Chapter 6

TT: Alright people, new chapter! Aren't you all happy? I hope so, because I think I'm going to fail that english speech I have tomorrow- I'm not allowed to do it on fanfiction after all.

Eris: Its your own fault, if you'd read to question right the first time you wouldn't have to rewrite your speech.

TT: Ah! clings to ceiling Where'd you come from!

Eris: Your imagination. I decided that I didn't like it there- your crazy assasin was asking me what it was like to die, and trying to work out how you kill a dead person.

TT: ;; Don't say things like that online, you'll scare away my reviewers!

Eris: Oh, alright. I'm going to see if you have any biscuits! disappears through wall

TT: sweatdrop right... Anyway, I'd like to first like to explain to Kouseki Yume, that being Eris is not coming back to life- quite frankly the thought of that sort of thing being possible kinda scares me- she's simply becoming stronger because of Kyo's presence. Just as well she'd a good guy, eh?

Secondly, I'd like us all to give Chipmunk of 'Kitten Chipmunk and Squirrel' a clap, because she's the only one who managed to guess where I developed Kyo's new nickname from- Neko, the japanese word for cat, and Kyo's own name.

I think that's it. I'll do my best to update again soon. PLEASE REVIEW IF YOU LIKE MY STORY, ALL FEEDBACK IS LOVED.

A gibbous moon peered through the window, illuminating the face of a teen and highlighting his orange hair. His face scrunched up with the light, and rolled over so that his back faced the watching moon.

There was suddenly a breathy sound, like a content sigh, but was probably the wind, because it was too high to be the boy, and there was no one else in the room.

A shadow crossed the floor, from the window towards the door. Humans had dispelled the enchantment that the moon and its light had brought with science and how the moon only reflected the light of the sun, but sometimes something mystic was true in those old legends in tales, something that remained.

You couldn't see ghosts on moonlit nights, like some stories said, but sometimes, just sometimes, you were given a clue…

In the hall, a thermometer that was hanging off the wall suddenly dropped to minus 5 degrees C, before quickly rising back up to its previous temperature, almost as if the change had been some kind of error in the mercury. Eris had a habit of running her fingers across the wall when she walked, willing herself to touch the object instead of go through it, subconsciously crying out for the world to recognize- even in the slightest sense- that she was there at all.

She did this every few nights, when Kyo went to sleep- sometimes she'd go out and haunt the streets or that old spot on the highway of hers, but these days, she also wandered the house. In previous homes, she'd learnt you could learn quite a lot about the occupants when looking at what they had lying in their secret-most places.

For example, on her very first night in Kyo's house, she learnt to never ever, under any circumstances, ever read the open word documents on Shigure's computer.

Shuddering slightly at the memory, Eris wandered down the hall, paused at a door, and glided through it. Even if she had had the power to open the door, she'd forgotten how.

Eris glanced at the large bed, there was a girl sleeping on the center, half curled around herself, her even breathing the only sound in the room. Tohru's room.

Turning away from the bed, Eris glanced at the walls- no posters of any kind, how boring.

Something on the dresser caught her eye. She hovered forward to look at it- a photograph in a frame. A woman, with the same coloured hair was Kyo? Eris strained her memory of what Kyo had told her about Tohru.

She turned to the bed again, "Is this your mother, Tohru?" The living girl didn't answer, but Eris continued on despite that, "She must be very important to you- look how she takes the most prominent place on your dresser. And there's hardly anything else on here too, just her really…"

Suddenly distracted, Eris continued her examination of the treasure's Tohru kept around her room. It didn't occur to her that this was a breach of privacy, not only would no one had cared when they'd gone through her stuff when she died.

Eris prowled. She didn't need to- no one but Kyo could see her anyhow- but it was a habit. Cats, her most usual companion, prowled and stalked, and were silent with the movement. Eris had vague memories of being a very small child, trying to be just like the family cat. It seemed that, after she died, Eris had tried to do that once again.

Cats were independent- which, now she thought of it, was probably the real reason that the 'Akito' person Kyo had told her about didn't like Kyo- a cat didn't need a god. Heck, cats had been worshiped as gods before themselves!

Cats moved as if they ruled the world. And in a way, they did- humans bent to their will, and took care of them with doing nothing in return, as opposed to dogs, who were trained to obey commands. Cats allowed humans because they made things easier, not because- unlike other pets- they needed them around. Eris worked out, soon after she died, that the best way to stay somewhat sane would be to be like a cat, to not need anyone, ever. She wasn't sure she'd succeeded, humans needed a group, even after death, humans simply couldn't be like cats. Even the most introvert person would start to go insane when they simply weren't acknowledged to the extent she had been.

Eris could remember, perhaps a few years after she first died, she'd really, really gone insane for a while. She wasn't the only ghost to do so, she hadn't met many others- they seemed to dislike a teenager, probably having watched too many bad ones over time, and most teens that did die didn't become ghosts- but she'd still meet some. Most seemed to go insane like she had, for a little while.

Ah, that one and a half years of insanity- they had been terrifying, in retrospect. She couldn't tell, was she real- had she ever been real- or was she the figment of someone's imagination? For all she'd known at the time, the entire world could've been like the Matrix, and she was just some unfinished rogue program. When she touched something, nothing had happened but she went through it, there was no way to prove that she was real because she couldn't interact with the world.

Then there had been a cat- it could see her, it was obvious, it would meow and ask for attention, and when it rubbed against her legs she could almost feel its fur, because the cat knew she was there, and it could almost touch her because it never occurred to a cat that it couldn't.

After that, she recovered somewhat. Oh, she was still inclined to have strange thoughts when the world was quiet and she was alone, but those were more introspective or philosophical thoughts than questionings of existence. Usually.

Still musing to herself, Eris wandered into the next room. Maybe, if she closed her eyes when minimizing any word documents, she could use the computer to see if she could look at the- probably now complete- archives of those web comics she seemed to remember enjoying so much…