So With The Sunlight
by Kellyann Ye
"Look, it's just a week, Lucas. There's literally nothing you can do in a week."
"Exactly my point," says Lucas, “It’s an entire week. There’s no useful purpose in sending me up.” He curls his fingers into loose fists at his sides so his hands have something to do, flicks his tongue against the back of his teeth in agitation. He waits until Marcus looks up again from the paperwork he's pretending to fill out before he speaks again, biting out his words even though he's pretty sure he doesn't mean to, "Marcus, explain why I'm being sent."
A Note about Lucas:
He really hates going up top.
Marcus purses his lips, something that would look disapproving on anyone else, but Lucas suspects the shade takes great pleasure in their bantering. "You've been here the longest, according to the records. Like, you haven’t seen the sun since the last pharaoh was buried. Plus His Lordship wants the oldest ones to go first. We can't keep everyone here forever. The circle of life and crap."
A Note about Marcus:
He's a much better plotter than he seems. But then again, so are all the best.
Lucas scoffs, bracing his hands against the front edge of Marcus' desk. "Marcus, we both know your records are an absolute travesty. Why not send someone that actually wants to go back?"
"They're not my records. They're the Underworld's," Marcus attempts valiantly, but as the only person in the Underworld's population of several trillion that ever enters the records room, the argument is weak. "And anyway, we can't send the ones that actually want to go. We wouldn't be able to get them back afterwards, and you know how overpopulation is getting to be a problem up top."
"Like it isn't a problem down here? We've been overcrowded since before doors were invented."
"You're not going to be able to argue yourself out of this one, Luke. Just sit it out and be glad it's not any longer." Marcus pointedly turns back to his paperwork without waiting for Lucas' response.
"Fine," Lucas scowls, resigned, and turns to leave. He halts in the doorway. "You'd better bring me back, you prat. If you don't I'll fling you into the corn maze myself."
Marcus snorts, and the scribble of pen on paper silences for a brief moment. "I wouldn't dream of it, you wretched shade. God knows that maze is an absolute terror to anybody that enters."
"No, he doesn't," snaps Lucas, falling back into familiar arguments, "If he did, he'd do something about it."
"Is it not better to have the ghosts wandering around looking for the exit rather than just wandering around?"
"Hell no. The Fields were perfectly serviceable."
Marcus laughs. "Still in the habit? It's been two thousand years."
"Shut up."
"You'd better go to Departures now, they'll give you all sorts of crap for being late."
Lucas raises him a double-fingered salute as he leaves. As he strides down the hallway, glowing with confidence - because he is always confident and never, ever sulks - he can hear Marcus shouting after him.
"And you know the waiting room is worse than the land of the living, so move faster, you prat!"
The waiting room of Departures is indeed worse than the land of the living.
The only thing it has going for it is that it’s not completely freezing, mostly because shades can’t feel cold. Or anything else, really.
It's comparable to an airplane, one of those huge ones that can carry nearly four hundred people. Except instead of well-dressed business people on their phones, or sappy couples whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears, this plane is filled with small, wailing children.
Most of them are ghosts or shades that have been around a few hundred years, and have either volunteered or been drafted to return as children. A few are shades that died young, remaining in their original form for re-entering. And then there's Lucas, in his full adult form, who's only leaving for about a week so this decade's Sector Seven census won't come off marked as overpopulated, or so he’s told.
It makes no sense, but Lucas was never one for politics, so he lets it slide.
As it stands, there's no point giving some poor couple (or single parent) up there a child for about a week before taking it away again. His Lordship is harsh, but not cruel. Much.
A Note about His Lordship:
He dislikes eating pomegranates. The seeds are really annoying.
All of these children-shapes are shouting as Lucas steps into the room. A harried wraith, blonde hair flickering in and out of focus, flashes Lucas a slightly desperate smile, promising over the hubbub that she'll be with him in a moment.
He nods, not willing to undignify himself with shouting, and gingerly takes a seat next to a snub-nosed shade-baby. The shade-baby makes a grab for Lucas' ear, and he slaps it away. A young form is no excuse for crap behavior. The shade-baby blows a raspberry at Lucas.
Lucas tries to ignore it, and flicks his fingers at a pile of ash under his chair in an attempt to form a pen.
