A wise wizard once said...

[Sean Hall]

Sean was standing in a field surrounded by cairns. He felt confused, he didnt know how he'd gotten there. Hadn't he been in the workshop? When did he drive all the way out here? This place wasn't in any of his books and that was when he heard the sound of rocks falling.

Did one of the cairns move?

Sean turned looking around. Nothing had changed. He heard the sound of falling rocks again he spun around hands up, but the winds of magic wouldn't head his call. They were there, or were they? Everything felt... strange. The winds of magic felt so far away... almost like a memory or a phantom limb. Rocks clattered again and Sean turned around. Again nothing. A hand touched his shoulder. It felt so soothing. He didn't want to move. A familiar voice whispered in his ear.

"You shouldn't be here Sean."

His shoulder felt wet and he looked. The flesh of the hand was melting away. He turned to look at the person who had whispered in his ear.

"You can't Sean."

The face was torn, broken, only the eyes looked alive. They looked so familiar, but he couldn't... everything was so fuzzy.

"Run Sean. RUN!"

He could taste blood, the smell... he could smell so much death. He felt cold. He felt shackles, cold steel, and a concreworkshop. He could hear chanting and feel somebody... no something touching him. He felt the blade touch his chest and wome up.

He was in his workshop where he was supposed to be. He looked down and realized he'd fallen asleep while working again. The room was in disarray, vials broken, and reagents scattered. He could taste magic in the air.

Again?

Sean thought to himself as he stood up clean up after... whatever it was that had happened.

((Open if somebody is interested))

[Wanda Johansson]

After a bit, there is a concerned knock on his door. "Sean? Are you okay?" It sounds like Wanda.

[Sean Hall]

"Everything is fine, I think," Sean said, "An experiment must've exploded or something. Everything was just a bit bollocksed when I woke up."

[Wanda Johansson]

"That's why you don't sleep on experiments. Need help cleaning it up?"

[Sean Hall]

"I- Yes, that'd be nice," Sean said walking over to let Wanda in.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda steps in, moving to shut the door behind her. In an odd twist for the winter weather, she was wearing sandals with her jeans and sweater. She glanced around at the destruction. "Certainly looks like something went up in here. You sure you're okay?" She asks as she squats down to gingerly pick up some of the larger pieces of glass.

[Hannah]

"That sounded like a bad one..." Hannah says as she moves in through the wall with a floaty step. Wanda might not directly hear her but she catches a glimpse of movement reflected in the shard of glass she's picking up.

[Sean Hall]

Sean looked over at Hannah then back at Wanda.

"Let me grab the broom can't have you cutting your hand and me getting murdered in my sleep," Sean said trying to hide his discomfort with humor.

He moved to the broom closet and then as he walked back looked over at Hannah. He didn't like talking about all of this.

"They're just. They're Just nightmares. It doesn't mean anything. Been having them my entire life."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Oh please," Wanda rolls her eyes, "She's trying not to be that bad." She frowns at the movement, but the glass is too sharp to try to do more with it than gingerly pick it up. "For people like us, nightmares may not be just nightmares."

[Sean Hall]

"I hope these don't mean anything. All they are is people I don't recognize dying over and over again each time in new and inventive ways in places I don't recognize," Sean said holding out the broom to Wanda. "But it all feels so... familiar."

[Hannah]

"Are they the same people?" the ghost asks, moving past Wanda and partially passing through her. She can hear the girls voice like a distant whisper on the wind.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda pauses part way to tossing the glass in the trash can. "Did... you hear something?"

[Sean Hall]

"Mostly the same people, I think," Sean said before realizing what he was doing. "Suppose it's not a surprise that you can hear Hannah."

[Hannah]

"She can?" Hannah says, turning around.

"She can!" she adds once she realizes Wanda had reacted to what she'd said.

To Wanda it would come across as a distant whisper and almost more of a sense of a presence than straight up speech.

[Wanda Johansson]

"I can sort of hear something. Like someone whispering a long way off," she says, looking around as she lets her eyes open to the admittedly small atmospheric patterns in the room. "There's also a presence..."

