9. Questions of Existence
She was cold. The chill slowly penetrated her, and she became dimly aware of a feeling that she was not alone. There was something in the room with her, a presence. Susan felt her heart skip as memories of some of the nightmares of her childhood came back to her. Cautiously opening her eyes, she saw a pale blue glow. Blinking, she focused, and saw the ghost of Renee sitting on the normal-sized sofa by her computer. Susan realized that the chill she had felt was the side-effect of Renee materializing. The clock beside her bed told her it was a bit after two in the morning.
Surprised, she sat up, holding her sheet to her breasts. "Uh, hello Renee," she said. "Um, is anything the matter?"
She saw the girl sigh. "I couldn't sleep. So I figured I'd go and see if you were awake."
"How'd you get in?" Susan asked, then smiled. "Oh, silly question."
"Yeah, silly question," Renee agreed. "I just told myself the door didn't exist, and was able to pass right through it."
"So much for privacy," Susan said with a light laugh. "Not that I have much here anyway."
"Are our rooms bugged?" Renee asked, looking alarmed.
Susan shook her head. "Oh, no. Not any more, at least."
"Not any more?"
"We were constantly monitored in the old prison," Susan explained. "Back when we were considered dangerous monsters. Now, well… things are better."
"Even for you?"
Susan made a face. "Yes, even for this dangerous monster. I'm may be in prison, but I'm here as a human, a member of the armed forces, not some inhuman monster. Even though I am…." With an effort, she stopped herself giving into the self-pity and guilt that were constantly hounding her. "So, Renee, uh, is there anything you want to talk about?"
"Not really," Renee said. "I'm just… I'm a little nervous. I'm… I'm scared."
"Look, I know this place can be scary. It's so big and cold and grey. But once you get used to it, it's not that bad. Monger said he'd get all your things brought from your old room, so it won't be too bad."
"It's not that," Renee said. "What's going to happen to me? What has happened to me? I'm a ghost? Ghosts don't exist! They're fairytales, stories!"
Susan laughed. "A year ago I'd have said giants didn't exist. And now look at me. I don't really know what you are, exactly. But you're Renee Geist, and, well…."
"No I'm not. Renee Geist is dead. That was her skeleton lying on the ground. I don't know what the fuck I am."
"You are Renee, really, you are," Susan said.
"Oh yeah? And how do you know? You didn't even know me before. I could be anyone. I could be an alien, like the one you said was making the pumpkins go mad."
"I… er…. Look, do you think you're Renee? Seriously."
The girl looked down, her expression sullen. "Yeah, I do."
"Then you are Renee. I know being a different form can feel like you're a different person. Renee, I know this, I really do. I mean look at me! How much of this, this body is really me, and how much is this alien stuff? Here I am, hit by a chunk of pure quantonium torn out of an alternative cosmos by Gallaxhar when he exploded his own sun. Which means that part of me isn't even from this universe."
"Yeah, I know," Renee said. She looked up. "I know a lot about you, you know."
"I guess I've been on the news a lot," Susan admitted.
"It wasn't just that. You were from Modesto, you weren't that much older than me, and I… I…. You were kinda my hero, in a way," she admitted.
"Uh, wow, thanks," Susan said, blushing slightly.
"I thought you were so amazingly cool. All that stuff you did. You were so strong. So powerful. So brave. And then… and then you went on that…."
Susan's face fell. "Rampage in Vegas…."
Renee nodded. "I couldn't believe it. I couldn't. But… yeah." She looked up at the giantess as if even now she half-expected her to start destroying things.
Susan looked down at her hands. "Renee, I am so, so sorry about that, about everything, about disappointing you."
"I used to have so many posters of you," Renee said. "Dad made me get rid of all of them."
"Wait, there are posters of me?" Susan asked, her eyes wide. "Sorry, you were saying?" Then she realised Renee was slowly fading, weeping. "Hey, it's going to be okay. You're going to be okay."
"I… I miss my Dad," Renee said. She looked up at Susan. "Do you think there'll be a funeral for him?"
"Sure there will. Uh, do you have any other family?"
Renee shook her head. "Uh-uh. Dad was an only child, and so was I."
"Look, I'll talk to Monger about a funeral. I'm sure he'll be able to arrange it. We had a funeral recently—two, actually. For Nancy and Mary."
"Nancy?"
"Yeah, I'm not the first quantonium giantess, it seems. The first was someone called Nancy Archer, over fifty years ago. She was taken here, and examined. She died… uh, a long time ago," Susan said, deciding to avoid mentioning Cockroach's role. "So we gave her a proper funeral, along with Mary."
