"cause the last thing that i need is a wet brain
during the hurricane"
As Mabel wandered away, the ghost flickered and turned, parts peeling from his shoulder and floating into space like eddies in a stream or particles of dust suspended in the weak January sunlight. As he walked, the pieces span away into silence and Cyrus disappeared from normal view, the only sign of his presence a damp trail of footprints along the footpath.
It was a surprisingly mild morning, almost fourteen degrees above freezing, but with a stiff wind skimming across the Atlantic and slamming into the British coast, bringing news from Cyrus' home across the waves.
Of course, it had stopped being his home on the day he died. The man who lived and walked in northern Canada was dead in more than the literal sense. The memories had been overwritten and discarded, moment-by-moment without his noticing, until he barely recalled anything. He increasingly felt like a tape that was recorded over, or the thought experiment of the ship, who's entire frame was slowly replaced until every damp beam was different from the original boat.
A red coat drew his eyes and he span, looking to his riding hood daughter, whom he saw, in every red coat or twisted brunette hairdo, in wilful, headstrong youngsters, and occasionally in Mabel's careless ease. The momentary sight that he was always and fully convinced was his Penny span away from him, autumn leaves of years uncounted freezing to a solid mass in the winter's snow. Soon it would start to melt and give way, and spiralling air would freeze the melt waters at nights, and the roads would turn to treachery,
Water ran down the back of his neck.
At the very least, not breathing didn't cause him discomfort, but a building pressure on his chest would pervade January, painfully crushing phantasm ribs and lungs that filled with water.
It was on such a night, with blistering winds, in a London suburb, when he'd glimpsed his daughter's red coat for the last time, as the big bad wolf drew near. He knew the hulking shape- it's eyes regarded him with an energy at once fierce and intelligent, powerful yet compassionate.
But it would not allow him to interfere, not even when the ceiling gave way and the beams collapsed, burying that red coat as the entire building fell away underneath him. He was left standing on a floor no longer there, staring at the place he was sure that Penny had looked at him- directly at him, not through him, as she often did when he trailed the orphaned child. A few times he'd been able to make her see the bear, which became the shape he most inhabited, but standing there for the few moments he was able, he flickered into the physical plane.
The grim had snarled as he tried to rush towards the red coat as it vanished into the world he didn't chose to visit, roaring unintelligibly as he lost the ability to hold his human form together. He had begged, in broken growls and groans, for her to wait, to stay, but the black dog seemed to gain size as he held him back. He understood, through some transference above words, that he was not permitted to interfere.
Cyrus would not be seen until well into spring, when life budded into being and the water truly began to flow. The sight of a man drowning on dry land was distressing to some.
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