[Hannah]

There's no disturbance in the airflow that would indicate anybody being in the room beside Wanda and Sean. That is until Hannah starts talking again and she can feel her voice rippling through the air like the shadow of a breeze and for a moment the contours of Hannah's face are outlined like an air bubble underwater.

"Hi. I'm Hannah."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Hello..." She seems to ponder what she's heard. "I'm Wanda."

[Hannah]

"Far out! So far only Sean and Samantha could hear me."

Her voice is still faint, but the more Wanda listens to her the easier it becomes to pick out what the ghost is saying and see her outline in the air like a ripple when she moves.

[Wanda Johansson]

"That's certainly a rare collection of people who can hear you," Wanda says as she looks at Sean.

[Sean Hall]

"She's a... ghost," Sean said trying to find the right word to describe Hannah. "A very complicated ghost who seems to have died many times."

He did of course decide to completely not explain how Hannah had gained a foothold in their world at all.

[Hannah]

"Complicated, yeah... But I stopped getting murdered, so that's nice."

[Wanda Johansson]

"I can imagine it would be," she says, holding up a hand. "Hannah, do me a favor, put your hand against mine, if you don't mind that is." By ghost lore, she'd expected a cold spot, maybe some disturbances caused by that. Seeing an actual, person-shaped disturbance made her curious.

[Hannah]

Hannah places her hand near Wanda's. She doesn't really feel anything until the ghost adjusts a little and pushes her hand through Wanda's. There's a sting like a sudden flash of cold, but overshadowing that is this feeling of familiarity and loss. Flashes of red and blood and a little man in a suit cleaving the heads off animals over and over with a thud that seems to shake reality, growing more intense with each one...

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda snatches her hand back as if she's been burned. She looks the space where Hannah is, obviously directing her question at her. "This is going to sound like a strange question, but have you ever run into a small person?" Then she seems to realize that the relative definition of 'small person' to someone like herself is quite the range. "A dwarf, as it were."

[Hannah]

"I... think so." she says, disappearing from Wanda's sight for the most part as she stands still, thinking. "Sorry, it's hard to remember, it all blurs together so much. I've seen a couple. There was a court jester who was little. And once at the circus, wearing a little suit and a top hat. Oh and there was a drug dealer I once knew who was a midget." she says, using a perhaps not too respectful term, but then again she's not the most modern person.

"And that travelling doctor. And one of my neighbors, the one always ranting about the Commies. But that's all. Oh and the one on the movie set."

[Sean Hall]

Sean looked between Wanda and Hannah.

"That's a very... oddly consistent thing between your lives," Sean said, "Do you remember anything else about him? Did he offer anyone anything?"

[Hannah]

"Some of them were selling things, I guess..."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Anything specific? Or was there some other thing that stood out?" She glances at Sean and then back at where she presumes Hannah is at the moment.

[Hannah]

"No... One was a drug-dealer, so, you know. I guess the ring-master was selling tickets to the circus?"

[Sean Hall]

"These would be pages torn from a book," Sean said, "A very old book."

[Hannah]

"No, nothing like that."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Wanda says, though it's obvious she doesn't think much of coincidences.

[Sean Hall]

"Maybe," Sean said, "We could try and ask Sa- no we could try astral projecting to if we can find something Hannah can't remember."

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda glances at him as he abruptly changes course. "Is there some reason we shouldn't ask Sam?"

[Sean Hall]

"We fought for different Will's and it got a bit personal," Sean said, "She didn't like me trying to bind her during the fight and I didn't like her sanctimonious 'I'm the hero' attitude, so we're at a bit of an impasse."

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda's eyes widen a little bit and it looks like she's about to say something, but she lifts her hands slightly and turns away from Sean in a 'not my problem' sort of way. "Okay, so you mentioned you kept getting murdered?"

[Hannah]

"Yeah, for a while. A very long while. I guess I kept... re-in-car-na-ting." she says, pronouncing the word like something she only recently learned about.

[Sean Hall]

"I have case files from some of her recent lives," Sean said, "Newspaper articles, police reports, that sort of thing."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Reincarnation is a complicated thing, by all accounts I've read so far." She mumbles to herself as she thinks, "Nothing's ever lost."

[Hannah]

"What's that mean? Nothing's ever lost?"