It's worked before, but it doesn't this time, and by the time the wraith returns, Lucas still only has a pile of ash. Although it's slightly lumpier than before.
"Martha, how may I help you?" asks the wraith, with the speed of centuries of repetition.
"Lucas," says Lucas. "I'm being shipped out for a week. I need a form, please."
"Ah," she says, "Sector Seven?"
Lucas frowns. She shouldn't know. If she does, that means Marcus isn't being nearly as careful as he could or should be. "Yeah. You probably shouldn't know about that."
She offers him a half-smile. "Hold that thought," she says, adding, "Follow me, please," when he doesn't immediately tail her toward the elevators.
"Marcus from Records told me," she explains, once they're sealed in an elevator carriage and out of earshot of the general populace of Departures. "We're friends, I think. He taught me how to make penguins."
The elevator doors grind open, revealing a maze of tunnels, the entrance to each labeled in white chalk. As they pass a pile of ash on their way to FORMS - HUMAN, she flicks her fingers at it, almost absent-mindedly. A dusty penguin rises from the ground, flops to its belly, and slides a few hundred meters away before dissolving back into dust.
"Neat," says Lucas, in spite of himself.
"Thanks." Martha's voice turns businesslike as the two reach the form-holding caves. "Now," she says, pushing open a door, "Do you have any preferences as to the shape of your form? Ethnicity, gender, hair style, or something?"
"Not really, no," says Lucas, honestly.
"Tremendous," Martha says, grinning, "Usually shades are all sorts of picky. But really, you have to give me some input. Have you got a gender preference?"
"Um," says Lucas, remembering how last time, he'd just been bundled into the form of a burbling blond baby girl and sent up. Not that he'd minded the jewelry or the kohl, but breasts were a little much for him. "Male, I suppose. Adam's apples and all that. Also, present society doesn't expect you to shave on a near-daily basis."
"Keeping up with the times, I see," she snipes, yanking the doors open to one of thousands of wooden box-closets. "How's this one?"
He doesn’t scowl, and blinks a bit to get used to the color difference. The Underworld is a sketchbook in charcoal, but the forms for up top are always in full color.
The form is clearly masculine, with slight stubble and a prominent Adam's apple, greyish eyes and dark hair. The fingers are long, elegant, and the facial features are very even, marred only by a single scar across the left eyebrow.
"I like it," says Lucas decisively, "It's got quite a bit of a rakish air to it."
"In you go, then," she says. "I'll put a sign up letting the others know this one's occupied, and leave you be."
"Thanks," says Lucas, as she closes the door behind her and he's left in darkness.
He steps forward, until his toes are no longer visible through the feet of the form, then lets himself fall upward towards life.
He comes to quite suddenly, shivering in the bed of a dingy apartment. There are no personal belongings in the room, only a handful of mass-produced furniture pieces and one truly horrendous piece of art that appears to be random splatters of paint. He assumes the apartment belongs to his form, probably one of several just-in-case rentals maintained by wraiths for when overpopulation gets to be a bit much down under, or when His Lordship decides to send rebels up top to shut them up for a bit.
Clearly, whichever wraith runs this room has no idea what central heating is, because it’s freezing.
Lucas sniffs in resignation, shudders, and has a go at inventory.
Two ears, ten fingers, ten toes, one nose. Both legs and arms. Working eyes, mostly, bit of a problem focusing far away. Foul-tasting mouth, but he attributes it to the trip up. Crossing worlds tends to do that.
He tries to lick the musty taste of it out of his mouth. The tongue takes a bit of getting used to, but once he's tried it a few times, it's not too difficult.
The rest of his muscles are a completely different story. They’re constantly shaking, for one, because of the temperature (which is not seventy-seven degrees, the thermostat is clearly lying). So he trips when he tries to get out of the bed. In a moment of panic, he forgets how to right himself, and crashes to the ground in a tangle of limbs and sheets. He resolves to stay put until he's figured out how to work the form, and starts trying to wiggle his ears.
It's nearly dark and absolutely freezing by the time Lucas decides he's ready to get up, and by the time he's dealt with the form's nutritional needs and found a decent book, he's quite content to retire to bed. Or at least, make a show of it to see what happens.
