prompt: ghost hunting - garden
fable: Mendorientry:Beneath the Willows
Mendori arrived at the hotel with meticulous documentation. She had heard the rumors: a haunting, unexplained phenomena, supernatural occurrences. Most would dismiss such things as superstition. But Mendori recognizes a system in chaos, and a system can be understood. Mapped. Controlled.
She came not for adventure, but to prove that even the inexplicable follows rules.
The groundskeeper's warning should have been routine: stay on the paths, don't approach the lake. Mendori appreciates clear boundaries. But the figure's abrupt disappearance suggests something that breaks its own rules. An inconsistency. A flaw in the pattern.
She cannot leave a flaw unexamined.
The footpath curves deliberately around the lake, and Mendori traces its geometry, looking for the logic beneath. Someone designed this boundary intentionally. Someone understood that the lake required containment. But why?
She moves closer to the path's edge and examines the lake. The water's surface reflects nothing true, not the sky, not the trees, not her. It reflects something else. Something that moves beneath, a pattern shifting in tune with her breathing.
The air here is colder. Colder than it should be in a garden at midday. And there's a sound, almost beneath hearing, like wind through a cave.
Mendori has spent her entire existence imposing order. Calling out times. Demanding precision. Building schedules tight enough so that her people can move like clockwork, predictable and controlled.
But this lake does not follow her rules. The thought should disturb her. Instead, it thrills her in a way she doesn't want to examine too closely.
She counts backward from three, grounding herself, and observes the water more carefully. The patterns are not random. They follow a logic, just not one she recognizes. Yet. There is meaning here. There is structure. She simply hasn't decoded it. Her voice, when she speaks, is steady but not quite as commanding as usual.
"I am here for answers," she announces to the empty garden. "Show yourself, or cease this game."
The water stills completely. For a moment, nothing moves. Then, from beneath the willows, she hears it: a sound like a bell, ringing once, clear and true. Mendori's pulse quickens. Not from fear, but from recognition. That sound. She knows that frequency. She's heard it before, or something like it, in the moment between sleep and waking.
"Show yourself," she repeats, disdain creeping in her tone.
The bell sounds twice, then three times. A pattern. A rhythm that is not hers. One that she didn't create and can't control.
She steps forward, head high, taking care to remain on the path, closer to the water's edge. The willows seem to lean toward her, their branches creating a bower of shadow and green. The lake's surface begins to shimmer, not with reflected light, but with something else. Phosphorescence, maybe. Or something that has no name in the waking world.
The bell continues its rhythm, faster now. Building. Insistent. Mendori realizes, with startling clarity, that this is not a haunting. This is a summoning. And she has always been punctual.
The question is: what called her? And more importantly: what does it want?
She takes another step forward. The path curves, and suddenly she can see the lake's center. There, where the water should be still and empty, something breaks the surface. Not a creature, not quite. A shape made of light and sound and the memory of something that was never quite alive.
It forms itself slowly, deliberately, as if constructing itself from the very fabric of the garden. Translucent. Waiting.
Three, two, one. She counts silently, centering herself.
Whatever this is (ghost, spirit, manifestation, or something without a proper name) it has shown her respect by warning her away.
"What is your name?" she asks the figure.
The bell sounds again, and in its resonance, she hears an answer forming.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
prompt: ghost hunting - forest
fable: Merewifentry:Among the Pines
WIP