Cassie sat on a bench overlooking the land of the dead. How do I leave? I gatta get home, just leave and pretend this never happened.
"Pretty view, nothing compared to you though." She saw the corpse coming, her jacket in hand, and buried her face in her hands. "Just leave me alone, or take me back home"
"This is your home now; I know how it is for new arrivals but I'll help you adjust. It's not so bad here." He insisted, sitting next to her and put and arm around her. "But I don't know your name." Cassie responded. "Josh, Josh Park"
A wind blew and she shivered. "Oh here, better?" he put the jacket around her shoulders, she didn't respond.
"I have something else for you, a wedding present "He placed a wooden box between them. She looked at it critically before opening it… and inside was a pile of bones. She gave him a very questioning look before muttering "thanks."
Then the box moved and she slammed it shut. Then it moved and fell spilling the bones everywhere, then they assembled into a dog. The caller lay on the ground, it picked it up and brought it to her. She took it and could see the tag clear as day. "Z… Zoe?" She barked to confirm. "Zoe, this is my dog Zoe!" Zoe barked happily before jumping next to her and nuzzled her head, like when she was alive.
"I knew you'd be happy to see her, found her two weeks after I got down here, been takin care of her ever since." Josh said patting Zoe affectionately.
"Ellie didn't really agree with getting her, she didn't like a lot of my ideas actually." Cassie told him honestly, he asked a question that made her go stiff.
"Would she have liked me?" Honestly, Cassie didn't know, "Not sure, my siblings weren't always nice to everyone I met." The thought gave Cassie an idea, could she see them.
"Can we go back to the land of the living and see them. I really need to talk to them Plus you should meet them since we're… married.
Josh thought it over, "I guess we and talk to elder Gutknecht and see if we can. I'd like to meet them, and the rest of your family." Cassie thought it over carefully "alright but I thing I might want to prepare them first. It'll a bit hard to explain, and I doubt they'll believe it unless they see you"
"Okay" he said excited, "let's go see your family!" A feeling of dread grew in her stomach; Vlad is not goanna be happy about this.
Josh lead them to an ancient tower, at the top was a large room with books strewn everywhere and had dozens of crows perched along the ceiling. "Elder Gutknecht, are you there?" Josh asked.
Cassie accidentally knocked down a stack of books scaring the birds. The lamp which lit up the room swayed and she could see the shadow of a skeletal arm reach to steady it.
Then at the top of a podium came and ancient skeleton with a very thin beard on his jaw bone and a crack in his skull, a piece of it protruded out. "Oh, hello my boy what brings you here. And who it that?" He said gesturing to Cassie. "My wife" Josh replied, "and she wants us to go upstairs."
"Hmm, I suppose I could do a quick spell, I just got to find the book." The opened cabinet filled with jars of unnamed stuff, pulled out draw letting out half a dozen crows. Then a big red book almost hit Zoe and he studied it. "This is it a Ukrainian haunting spell." he went to the cabinet to get a couple of jars and returned to his podium.
He filled a goblet with red liquid, added a pinch of some powder, and plucked a feather from a nearby crow and added it to the mix. He fanned away the smoke from it, raised it… and drank it causing him to burp and smoke to come out of the crack in his skull. "Now, where were we?"
Josh and Cassie exchanged a glance, "Ukrainian haunting spell" she said. And with that the elder grabbed a crow and squeezed an egg out of it. "Alright now remember when you want to come back just say hopscotch."
"Hopscotch" Cassie said questionably.
"That's it" He cracked it and gold mist enveloped them and turned blue at their feet.