"Mary was the vampire?"
Susan nodded. "Yeah."
"Awesome. She must have been so cool. Like, True Blood, or Twilight?"
Susan smiled sadly. "She was cool. But nothing like those. Being a real vampire isn't glamorous, or fun, or anything. It's being constantly worried someone will discover what you are, constantly having to drink blood from people, always alone, always afraid."
"Oh. Worse than a ghost, even," Renee said softly.
"You might be right," Susan said, and sighed. "For one thing, I doubt bullets could hurt you."
Renee looked at her hands, turning them over and over. "I suppose nothing can touch me. And I can't touch anything. Ever again." She slumped down, resting her head in her hands. "I'm dead. My father's dead. I've got no one now…." The ghost started wailing softly, a thin, high lament that filled Susan's heart with sadness.
"I wish I could touch you, comfort you," she said softly. "I wish there was something I could say to make you feel better. But there isn't, and you shouldn't feel better. You've lost everything you ever loved, so of course you feel awful. This isn't the time to bottle it up. Mourn as much as you like."
After a while, as Susan sat there patiently, the moaning died away to the occasional sob, then eventually to silence.
"Hey. Are you going to be okay?" Susan asked softly.
Renee lifted her head up, and Susan could see her face was streaked with tears, glowing softly. "Could I... could I stay here tonight?"
Susan nodded. "Sure. Uh, do you want to share my bed? There's plenty of room, after all."
Renee looked down at the giantess's huge bed, and shook her head. "The sofa's fine. I'll be fine here. I just… I just don't want to be alone…."
"Well, I'm right here," Susan said. "Goodnight, Renee."
"Yeah, you too. Uh, see ya…."
Susan watched as the ghost lay down on the sofa, and slowly faded from sight. Soon the room was dark again, save for the small night light Susan had insisted on. It didn't light up much of the huge room, but she still found it comforting. Turning over onto her other side, she carefully picked up her Pussy-Boots doll, holding him close, remembering when she was young and afraid of the dark, afraid of ghosts and monsters and he was there to comfort and protect her. She wondered if Renee had ever feared monsters—or if she still did.
The alarm went off at seven, and Susan yawned and stretched. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, then brought her computer back to life. There was an email from her father, which she quickly opened. She smiled as she read his account of the night, and the horrendous mess left behind. Shortly after they had left, the media had, as Monger predicted, swarmed in like a horde of locusts, along with the police, but her parents and the others had stayed inside, refusing all interview requests.
Susan began typing a reply, then shivered.
"Oh, I completely forgot you were here," she said, glancing down at the ghost.
"Do you always sleep naked?" Renee asked, looking up at Susan's bare torso.
The giantess laughed as she covered herself with her sheet. "Making clothing in my size is hard. Took days before I even got panties, and a month for a bra. The army never bothered with giving me pyjamas. So I had to get used to sleeping in the nude. Anyway, I'm going to have a shower. You… you don't need one, I guess."
"I guess," Renee said, looking at her hands. "Do you… do you have a mirror, though?"
"Here," Susan said, handing her a full-length one that she kept by her bed for the rare times she bothered with make-up.
Renee stood up, and stared at her reflection. Susan watched sympathetically as the young girl carefully felt her face, watching her doppelganger in the mirror do the same.
"Do you… feel… any different?" Susan asked cautiously.
"Cold. I feel cold," Renee said. "And sort of… I don't know. It's like I'm touching…. You know how it is when your arm goes to sleep, and then you touch yourself? It's like someone else is touching you, but it's you touching you?"
Susan nodded. "Yeah. Sort of odd. Is it tingly?"
"No, not tingly, just… just sort of like I'm not really here," Renee said, fading slightly. She sighed, and became fully opaque again. "Everything looks normal," she muttered. "I look solid enough, I feel solid enough. But why am I so pale?" She looked closely into the mirror and gasped. "My eyes! What happened to my eyes?"
"What do you mean?" Susan asked.
"Take a look," Renee said.
Susan bent down low, and her own huge blue eyes opened wide. "They're pure white!" she said. "I mean, pure white. No iris, no pupil, nothing! Wow, that looks freaky!"
"But I can still see you," Renee said. "I mean, I can still see normally and everything. So what's with my eyes?"
