[SE] The Perils of Memory

What is a ghost?

The sea at night is a treacherous thing. Seiji remembers this, but not who taught it. Perhaps it was something he grew up with, the same as washing his hands before he eats. He remembers now a sea like this one, iron grey and restless, running from one horizon to another. He cannot recall its name. Memory is a jagged, crumbling thing, like the craggy cliffs he now walks over, and it swallows more than it gives up.

He does not wish to leave this place. Seiji knows that. It feels more like home than anything else in Caido, and even if the breeze rolling in off the tide now chills him, even if the town is too full of noise, too saturated in itself, to hold him now, he cannot go. With slender arms he hugs himself, wrapping the too-big folds of his jacket more tightly to his ribs, and makes his way alone along the cliffs. He is thinking. Thinking: he remembers looking down at the water like this. A candle in the window, the creak of a door. Voices hushes beneath a cavernous roof, or shouting over the rocks…

He cannot recall their names. He lived with people, probably loved those people, and yet he knows nothing about them. How can he be so full now and so hollow all at once? He stoops to pick up a rock and casts it over the side, watching as it falls and falls and disappears, its splash lost to the voices of the tide.

Something dead that seems to be alive.

Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.

SUNJATA

the flood

anyway, you say you're too busy
saving everybody else to save yourself

The sea had always been the closest thing Sunjata had to home as well. Perhaps a bit more closer to a relief, a release of sorts where he could avoid the terrible things that continued to happen in his previous life. But for now? Now it was as much of an escape as everything else was — especially with the mistakes he’s made as of late.

And so he focuses a bit more on the lighthouse and the path to his home, settling in near the base of the lighthouse itself debating whether or not to head straight to the house or head toward the shrine up above. He hasn’t talked to Safrin recently… Hasn’t thought to want to after everything and the state he’s in. And so it’s this half debating stance he remains in, torn between speaking with his goddess or cutting his losses and heading home.

So he turns to look over the cliffs edge, sighing somewhat content with the sound of the crashing waves below, and relishing in those small mercies and comfort of something as close to home as he could ever get.

and you don't want no help, oh well
that's the story to tell