She likes to watch them float.
The ghosts, that is.
She likes to watch them drift along aimlessly in the corridors, pale grey breaths on the air, melting seamlessly into walls and through doors. They do not seem to notice her presence, or indeed that of any of the students. The imprint of their souls might be here, but their souls are elsewhere.
Where is this elsewhere, she wonders. Is it the beautiful place, of gilded streets and shimmering clouds that they preach to young children? Perhaps…perhaps it is a great lake, black water, smooth, without ripples. They float just below the surface, waiting to be reborn, or to be sent onward to another elsewhere. Or maybe it is nothingness. A vast, blank expanse of cool mindedness and the exhilaration of being…of being nonexistent.
Is that where they want to be, this elsewhere? She assumes they have no choice in the matter, initially, that they are sent there right after death. But are they forced to stay? What if they don't like it, their own personal elsewhere? Are there other elsewheres out there, like a selection of candies, and they can pick another if the first one doesn't fit? Or are they trapped permanently in what has been predetermined as their fate?
One of them nearly floats through her and she steps aside swiftly. They are rather cold, aren't they? Like ice water on living flame. Like a cemetery at twilight. Like steel in winter. Like the first snow of the year. Like a heart that has been--. How ridiculous, she thinks, and she stops herself.
She does this a lot, quite honestly. Lets her thoughts run away from her. That's a funny phrase. Thoughts run away. Where are they running to? Why do they feel the need to run? Should she follow them?
Another ghost swims by. Swimming, like the school is an ocean and it is merely a bystander, an outsider, a tourist of sorts looking in but never really staying. An imprint of a soul. The true soul, as she knows, is elsewhere.
Her mother is elsewhere, too. The same elsewhere as the ghosts, only she isn't one of them, she's one of…something else. Part of elsewhere, perhaps. Her father says that the ones we love never truly leave us, that they live on in our hearts.
And then she thinks that she knows wherethis elsewhere is, and it makes her chest constrict, her breaths grow shallow. Pressing a hand against the stone wall, she pauses in the hallway, mind pulsing wildly against the confines of her skull. Her heart. Her hand rises, and rests lightly on her breast.
Luna looks up again, and the ghosts do not seem quite so lost any more.