Susan shook her head. "I really don't know," she said, shrugging. "Maybe Doc'll know. Anyway, I need to grab a shower," she added, standing up and holding her sheet around her. "I've got class this morning, and if I'm late, Monger'll get really mad. See you in ten minutes." With a quick smile, the giantess headed into her bathroom.
When she was alone, Renee continued looking at herself in the mirror from as many angles as she could reach. "Everything looks normal," she asked, poking and prodding various bits of her anatomy. "How can I be a ghost?"
Gingerly, she put out her hand towards the mirror. It went straight through. Renee drew a quick breath, but held her hand there, looking at where her wrist vanished into the glass. She moved it back and forth, then swept her hand right through the mirror to the edge. Then she pulled it out and looked at it, feeling it with her other hand. She pinched the fleshy part of her palm between her fingers, and winced. "Ow. That hurt."
Then she swung her arm at the mirror slowly, then faster and faster. Finally she started attacking the mirror in a frenzy, each blow going straight through it, before collapsing on the desk, sobbing as she vanished from sight.
"Hey, Renee, you still here?" Susan asked as she stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later, a massive towel draped loosely around her torso. "Renee?"
"I'm here," came Renee's soft voice. "Where else would I be? I got nowhere to go."
"Hey, you okay?" Susan asked, looking around to see where the girl might be. She dropped her towel and slipped on a clean pair of panties, then her bra, before getting into her standard dark grey uniform.
"I'm dead. You don't get much less okay than that," Renee shot back. "I'm dead, my father's dead, I got thrown out of my home, and I can't fucking touch anything!" she finished in a shriek. "Why aren't I properly dead? Why am I hanging around as a ghost? Why?"
"Come on, maybe the Doc and Xalthy have some answers," Susan said, deciding to be practical. She shivered as Renee partially materialized. "Including to why it always gets so damned cold when you appear."
"I don't feel it," Renee said dully. "I don't feel anything. I can't feel anything!" She held up her hands, looking at them. "I can even see right through them."
"There's a lot my hands can't do either," Susan said, squatting down by her desk, bringing her head closer to Renee's level. "I have to have things specially made, like my phone, my reading tablet. I can't hold anyone's hand, ever again, or even hug someone."
"You can still touch things, move things, carry things," Renee said.
"Big things, yeah. Like a crane. And I can smash things, crush them. I'm very good at crushing things," Susan said, her voice dropping. "Very good." She looked at her fingers, gently flexing them. "You might not have enough strength, but I have too much. Neither of us can really interact with the real, normal world."
"It's not the same at all," Renee said.
"Maybe, I guess," Susan said. "But I do sort of understand. And sympathize."
"I don't need sympathy," Renee spat. "I need a body!"
Susan shook her head, then stood up. "I'm sorry, Renee. I really am. But there's honestly nothing I can do. Look, let's go and have breakfast, and maybe you'll feel better."
"I doubt it," Renee said.
"Well, you never know," Susan said. "I mean, I know the food isn't that bad. Hey, would you like some chocolate?"
"Chocolate?" Renee asked, perking up.
"Here," Susan said, taking down a nearly-finished Ginormibar. She broke off the smallest piece she could, which was still larger than Renee' fist, and held it out to the ghost.
Renee tried to hold it, but her hand went right through. She swore.
"Perhaps if you try eating it directly?" Susan suggested, holding it lower.
Renee leaned over and attempted to take a bite. "Fuck!" she shouted. She swiped her arm at the chocolate, her hand going straight through. "I can see it, I can smell it, but I can't fucking taste it!"
"Maybe the army's come up with something you can eat," Susan suggested, popping the chocolate into her mouth. "Come on. Let's go and see. Would you like a lift?" she added, thrusting out her hand.
Renee shook her head, quickly backing away from Susan's gigantic hand, as long as she was tall. "I can't, remember? I can't touch anything!"
"Renee! Watch out!" Susan called as the young girl kept backing up, right to the edge of the desk. She lunged forwards, then gasped as Renee continued walking backwards, with nothing underneath her feet but thin air.
"Renee! You're—you're…."
"Holy crap!" Renee gasped, looking down. She was hovering in the air, three feet away from the edge of the giant desk and two dozen feet off the floor.
Susan stopped, her hand ready to catch Renee, and stared. "Wow. Okay. Um..."
"I can… float?" Renee asked nervously, taking a step forwards. She walked ahead perfectly normally, except that her feet were nowhere near the floor.
"It's like… it's like one of those old Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote runs off the edge of a cliff and doesn't notice it," Susan said softly, standing to her full height.