Because sleep isn't a thing that happens in the Underworld. You don't need to sleep. You don't get physically tired, because there's nothing physical. It's only ever mental exhaustion, and even then, nothing that doesn't go away after spending a few hours staring at a pile of dust.
A Note about the Underworld:
For all the legends that bitch about how cold the Underworld is, any shade that's ever been up top can verify that nights in the land of the living are much colder. Mostly because you can actually feel them.
So, shaking, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from clattering against each other, Lucas changes into a set of matching striped pyjamas, shifts the form into the bed, pulls up the sheets, and closes his eyes.
Nothing happens.
He's kind of disappointed, and still cold.
By the time he's counted to seven trillion and fourteen, figured out how to wiggle his ears and his nose at the same time, and slowed down his breath until he's nearly not breathing, he's really rather frustrated.
He gives up, devoting himself to staring blankly at the ceiling, and that's when sleep takes him.
Of bloody course.
A Note about Lucas:
There are very few things he is not good at. They include making dust elephants, penmanship, and sleeping. He strongly dislikes all of those activities.
He wakes up the next morning still shivering and thinking, one down, six to go. It's an oddly sobering thought, the fact that he's going to have to stick out six more days.
He toys briefly with the idea of staying in the apartment and sulking instead of making like a living person and going outside. Then realizes doing that would more than likely damage the form, and if he did, the wraiths in charge of Departures would have a collective conniption. And charge him a frankly exorbitant amount of fees.
So he decides to venture outside.
Getting up is much easier this time than last time, and he can tell he's nearly affiliated with the form already, the toes wiggling at his command, hands jerking out from under the hot water tap faster than he'd expected.
When he steps outside, it's just before sunrise, and edges are strangely smudged in the half-darkness. He waves his fingers out of habit at a pile of dirt that doesn't shape itself to his will, and scowls, shivering in the weak pre-dawn light.
But then the sun wobbles up from behind the city's skyline, dazzlingly bright, and he lifts his hands to see his fingers traced in gold, blinks as sunlight strikes him full on the face, and smiles as he feels warmth soaking into his skin.
Not so bad, then.
A Note about Lucas:
If he says he really hates something, he really doesn’t.
Lucas tilts his head up and lets his eyes slide closed in contentment.
by Kellyann Ye
"Look, it's just a week, Lucas. There's literally nothing you can do in a week."
"Exactly my point," says Lucas, “It’s an entire week. There’s no useful purpose in sending me up.” He curls his fingers into loose fists at his sides so his hands have something to do, flicks his tongue against the back of his teeth in agitation. He waits until Marcus looks up again from the paperwork he's pretending to fill out before he speaks again, biting out his words even though he's pretty sure he doesn't mean to, "Marcus, explain why I'm being sent."
A Note about Lucas:
He really hates going up top.
Marcus purses his lips, something that would look disapproving on anyone else, but Lucas suspects the shade takes great pleasure in their bantering. "You've been here the longest, according to the records. Like, you haven’t seen the sun since the last pharaoh was buried. Plus His Lordship wants the oldest ones to go first. We can't keep everyone here forever. The circle of life and crap."
A Note about Marcus:
He's a much better plotter than he seems. But then again, so are all the best.
Lucas scoffs, bracing his hands against the front edge of Marcus' desk. "Marcus, we both know your records are an absolute travesty. Why not send someone that actually wants to go back?"
"They're not my records. They're the Underworld's," Marcus attempts valiantly, but as the only person in the Underworld's population of several trillion that ever enters the records room, the argument is weak. "And anyway, we can't send the ones that actually want to go. We wouldn't be able to get them back afterwards, and you know how overpopulation is getting to be a problem up top."
"Like it isn't a problem down here? We've been overcrowded since before doors were invented."
"You're not going to be able to argue yourself out of this one, Luke. Just sit it out and be glad it's not any longer." Marcus pointedly turns back to his paperwork without waiting for Lucas' response.
"Fine," Lucas scowls, resigned, and turns to leave. He halts in the doorway. "You'd better bring me back, you prat. If you don't I'll fling you into the corn maze myself."
Marcus snorts, and the scribble of pen on paper silences for a brief moment. "I wouldn't dream of it, you wretched shade. God knows that maze is an absolute terror to anybody that enters."
"No, he doesn't," snaps Lucas, falling back into familiar arguments, "If he did, he'd do something about it."
