There he was, setting the scene, having everyone on the seat of their pants as he continued his spooky, spooky story. Even Groot looked scared when Peter started making the creaky, eerie er-ehr-EHR of the empty rocking chair, and Groot was still in that 'too cool to be scared by anything phase'. Sure, Mantis was wide eyed too, but she wasn't exactly hard to scare, so Peter wasn't using her facial expression to judge how well his story was going over with the group.
"But… no one was there," Peter continued, leaning forward as he looked around the circle of his friends and family. Rocket was munching on those crunchy bugs and even he looked entertained. "I thought it was all in my head, but then I heard this… scratching sound coming up the staircase behind me, followed by a thump, like something was clawing its way up the stairs and dragging its body behind it. Or dragging something. I didn't even close the door behind me. Left it open just a crack. And when I turned around-"
"Did you kill it?" Drax asked, totally interrupting his storytelling momentum.
Peter groaned and made a face, "Dude, what do I keep telling you about interrupting. I'm not at that part yet. Besides, you can't kill ghosts."
"Ghosts are not real," Gamora scoffed, sharpening her knives to make a show of just how uninterested she was in story time. She was still there though.
Peter gave her a look of absolute betrayal. He expected interruptions from Drax, Rocket, Mantis, and even Groot. But not from her.
"Uh! How would you know?! You've met a literal god before. Who's to say ghosts aren't real?"
Gamora was a bit taken aback, because nobody challenged her beliefs like Peter. She's never met anyone who challenged her already set automatic beliefs like Peter Quill did. Most of the time it was challenging the belief that she didn't deserve to be loved, the belief that she didn't deserve to be happy, that the team was better out without her, that she was a burden, the belief that she didn't deserve their family.
Nobody challenged her set in stones beliefs like Peter did. He made her examine why it was she thought that way, and challenged her internal belief that she didn't deserve to be loved.
But sometimes it came out like this. Gamora's automatic response was that ghosts didn't exist. And his response was to ask her how she would know, and brought up the fact that she's met supposedly unreal beings before.
When faced with the question how she would know ghosts aren't real, the only response she could come up with was I don't know, they just aren't.
She'd never thought about that before. She has encountered many 'mythical' creatures that other cultures considered to be fiction and fairy tales. She has met beings that were the stuff of legends back on her home planet. How could she say that spirits of the dead didn't just… disappear like she'd always known, when she also knew that wraiths of the lake didn't exist deep in the woods as a little girl, because no sentient creature could breathe underwater like that, when Gamora, as an adult, had encountered many species who lived their entire lives underwater and needed to bring an apparatus in order to survive in oxygen and nitrogen rich environments.
She'd never even thought of it that way before.
Peter challenged her beliefs like no one else, the way she's never challenged her beliefs herself.
And sometimes it was over ridiculous topics like ghosts when everyone knew that they just weren't real.
"Your father was a celestial, not a literal god," she told him disinterestedly. "He had some… impressive powers, but he wasn't a god. Your argument is moot."
Peter rolled his eyes. "I wasn't talking about him. Golden boy and his brother Loki call themselves the god of mischief and thunder. And you've met people who have access to alternate dimensions. You can't just dismiss ghosts as not real."
It had been almost a year since the guardians last saw Thor, and Peter still preferred to not say his name out of a jealousy that was completely childish and actually kinda adorable.
Gamora frowned- as much as she hated to admit it, he'd brought up some semi-good points.
"Oh! Oh! That T'challa dude! From earth!" Peter exclaimed, hitting her on the shoulder in excitement. "Remember our little saved the universe bonfire and everybody ended up drinking and sharing about our messed up childhoods and family issues? And he talked about the jaguar thing! You heard what he learned from that vision thing where he talked to all the dead people, and it was true! So that means that dead spirits, or ghosts, do exist somewhere on some plane of reality. Who's to say they can't cross over? Dead ghosts in the land of the living!"
"Stop it!" Gamora shouted, clutching her head, hoping to block out any further points he'd like to add. "This is supposed to be a fun story time, not making me question fundamental beliefs and causing existential crises! I came out here to hear a fun story, not to have my core beliefs called into question!"