"I… I don't understand. How can this—whoops!" The ghost dropped about ten feet suddenly, then stopped and slowly rose. "I can… I think I can fly," she breathed, her pale bluish skin glowing softly. She rose up higher, to Susan's eye level. "Hey, tall girl."
"Hey yourself," Susan smiled. "Wow."
Renee looked down, and gasped. She faltered and dropped for a few seconds before she recovered and flew back up, breathing heavily. "Fuck, that's a long way down!"
Susan laughed. "You get used to it. Actually it looks normal to me. Everything else just looks smaller. Come on."
The two of them headed out to the main room, and Susan took her seat.
"Good morning, my dear," Cockroach said, heading down the steps from his lab. "Sleep well?"
"Not too bad," Susan replied. "Hey, Doc, Renee can fly!"
"Fly? Good heavens," Cockroach looked up at the ghost, who was slowly circling around the room. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after all. Since her interactions with the material plane are not based on physics, I suppose it stands to reason she doesn't actually need a floor to walk on. Susan, my dear, I suspect very much that this form of Renee we can see is not her true form."
"You mean she's not human?" Susan gasped. "Wait—you think she might be an alien?"
Cockroach shook his head. "Not at all. I simply mean that Renee, as she is now, has no form we would recognise at all, but takes this form because it is how she sees herself."
"Huh. You think she can change shape?"
"As to that, I would be somewhat surprised. One of our most fundamental concepts is our concept of self-image, of who we are. I should know—it took me quite some time to accept this relatively minor change," he said, gesturing vaguely towards his head. "Ah, good morning my dear," he added as Renee drifted down towards them.
"Did you see me?" the girl asked excitedly. "I was flying! I can fly!"
"So can Insecto, but you don't see her going on about it," Link said, rubbing his neck as he joined them. "What a night. That damn pumpkin thing beat me up pretty bad. Might go and see the doc later. Not you, you quack," he added, shooting a grin at Cockroach, who merely raised an eyebrow. "You okay, Suze?"
Susan nodded. "I'm fine. I had a couple of bruises and scratches last night, but they're all gone now."
"Sweet. I wish I could take a pounding like you." Link sat down and nursed his cup of jot fish juice.
"Can I take a pounding? Are we having poundings now?" Bob asked. "Is that like pound cake? Where's the pound cake you took? Was it mine? Did you take my pound cake? Why'd you take my pound cake?"
"This is a really weird room," Renee said, floating near Susan's head and looking around. "I didn't get much chance to see it last night. Everything's so huge!"
"Designed for my, uh, scale," Susan said, going slightly pinkish. "All those yellow couch seats around the sides, they're for me, since that's my height. Everyone's rooms are around the walls, along those raised platforms running around the room behind my couches. That strange wooden thing over there is Bob's jungle gym, so he can ooze around; that's Doc's library and lab on top of that tall platform in the middle; and over there is on the other side is Link's pool area."
"Hey, sweet!" Renee exclaimed. "You got a waterfall! Rocks, trees!"
"Yeah, it is pretty sweet," Link called up. "You want a dip? It's heated."
Renee shook her head. "I, er, I don't have a bathing suit," she said.
Link shrugged. "Nor do I. Nor does Suze. She still swims."
"You swim in that?" Renee gasped, looking at the fifty-foot woman. "How?"
Susan laughed. "I could barely use that puddle to wash my feet! No, there's a small lake in the hills topside. That's where we go swimming."
"So if you don't have a bathing suit, what do you wear?" Renee asked.
Susan turned a bright shade of pink. "Nothing," she admitted, and Renee's eyes went wide.
"Nothing? You go skinny-dipping?"
"Well, there's no other humans around," Susan explained.
"Yeah, I'm not human," Link added.
"Wait—you go swimming naked with him?" Renee gasped. "Are you two… you know…?"
Link and Susan exchanged quick glances, and both burst out laughing.
"No, no, nothing remotely like that!" Susan said quickly. "God, no!"
"Not a chance! She's the wrong size, wrong colour, and wrong species," Link added. "No, she and the Doc, they're the ones who're all smoochy with each other."
"The Doc? You mean the cockroach man?" Renee asked, shuddering. "Are you serious? Gross!"
"He's a genius," Susan said, a slight edge to her voice. "He's also kind, considerate, educated, helpful, and has the most wonderful amber eyes. Plus he's got abs you wouldn't believe."