"Is it not better to have the ghosts wandering around looking for the exit rather than just wandering around?"
"Hell no. The Fields were perfectly serviceable."
Marcus laughs. "Still in the habit? It's been two thousand years."
"Shut up."
"You'd better go to Departures now, they'll give you all sorts of crap for being late."
Lucas raises him a double-fingered salute as he leaves. As he strides down the hallway, glowing with confidence - because he is always confident and never, ever sulks - he can hear Marcus shouting after him.
"And you know the waiting room is worse than the land of the living, so move faster, you prat!"
The waiting room of Departures is indeed worse than the land of the living.
The only thing it has going for it is that it’s not completely freezing, mostly because shades can’t feel cold. Or anything else, really.
It's comparable to an airplane, one of those huge ones that can carry nearly four hundred people. Except instead of well-dressed business people on their phones, or sappy couples whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears, this plane is filled with small, wailing children.
Most of them are ghosts or shades that have been around a few hundred years, and have either volunteered or been drafted to return as children. A few are shades that died young, remaining in their original form for re-entering. And then there's Lucas, in his full adult form, who's only leaving for about a week so this decade's Sector Seven census won't come off marked as overpopulated, or so he’s told.
It makes no sense, but Lucas was never one for politics, so he lets it slide.
As it stands, there's no point giving some poor couple (or single parent) up there a child for about a week before taking it away again. His Lordship is harsh, but not cruel. Much.
A Note about His Lordship:
He dislikes eating pomegranates. The seeds are really annoying.
All of these children-shapes are shouting as Lucas steps into the room. A harried wraith, blonde hair flickering in and out of focus, flashes Lucas a slightly desperate smile, promising over the hubbub that she'll be with him in a moment.
He nods, not willing to undignify himself with shouting, and gingerly takes a seat next to a snub-nosed shade-baby. The shade-baby makes a grab for Lucas' ear, and he slaps it away. A young form is no excuse for crap behavior. The shade-baby blows a raspberry at Lucas.
Lucas tries to ignore it, and flicks his fingers at a pile of ash under his chair in an attempt to form a pen.
It's worked before, but it doesn't this time, and by the time the wraith returns, Lucas still only has a pile of ash. Although it's slightly lumpier than before.
"Martha, how may I help you?" asks the wraith, with the speed of centuries of repetition.
"Lucas," says Lucas. "I'm being shipped out for a week. I need a form, please."
"Ah," she says, "Sector Seven?"
Lucas frowns. She shouldn't know. If she does, that means Marcus isn't being nearly as careful as he could or should be. "Yeah. You probably shouldn't know about that."
She offers him a half-smile. "Hold that thought," she says, adding, "Follow me, please," when he doesn't immediately tail her toward the elevators.
"Marcus from Records told me," she explains, once they're sealed in an elevator carriage and out of earshot of the general populace of Departures. "We're friends, I think. He taught me how to make penguins."
The elevator doors grind open, revealing a maze of tunnels, the entrance to each labeled in white chalk. As they pass a pile of ash on their way to FORMS - HUMAN, she flicks her fingers at it, almost absent-mindedly. A dusty penguin rises from the ground, flops to its belly, and slides a few hundred meters away before dissolving back into dust.
"Neat," says Lucas, in spite of himself.
"Thanks." Martha's voice turns businesslike as the two reach the form-holding caves. "Now," she says, pushing open a door, "Do you have any preferences as to the shape of your form? Ethnicity, gender, hair style, or something?"
"Not really, no," says Lucas, honestly.
"Tremendous," Martha says, grinning, "Usually shades are all sorts of picky. But really, you have to give me some input. Have you got a gender preference?"
"Um," says Lucas, remembering how last time, he'd just been bundled into the form of a burbling blond baby girl and sent up. Not that he'd minded the jewelry or the kohl, but breasts were a little much for him. "Male, I suppose. Adam's apples and all that. Also, present society doesn't expect you to shave on a near-daily basis."
"Keeping up with the times, I see," she snipes, yanking the doors open to one of thousands of wooden box-closets. "How's this one?"
He doesn’t scowl, and blinks a bit to get used to the color difference. The Underworld is a sketchbook in charcoal, but the forms for up top are always in full color.
