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Assist The Dead ~ PPAU Quest

justspillingcoldtea

Published: Nov 22, 2022

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Character Plover (OC)Character Droom-Avista (OC)Location Pyrrhia/Pantala

Description

Welcome back to PPAU! I know I’ve been on a GG kick, but there’s still a lot of PPAU art kicking around in the storerooms. They just take longer.

In this piece, we’ve got both deep, existential writing on the meaning of mortality and me practicing a more cartoonish style. It’ll make more sense next month, I promise. But as life events have pushed the event back, I’ve decided to give Plover more room to breathe and learn a new trade! So they get a life-affirming talk with their best friend and a better understanding of death.

Two birds with one stone!

This a warning that this story, and many of Plover’s stories going forward, will discuss death. Not graphically, but Plover’s becoming a more existential character and a forensic pathologist. They’ll still be the same goofy Plover you all know and love, but they’re growing up some.

Quest: Learning A New Trade

Featuring: Droom-Avista, Plover, and best boi Helena

Word Count: 1335

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The living cannot assist the dead.

As a doctor, Plover knew this well. If a patient coded, you’d fight tooth and nail to rescue them, but once someone calls out the time, it all stops. All the adrenaline pours from your body as paperwork begins: name, time of death, cause of death, and listing relatives to turn the body over to.

Doctors could do many things, but they couldn’t perform miracles. So there was always a point when a doctor’s work ended and an undertaker’s begun.

Plover knew this, but—

It was no longer sure that the deceased would stay down. Mezzo was a hotspot for the undead, conscious or not. Plover personally was friends with a four-year-old ghost. Not to mention, undead creatures beyond understanding beset the island they lived on three times in the past four years.

All this magic in the air had reshaped their body, cursed their tongue, and possibly saved their life, but Plover could do nothing for the dead (besides a cup of tea on Saturday nights).

And now, with current events, that statement felt like a damnation. Tens, if not hundreds, dying across the continents, with no way to ease their suffering. Dragons, scavengers, people suffering on the whims of some cuckoo-like parasite.

Countless people Plover didn’t know the names of, that they’d write about but never know.

The living cannot assist the dead.

Plover’s claw drew rings around the lip of their teacup as their gaze drifted down to their desk, illuminated in the late Saturday evening light. Papers and notes covered nearly all of the desk, only parting for arm room for writing. It had been like that for months, ever since this situation began.

There wasn’t time to clear it and no ability to— not when any information could be vital.

But all this clutter was driving Plover mad, and the last thing they needed (on top of the maybe zombies and parasites) was a messy headspace. Confusion meant death here, and the fact that Plover and Avista weren’t lost in a snow drift somewhere was nothing short of a miracle.

Speaking of which.

“Speaking– speaking– speaking of which–”

Plover snorted, standing from their desk to turn towards the ghost half-hanging through their door. Their back popped as they stretched, a sound that Avista quietly mimicked. “Yeah yeah, I just had to finish up a section.

“You’re so impatient for someone with eternity on their side, ‘Vista,” Plover chimed as they stepped through Avista and out into the Amethyst Talon hall towards the Crystal Castle proper. Helena beeped, hopping down from the desk to trot along with the two.

Avista beeped along with him. “Impatient. Eternity– so impatient. Boring,” she hissed, switching between Plover’s voice and an unknown one before returning to Plover’s with a sun-bright cheer. “‘Cup-a tea?”

“Of course.”

The two wound their way down from the eighth floor of the Crystal Castle towards the cafeteria. Plover carried the tea leaves, while Avista carried Helena when his tiny legs couldn’t keep up. Neither hurried, having done this ritual many times, and knowing the route by heart.

Neither spoke until Plover boiled the kettle and poured it over two bags of leaves.

“What ‘we got?” Avista asked.

“Two cups of tea,” Plover’s voice answered before letting them explain as they slid a cup into Avista’s gauntlets. “It's a white tea. I thought we’d step outside our herbal comfort zone?”