"I should also mention that I am, or rather was, human too," Cockroach said, his antennae vibrating rapidly at all the compliments. "Both Susan and I have been transformed from perfectly normal human beings, just as you have. Link was never human to begin with."
"Still, aren't you embarrassed, being naked in front of a guy?" Renee asked. "I mean, he's a guy, right?"
"Yeah, and have you noticed he's stark naked too?" Susan responded. "If we don't think that's weird, having a guy walk around nude, well, that's how he sees us when we're nude."
Renee looked over at Link, and shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, if a guy, a human guy that is, was walking around here starkers, I suppose that'd be really weird. This one's just so... He's like an animal."
"Thanks," Link shot back.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you," Renee said quickly, fading slightly. "I'm just not… I'm not used to all you…."
"Monsters. Yeah, you're going to be, though. Since you're one of us now."
"One of us! One of us!" Bob chanted.
"Stop that, Bob," Susan told him, squashing him flat under her palm when he didn't shut up.
The chime sounded, and the food hatch opened. Susan released Bob and took out her bowl of oatmeal and cup of tea.
"Yay, it's breakfast!" Bob called out. "Hey, why do we have to break so fast? What happens if we break slow?"
"It's not speed, Bob," Cockroach told him as he took his seat. "A fast is when you don't eat."
"Not eat? How can anyone not eat?"
Cockroach looked at the meals on the serving tray, then over at Renee, who had followed Susan to her eating area and was looking around with a mixture of expectation and nervousness. "I… I'm afraid there doesn't appear to be anything for you, my dear," he said.
"No breakfast? What am I going to eat?" Renee gasped.
"Er, well, I assume nothing. That is to say, that as you're, well, dead, so to speak, you don't, er, actually need to eat."
"Mary was dead, and she ate," Susan quickly pointed out. "Or drank, at least."
"Mary was corporeal, my dear," Cockroach replied. "She had a physical body. Poor Renee, er, does… not."
"So I have to starve? What kind of place is this?" Renee asked, in a voice that was almost a shout.
"Ummm…. Are you actually hungry?" Cockroach asked.
Renee blinked. "Well, you know, now that you mention it…. No. I guess I'm not actually hungry."
"Precisely," Cockroach said, taking a satisfied bite out of a piece of mouldy cardboard.
"You mean I'll never eat again?" Renee gasped, and turned translucent.
Susan held out her hand to pat her on the back, then hesitated. "It'll be okay. I'm sure the Doc'll find some way you can have food."
Cockroach looked dubious. "It's possible," he admitted. "There's very little the proper application of plutonium can't achieve. Once I know more about what exactly you are…."
"I'm a ghost, aren't I?" Renee asked.
"Yes, but what exactly is a ghost?" Cockroach replied. "I've been up most of the night researching ghosts, spectres, apparitions, and sundry manifestations of the spirit, but there are so many conflicting reports it's very hard to make sense of them."
"So what do you know?" Susan asked.
"Well, there are some universal, unifying elements," Cockroach said. "Variable visibility, often an inability to touch, though some can, poltergeists especially; ability to float or fly, pass through walls…. There seem to be two broad types: historical ghosts, and personal ghosts."
"What's the difference?"
"Historical ghosts are ghosts of people who died a long time ago. They don't actively haunt a place, in terms of interacting with their environment. They're passive, like watching a film. One famous example is the Roman ghosts of York. Roman soldiers parade through a cellar in the old Treasurer's House there, coming in from one wall and out another. And the fascinating thing is, they seem to have no lower legs, because they're walking on the old Roman road, beneath the cellar floor."
"Oooh! Roman soldiers marching through eternity! That does sound scary!" Bob said, looking pale.
Susan shivered. "For once, Bob, I agree with you. That does sound scary."
"Yes, well, these appear to be displaced temporal shades," Cockroach said. "Imprints of the past. We cannot interact with them, and they do not interact with us or the modern environment in any way. They're not sentient apparitions. Some researchers consider them to be the product of what they called 'stone tape.' Which is when the environment itself somehow acts as a recording mechanism. Of course, these days, we'd probably say 'stone DVD' or 'stone memory card'…."
"Yeah, yeah. And the other sort?" Renee asked.
"The personal ghost," Cockroach explained. "These are the spirits of the departed, and are sentient. They interact with the living, often with their environment, and can sometimes be communicated with."
"Like we are with you," Link added to Renee dryly. "Hey, hey, what's the matter, girl? What did I say?"
