eudaimonikos | Stone of Farspeech

Oh. I've never celebrated that. I know it sounds like the holiday we would like, but we were really never given any time away from work.

[Anyway...face paint fits in with what Michael knows of Halloween, he guesses. Not sure about the other one.]

None of my human friends were from Mexico. What do you do for Dia de los Muertos?

[An easy question, it's only the greatest day of the year for the entire city of the dead! Except... well, different worlds or Earths or whatever's going on. Definitely different afterlives.]

Probably a whole lot cooler in my world than yours. Spirits like me can cross over and visit our living family or friends, if there are enough cempasúchil in the area and you have a photo put up on an ofrenda. Someone has to be thinking of you enough to put in the effort or it's no go.

I've never made it over, so I'm not sure how it actually works, but I've seen people come back with all kinds of offerings. The... the essence of the thing, I guess, not the real solid object. Real enough for us dead folks, though.

Oh, so you get to be ghosts for a night? That is fun. We don't have any sort of...life-death travel, except under very specific circumstances.

[...]

I think I was actually involved in all of it.

It is fun. Best night of the whole year. I might even have something left for me next year, it's going to be great.

[No real sadness for the decades he went without, struggling and failing to cross that dumb flower bridge. There's only a quiet hopefulness. The next year, when he's back to normal and time starts moving again... maybe the Riveras who can cross will bring him back a tasty treat.]

Are ghosts real in your world, too? Can you just stick around and haunt them later, if you want to?

[That concept is interesting to him.]

Maybe in the rest of the world. I hear if my type don't make it back across the bridge before sunrise, they don't come back at all. Not that I've heard of anyone risking it, it's always rumors. Friend of a friend, that kind of talk.

[Hm. Michael nods.]

Ours just can't hang around. As soon as they die, they're routed directly to the afterlife for processing. My friends were the only humans ever not to be - but that was just because we took them to the afterlife through a back door.

[He shouldn't be asking questions, the answers he gets from Michael are always horrifying or just plain depressing, but... one slips out anyway.]

So where did the idea of 'ghosts' come from then? If no one is allowed to visit?

Weird electrical fields, and illnesses humans didn't understand yet. Same as demons - we're real, but we don't go to Earth to mess with people. Even when I did, I didn't have any of my powers. Just looked like this.

[He gestures to his regular human body.]

'Weird electrical fields'? I don't even know what that means. How do you get from that to seeing the ghost of... I don't know, your dead grandpa or whatever?

Certain levels of atmospheric electricity can make humans feel dread, or the sense of a presence around them. After that - [He waves a hand carelessly.] - you're imaginative and you want to believe the dead are around. Also, not that hard to make you hallucinate.

[.....]

Maybe not you, specifically. Without the meat brain, there's a lot fewer weaknesses.

[Hah. For once he can surprise the demon dude, maybe, and he's going to take pride in that, stupid as it is.]

Don't be so sure about that! We can have allergies. Get itchy and sneeze and such. And, ah, you know... get drunk and all that implies. Anything a living person can do.

.....then why are you even skeletons?

[He doesn't have a good answer to that. So.]

...Skeletons are cool?

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