Avista grinned beyond her usual fixed smile as she pulled the warm cup close to her intangible chest. The pinpricks of light in her eyes dissipated, leaving only the black voids– her version of a peaceful expression. It was a rare expression on the ghost but a wonderful one to see.

Plover smiled, letting the quiet wash over them as they enjoyed their friend and bird’s presence. Plus, a good cup of tea. There was nothing better.

But Plover couldn’t bring themself to fully enjoy it. Instead, they could feel each second ticking by, counting grains of sand in the time Plover should be using to prepare. Winter clothes didn’t buy themselves.

The dead didn’t catalogue themselves, either.

“Quiet,” Avista hissed, breaking through Plover’s thoughts. When Plover looked up, Avista’s previous smile seemed strained. “Thought– you? What thoughts?”

Having been friends with Avista for nearly a year, Plover was adept at translating her disjointed words– even if some were harder than others. What are you thinking about? she was asking.

“Death mainly,” Plover hummed as they curled their claws around their cup.

“Mine?” Avista croaked, cocking her lifeless head to the side as those pinpricks of light stared at them.

“No, not really. Just death in general.”

“Hmm, messy thing.” Her claws tapped against her cup as her wound fluttered in a newly conjured, intangible breeze. “Splattering. ‘Vessels going pop pop pop.”

After a moment of mimicking, Avista suddenly fell silent, almost sheepish. Then, finally, she coughed, dripping blue blood down into oblivion. “When I’m involved, that is.”

“When I’m involved as well,” Plover replied as they shrugged off the sudden awkward tension in the conversation. “It’s a messy business, saving people.”

The tiny squeaks of a small grey bird caught in a discarded gillnet; the silent horror on their ‘ma’s rapidly paling face as she lifted up a limb that ended in a ripped stump; and the stuttered wheezing of the dragon beneath them, red blood clotting the pink wool beneath their claws.

The weeping of their girlfriend, as she feared she’d caused a massacre just by existing; the guilt on their friend’s face, so sure that Plover’s sins were his own; and spending night after night trying to save friends from literal demons, just to read themself in circles.

Life was so messy. And now, thanks to some cuckoo, so was death–

Avista’s gauntlet slid under Plover’s claws, gently prying them from their death grip on their mug and settling them over Helena. The little bird beeped, nestling into the warm cave Plover’s hands created.

Meanwhile, Avista’s gaze drifted back to Plover, seemingly concerned. It was always hard to tell. “Why? Why thoughts?”

“I don’t know. Everything and nothing. There’s all this talk about death, and I can’t help these people. They’re suffering, and I can’t help them. All this information and I can’t put the fact these are people into appropriate words.” Plover paused, gesturing towards Avista’s armour, towards those claws Plover knew had killed before. “You help people by stopping those who would hurt them. But I– I don’t know.”

“You help people! Messy– help people. But helps,” Avista hissed, her voice suddenly rising from its low croak into an emotional snarl.

She paused as her words rang in the air, her voice falling back into a whisper. “‘How can ‘help you?”

“I don’t know,” Plover’s voice rang as their eyes stung. “But you’re not the only dead body I’ve seen. And the worrying thing is that it doesn’t worry me.

“For hours, I can stare at a dead body, but writing about one terrifies me. Because I can’t make them people in my writing. I reduce them to words.”

A repeating tut echoed from Avista’s maw as she scooped Plover’s claws into hers. Helena beeped his disapproval, but Avista paid him no mind. “Read your notes– you make them people. Writing makes them people. Remembering. Remembering makes them people.”

“You really think so?”

“Mhm. I— splatter. You solve. You learn. Helps people. Helped me.” Avista’s genuine smile returned, wrinkling the little skin that clung to her snout. The ghost chuckled. “Solving diseases, injuries, mysteries. ‘Lil Sealoche Foams.”

Plover couldn’t help but giggle along, even though their eyes still stung and their voice still caught. They looked at Avista and Helena, at their little confused Caffeine Club.

The living cannot assist the dead…

But here Plover was, living in a once-dead body, the joyfriend of a reincarnated god and speaking to a ghost.

…

Eventually, Plover just smiled, grinning at the sheer life around them. “I like the sound of that.”

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