally, her hard work paid off and the skeleton of a human came through the surface. Dirt and clay filled it's crevices, and it's jaw hung limply on one side. It pulled it's chest through and it was obvious that some ribs were missing. The pressure of the earth beating down on it for centuries had obviously taken it's toll.

"See? It's not a very pretty sight, so living people don't like to see dead people after they've died... Oh, this could be confusing. See, this person is dead, but it can move because some people can use a special kind of magic to make them move. Really, it's not moving. I'm making it move. Do you understand?"

[Seaheart]

He listened to the explanation, trying to understand. When he saw the skeleton come up, he didn't find it revolting. After all that, he asked "What's pretty?" She said it wasn't a pretty sight. "What is it? What's wrong?" Dead was when....you couldn't breathe or move. He stopped breathing for a second, hold his breath. Was he considered dead? He wasn't moving, and he wasn't breathing. Did you have to look like...that thing to be dead? He looked at her and asked "I didn't breathe and I wasn't moving? Was I dead? Or do I have to do that when I'm buried?" He said asking curiously, still not grasping the concept.

[Katsumi]

Frigg smiled. This was like a game! It reminded her of being children and playing 'school' with her older brother. He was always the teacher in those games because he was so much older. Now, she got to play the teacher. "Remember: I said you have to stop breathing and moving forever. If you only stop for a little bit, then you're still alive; you breath and move again eventually. When you never ever do those things again, then you are dead, and people bury you. You die before you are buried."

But, Frigg's specialty ended with death. How could she explain to this person what 'pretty' was? Frigg didn't consider herself pretty at all. With her eyes still healing from the possession she had suffered from earlier in the day, she would say that she was rather creepy looking. So she couldn't use herself as an example. Just how could she make him understand 'pretty'?

"And... well, 'pretty' is whatever you want it to be. Every one has different thoughts on what pretty is. Like... some people might think that I am pretty... but some people might think that my lips are too small, or my skin is too pale, or my nose is shaped funny, or my hair is like straw, or my eyes are creepy when they're red... Ahem, I mean, every one thinks different things are pretty. You just... know when things are pretty. A lot of people think that things in nature are pretty. Look around: does anything like that stand out to you? Does anything seem more special than the other things?"

She would try this. Maybe if he could recognize what he thought was pretty, he would understand the concept better. As she made her attempt at explaining these things, she stuffed the corpse back into the ground where it came from and released her hold on it. It was a lifeless stack of bones again, and Frigg couldn't help but sigh. She didn't even know who she was controlling. Every grave in this forest was unmarked.

[Seaheart]

He looked at her. He didn't understand any of these looks she described. "So if your none of those things you mentioned...then your pretty?" OK. Remember, he has no idea hwat pretty is or what straw or pale or anything else she just described is so don't be surprised when he says...."Well, I guess your pretty then." He just doesn't know what these are, which is why he's saying, she has none. He kinda understood death...if he stopped doing it forever...he was dead. But why would he stop breathing? Antoher question "Why should people stop breathing? Or moving? How is that....good. Isn't it....bad?" He has a slim conecept of bad and good. He knew what his parents did were bad.

He took what she said to mind, and look around. Nature is what he understood. The forest...it was his home for tiger's sake! "Yes...everything here...stands out. The smells are overwhelming but they are.....good." He held up a flower and said "Yes. This stands out. It's strange, but I just know this whole place is...good."

[Katsumi]

Frigg sighed and rubbed her forehead. What a difficult student! "Well, you see, no one should stop breathing forever. But, it's not their choice. Their body just doesn't work any more. It's not necessarily a good thing, but it really isn't a bad thing either. It happens to every one. Death is just another part of life. It is the end."

The lesson on pretty didn't seem to go too well. "Um... right. You might think that I'm pretty, but not every one would. But... the forest! Right! The whole forest is pretty because it is good! It's all beautiful... oh, beautiful is the exact same thing as pretty. It's just a different word. These things make you happy because they are good, and that is what makes them all pretty."

Something like that.

[Seaheart]

He looked at her and thought...no choice. Like when his parents beat him? Did he have a choice. Could he have not been beaten? For some reason, he felt no one could answer that. He shook his head. not wanting to htink about it. He then asked "So why do people die? Their body...just stops? So when you die...that's it? There is nothing you can do except lie where people bury you? But...why? Why does the body not work? What happens? Why do people die?" He said pressing onward with more questions, forgetting about the ofrest, but still leaving his regretful expression on.

[Katsumi]

Frigg couldn't help but smile; he was asking more questions that she was capable of answering. Looking up, she let her eyes wander to spots of sky visible through the leaves of the trees. "Every one dies for a different reason. Some people have just become too old and their body has run out of energy. Some people get hurt too badly and their bodies just can't fix themselves. But, when people die, only their body is gone. The body does just stay there when people are buried because there is no spirit left in them."

Anticipating his next round of questions, Frigg went into that explanation. "The spirit is the part of a person that makes them think. Your spirit gives you all of these questions, and my spirit gives me the answers. Your spirit doesn't make you move; it makes you want to move, and it gives you reason to move. You walk because you're hungry: there's no food in one spot, so your spirit makes you move to find where there is some. When the spirit can't take care of the body anymore, it leaves, and sometimes it moves on to a different place away from the planet we're on now. Every spirit makes it's own choices. When they have a body, they make choices to breath and move and talk, and even fight. Those are all choices. After the body is gone, spirits still have choices. We just can't notice them any more because most people can only see bodies."

[Seaheart]

He listened intently, wanting to understand dead and why people are dead. "So....how do people get injured? How can it be so bad that it makes the spirit want to leave? You said the spirit can't care for a body? You speak of the spirit as if it's....not real in a sense. If it's inside the body, it should be protected. Does it leave because it can't keep up with the pain, and it doesn;t want to be with someone who causes pain? Does it feel the body is worthless for being in such pain?" He only expressed these views for htis is how his parents. thought of him at times.

"Where are some places the spirit go? Can it go in another body? One that's worthy to it? Or just stay around it;s original body? Where? Where can it go? Where are places the sprit who makes all the choices go?" He then heard her say most, making him wonder. "How do oyu see a psirit? Who does see it?"