"Nothing," Renee said, wiping her eyes. "Nothing. I'm just…. My life is over."
"It sure is!" Bob agreed. "Happy Deathday!"
"Bob! You are not helping!" Susan hissed. She gave Renee a small smile. "Your life isn't over. In fact, it's just beginning. You know, that's one thing becoming a monster has taught me—the only limits to your life are the ones you make for yourself. I mean, look at me. This time six months ago I was just plain old Susan Murphy, about to get married to a loser."
"Derek Dietl, yeah," Renee said, a slight smile playing about her lips. "I know."
"I guess you'd have heard about that, yeah," Susan said. She sighed. "I used to be so in love with him, you know. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but I had no idea I could do so much better. And that's the whole point. I was this sheltered, limited girl whose biggest ambition in life was to marry her handsome high school sweetheart, happy to be defined by other people. I never expected anything of me beyond that. Hell, nobody ever expected anything of me beyond that. And then this… this happened to me. Sure, it was really, really hard to cope with at first. It cost me a lot. I lost my dreams, I lost my innocence, I lost my freedom. But you know what? I found something even more important. I found myself."
"Oh, Susan, my dear, that's so lovely," Cockroach said, gazing up at her with admiring eyes as Link tried to stifle a laugh by drinking his coffee very quickly, and ending up choking as he tried very hard to pretend he was just clearing his throat. Susan scowled at him.
"Yes, well. Indeed. Time to head off to class, I think," Cockroach quickly noted. "You don't want to be late, do you?"
"What do I do?" Renee asked as Susan finished off her tea. "Do I have to come as well?"
"No, I mean, I don't think so," Susan said, putting her mug down.
"So what am I going to do all day?"
"Read a book?" Cockroach suggested.
Renee held up her hands. "Without being able to turn the pages?"
"My apologies, my dear," Cockroach said. "I'll… I'll set up a film for you to watch. Any requests?"
"A movie? Uh, I don't know. Wait, do you have 'How to Train Your Dragon'?"
"Training a dragon?" Cockroach asked. "Is it a documentary?"
"No, it isn't, and yes, we do," Susan said. "You know, Doc. The one I was watching the other week, and you made those snarky comments about the accents."
"Oh yes, that one," Cockroach said. "Yes, I remember. Scottish parents and American children in a Viking village. Naturally…. Very well, I can set that up, easily. You head off, my dear, and I'll see you later."
"Okay. Renee, you'll be fine. Really. Things are so much better here than they used to be. So don't worry."
Susan watched as Renee followed Cockroach to his lab, hoping that things really would turn out better for the scared young girl than they had for her. She vowed to herself that as long as she was there, she would do everything she could to keep Renee safe and happy, to be the next best thing to family for the lonely orphan girl.
...
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The Roman ghosts mentioned here are real, at least in the sense that the reports of them are real. I don't actually believe in ghosts any more than I believe in vampires or giants or any of the other monsters (to say nothing of invading aliens), but ghost stories can still be an fun and chilling read. The stuff about stone tapes is also true as far as it goes. Does anyone use tape for recording anything these days?
Since Susan was not given much clothing at the start, it does seem she would have had to either sleep in her jumpsuit, or sleep naked. Since she has her own private room, and sleeping in clothes is never much fun, I chose the latter. As you can see from my DeviantArt illustration of her and the Doc in her tent in DC. So this bit just explains that a little more.
Ghosts seem pretty usually able to fly, so I've given her that ability. I have no idea if they can smell, however. They can of course see, but would something unable to touch also be unable to smell—the molecules would have to hit the nasal sensor receptors, implying a physical presence. Since ghosts can clearly hear without a physical eardrum to vibrate with sound waves, let's just fudge this issue a bit, shall we?
The description of the common room is based on a very careful watch of the common room scene in Mutant Pumpkins. When Monger flies up to admonish Susan, behind him you can see, very out of focus, a nice pool and rocks area for Link. I have actually started working on a proper layout plan for their room, and am stuck about where to put the TV….
The mention of How to Train Your Dragon is a bit of a shoutout to TheNightFury319, who got me watching the "Dragons" TV series, which is way better than the MvA TV series.
I finally got around to seeing "Frozen." Loved it, loved Elsa especially. So many parallels with Susan, and the character issues I love to write about. I think I know where I'll be heading after I finish this story, but I *will* finish this story. And yes, things will start happening again soon, don't worry. I just want to flesh out (sorry, Renee) the new ghost and get a bit of breathing room before things start hitting fans...