The form is clearly masculine, with slight stubble and a prominent Adam's apple, greyish eyes and dark hair. The fingers are long, elegant, and the facial features are very even, marred only by a single scar across the left eyebrow.
"I like it," says Lucas decisively, "It's got quite a bit of a rakish air to it."
"In you go, then," she says. "I'll put a sign up letting the others know this one's occupied, and leave you be."
"Thanks," says Lucas, as she closes the door behind her and he's left in darkness.
He steps forward, until his toes are no longer visible through the feet of the form, then lets himself fall upward towards life.
He comes to quite suddenly, shivering in the bed of a dingy apartment. There are no personal belongings in the room, only a handful of mass-produced furniture pieces and one truly horrendous piece of art that appears to be random splatters of paint. He assumes the apartment belongs to his form, probably one of several just-in-case rentals maintained by wraiths for when overpopulation gets to be a bit much down under, or when His Lordship decides to send rebels up top to shut them up for a bit.
Clearly, whichever wraith runs this room has no idea what central heating is, because it’s freezing.
Lucas sniffs in resignation, shudders, and has a go at inventory.
Two ears, ten fingers, ten toes, one nose. Both legs and arms. Working eyes, mostly, bit of a problem focusing far away. Foul-tasting mouth, but he attributes it to the trip up. Crossing worlds tends to do that.
He tries to lick the musty taste of it out of his mouth. The tongue takes a bit of getting used to, but once he's tried it a few times, it's not too difficult.
The rest of his muscles are a completely different story. They’re constantly shaking, for one, because of the temperature (which is not seventy-seven degrees, the thermostat is clearly lying). So he trips when he tries to get out of the bed. In a moment of panic, he forgets how to right himself, and crashes to the ground in a tangle of limbs and sheets. He resolves to stay put until he's figured out how to work the form, and starts trying to wiggle his ears.
It's nearly dark and absolutely freezing by the time Lucas decides he's ready to get up, and by the time he's dealt with the form's nutritional needs and found a decent book, he's quite content to retire to bed. Or at least, make a show of it to see what happens.
Because sleep isn't a thing that happens in the Underworld. You don't need to sleep. You don't get physically tired, because there's nothing physical. It's only ever mental exhaustion, and even then, nothing that doesn't go away after spending a few hours staring at a pile of dust.
A Note about the Underworld:
For all the legends that bitch about how cold the Underworld is, any shade that's ever been up top can verify that nights in the land of the living are much colder. Mostly because you can actually feel them.
So, shaking, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from clattering against each other, Lucas changes into a set of matching striped pyjamas, shifts the form into the bed, pulls up the sheets, and closes his eyes.
Nothing happens.
He's kind of disappointed, and still cold.
By the time he's counted to seven trillion and fourteen, figured out how to wiggle his ears and his nose at the same time, and slowed down his breath until he's nearly not breathing, he's really rather frustrated.
He gives up, devoting himself to staring blankly at the ceiling, and that's when sleep takes him.
Of bloody course.
A Note about Lucas:
There are very few things he is not good at. They include making dust elephants, penmanship, and sleeping. He strongly dislikes all of those activities.
He wakes up the next morning still shivering and thinking, one down, six to go. It's an oddly sobering thought, the fact that he's going to have to stick out six more days.
He toys briefly with the idea of staying in the apartment and sulking instead of making like a living person and going outside. Then realizes doing that would more than likely damage the form, and if he did, the wraiths in charge of Departures would have a collective conniption. And charge him a frankly exorbitant amount of fees.
So he decides to venture outside.
Getting up is much easier this time than last time, and he can tell he's nearly affiliated with the form already, the toes wiggling at his command, hands jerking out from under the hot water tap faster than he'd expected.
When he steps outside, it's just before sunrise, and edges are strangely smudged in the half-darkness. He waves his fingers out of habit at a pile of dirt that doesn't shape itself to his will, and scowls, shivering in the weak pre-dawn light.
But then the sun wobbles up from behind the city's skyline, dazzlingly bright, and he lifts his hands to see his fingers traced in gold, blinks as sunlight strikes him full on the face, and smiles as he feels warmth soaking into his skin.
Not so bad, then.
A Note about Lucas:
If he says he really hates something, he really doesn’t.
Lucas tilts his head up and lets his eyes slide closed in contentment.