There is a mourning beauty when anyone sees a flea market full of the unseen ghosts of floating cloth materials. This was once breathing life through this little ditty town. Trading the everyday wares.
Stalls used to be full of jam's, sauces and house made recipes. Someone across the way were the candle sale's man. The stall far to the edge of view were the meat markets and fish monger. There were nick nack and kid's trading cards stall. A watch fixer and shoe heel's crafter.
They are gone. These ghosts took over and use it for unseen sales of stranger things. Replacing jam with bits of corpses used for 'potions'. The wood craft turned bone carver. The large meat fridge truck is stone trader. The nick nack and trading cards have been long replaced with items of their interest. Things that I have no understanding for such uses. What most caught my eye was that a slave trader; which after such a rude argument I had with my current contractor. No surprises that I was being on offer.
The language was getting easier to understand with getting use to sticking around the shadows of the clothed folk. This lone wolf among the pack of clothes wolves were a minor no one.
"What you have there is a clause where this servant going to hunt you down and have you pinned to the floor until you appease the soul of it. It's rare but often normal for the one's with human qualities or the clever titled demons." Or was just seeking the advice from one contract maker to another, "Whatever you family has done to this being; this one is hell bent on you making up for the suffering this curse it claims it owns." I was taken out as some pet to be touched, "You really managed to take a Cat Crawler."
"That speaks the human languages and is incredibly sour." Yeah, for this curse over my soul. Wouldn't anyone be pissed? "Claimed my grandfather's doing."
"Interesting." Lowered to my eye level and lightly grinned towards me.
"Hello fool, would like your head off your shoulder?" Yes, wipes off that grin and disagreed about that, "What is it you want from me? I have very little to offer and littler of patience."
"At least your honest. I would like to listen to your soul a moment and see it's shape."
"I don't know how one does that but sure… am already tired of all this. I can find this fool again in a another life." The comment is met with a deeper frown.
I feel into some sort of sleep and weren't really dead or alive. Waking back up the two were in an argument over me and what I am. This soon had the owner of my contract marked by law and sunk instantly to darkness. I were sunk back to shadows of his pocket and left there to sleep.
It were a long time before I sensed any sort of freedom from the shadows and were walking around the ashes of my ex-master. His soul stayed here, this crystal which I ate. This freed us both from this curse contract and had been enough to be forgiven. I weren't as cruel as life had been to me. I let myself die and let free into letting them pass over to death. Yet it's always that my soul is often always thrown away as a fluke. But not this time.
My soul were instead put into a bird, a bird of this land and of freedom…. But I am now chained to death by some sort of god binding contract. I can stand upon this reaper's shoulder, ghostly as they are.
"Abnormal soul, I see you been thrown aside time and time again. I see you are cursed with reincarnation memories. A Clothus curse that is taboo by practice. They should have dealt with you much better, yet now you stuck here." sorrow tolls deeply in sweeping whispers. Such a voice that demands to not be ignored or be overheard by anyone, "Would you help me?" I cooed lightly, "I searching for any humans left… would you take me there?"
He had me hop over to his forearm, I bowed in agreement then into flight. Soaring high enough to spot any entrance of vaults. Back down as the guide to lead them through the dust and through the everything that tried to hinder – pushed aside as some bug on the shoulder. Sand storm, not even a blinking bother. Passing vast creatures that kill, they die in the encounter with death. The metal doors, he just walked through them. I sit out here waiting for anything of a return.
Back through he was with many souls, he lifted a hand in ask for me to land there. I hovered into flight and gently land on the shoulder; I looked back at how the metal door opened to the rotting smell of dead, then to onto the souls that were trapped there. My tear was valid emotional response to knowing tor understanding.
"I know." I am gentle comforted by the death's sombre sorrow, "Let us take them over and back to another place. I can tell there are more." I nod with how we walked through a open door. Such door that came from no where and unnatural stood untouched to its surrounding. Through here was darkness as back to sleep I were. Back out this place of doors were to be awaken back into the living lands and for me to direct the party of reapers.
Off to next 105 vaults of civilians locked underground; none were alive. None were alive. The more hidden one's were they hidings as they follow computer documents about them. It's what one said to search for the experimental lab vaults. They were reaping lives to pick this place clean of life – but had been ignoring life I knew had souls too. the plants that grow despite the radiation levels. It worried me more knowing they were just taking them without checking for what is the common known of life.
"Bird?" My lingering to a tree were the nearest life I knew around here, "There is nothing here."
My disagreement is met with the deep stare through them.
"Is there something trapped there?" He swept through and took the soul of the tree. The tree withered and creaked and died as it should have, "Why does it have a soul?"
I hop over leading him to the forest, here he picked through more souls.
"Are you telling me that ever wood and green is alive?" I nod in agreement, "But this place is nothing left." I disagree and landed to a nest of cat crawlers. He does his test of souls and yes finds they too have souls, "So despite the fact of humans and known living creature to be gone – this place is not dead."
I flutter in agreement and circled around above. He asked of my return and I do so, landing on his arm. My soul taken out of this shell of a bird and added into the pocket of many. Darkness and nothing. Swallowed up and broken up. This lotto game became changed, I no longer seemed to ever wake up out of the darkness ever again. Lost and scared.