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auberginesdonthavelimbs · 5 years

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Phanniemay Day 9: World Building

Word count: 1457

“Papa, what happens when we die?” The man started, completely unprepared for this question from his young son.

“Why do you ask?” The child shrugged.

“I don’t know. I heard some people talking about it.”

“About dying?” The child shrugged again, and his father noted, not for the first time, that he was going to need to break that habit sooner rather than later. It could make conversations rather difficult. “What did these people say?” he asked, hoping the more explicit question would prompt a more explicit response.

“They said we were all gonna die if the hunters built a portal, because they’re gonna come in and kill everybody.” Than man gasped quietly, doing his best to hide his reaction from his son. Whoever ‘they’ were, their fears were valid, but they had no business discussing those fears in front of one so young.

“My child, you don’t need to worry about hunters. They cannot build a stable portal, and, even if they could, they wouldn’t get through. Daddy and I, and every adult in a thousand-mile radius, will fight to protect our home, and you. I promise you, you aren’t going to die. Do you believe me?” The child nodded, seemingly unconcerned. Thank goodness.

“But people die sometimes, right? What happens to them? Where do they go when they’re not here anymore?” The man sighed. He was glad that his son wasn’t afraid of imminent death, but that didn’t make this conversation much easier. Children liked simple, easy answers, and there were none of those to be found regarding such complex questions. Well, he supposed he had better meet his child where he was at, as it were. That could guide the conversation, at least.

“What do you think happens when people die?” Another shrug. Fantastic. “You asked where people go. Did someone tell you that people go somewhere after they die?”

“I guess. That's what people say sometimes, that someone isn’t with us anymore, or that he moved on, and stuff. So they must have gone somewhere.”

The father nodded. Yes, he supposed people did say things like that.

“Well, yes, a lot of people believe that, when a ghost dies, they go somewhere else. Some people speak of a place called the Timeless Realm, where everyone who ever died spends eternity. But people who are alive can’t get there, because we are still part of the natural flow of time.” The expression on his child’s face told him what he already suspected - this was too abstract, and the boy didn’t understand a word he was saying.

“It’s sort of like … you know how there are some types of things that we can pass through, and some we can’t? Well, imagine that the timeless realm is one of those things that we can’t pass through. But after a ghost dies, their body changes, so the two types are switched; they can only touch those things that are intangible to us, and they simply pass through that which we can touch.” The boy cocked his head.

“Like a human?”

“N- … sort of, but ghosts can’t become humans. It’s just a metaphor.”

“What’s a melaphor?” The man resisted the urge to put his face in his hands. To think, there had been a time not too long ago when he couldn’t wait for his child to start speaking.

“A metaphor means that you are using one thing to describe something different. Like, I might say that water is crystal-clear. I don’t mean that the water is made of crystal, just that it’s perfectly clear, in the same way that a crystal is perfectly clear. Or,” he continued as he reached out to ruffle his son's hair, “I might say that your hair is downy. Down is a type of very soft feather. When I describe your hair as downy, I’m saying it’s very soft, but I’m not saying that you have feathers. Do you understand?” He considered for a moment.

“So dead people are like humans in some ways even though they aren’t the same as humans?” The man hesitated, then shrugged and tilted his head in the well-recognized symbol of, ‘eh, kind of.’

“This metaphor is a little bit more complicated than that. I just meant that some people believe that the reason we don’t see dead people is that people change completely when they die, so that they can’t interact with the world in the same way that they did when they were alive. The Timeless Realm is an example of a place that the dead might go, based on the belief that they don’t move through time the way we do anymore.” He could see that he had lost the boy again, and he shook his head.

“But that’s just one belief. The truth is that nobody knows for sure what happens when we die, because nobody who dies can come back to tell us. Other people believe that, when a ghost dies, their body turns back into energy, and when a very powerful ghost dies, a new nova forms in that spot.”

“What do you believe, papa?” That was the question, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to tell his child what to think; he and his partner had agreed a long time ago to let their son come to his own conclusions as much as possible. But he did need to answer the question.

“I don’t know for sure. I can only guess like anyone else. But … why don’t you come sit on papa’s lap?” The child floated up and over, nestling easily into his father’s embrace. The man couldn’t help but remember a time when his son would spend most of his time in one parent's lap or the other’s, and he was painfully reminded of how quickly the boy was growing. He smiled at his son and ruffled his hair again.

“I do believe that our bodies are made of energy, and I believe that we become energy again when we die. But I’ve never felt the presence of an energy nova the way I feel the presence of another ghost.” He placed his son’s hand on his chest. “You feel that? The feeling of another person’s core is like nothing else in the ghost zone, no matter how much energy it has, or how concentrated that energy is. So, I believe that core energy is something different from regular ecto-energy. And I believe that when we die, our consciousness is no longer holding that energy together, so it dissipates.” He paused. This might be getting too abstract again.

“That means that it stops holding together. It’s like how water in a cup is held in place, and held in a certain shape, by that cup. If the cup breaks, there’s nothing holding the water together anymore, so it spreads out in a puddle.” The boy seemed to be thinking very hard.

“So our bodies are like cups, and our cores are like water. That’s another metaphor, right?” The man hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“It is a metaphor, very good. I was saying that our consciousness - our minds - are like the cup, but, yes, you have it basically right. And the thing about water is that it can always take the shape of its container, no matter what it was doing before. You can take that puddle and put it into a new cup, and then it will be in the shape of that cup.

“So maybe the reason that energy in the atmosphere doesn’t feel like a person is that it needs to be concentrated into a core to be felt, and it can only be concentrated like that when there is a mind holding it together. This core energy is all around us, but too diffuse to be noticed. Like how being surrounded by humid air feels very different from being submerged in water.

“But, sometimes, a new mind enters the ghost zone, like when a child is formed. And that mind can draw core energy to itself, and concentrate it into a core of its own. Of their own, I should say.”

“Is that what happened when I was formed?”

“Maybe. Like I said, nobody really knows. Do you feel like your core used to be somebody else’s?” The boy shrugged again.

“I dunno. I don’t think so.”

“Well, then perhaps I’m wrong. And you don’t need to know, right now, what happens when we die. Many people never figure out what they believe, and that’s ok too.” That prompted a pout.

“I wanna know, though.” The father chuckled softly.

“Yes, child, we all do. But, sometimes, we need to accept that there are some aspects of the world which will always remain mysterious.”

A/N: There’s a lot of fanon that I wouldn’t begin to know who to attribute it to, but, in this case, I definitely stole some shit from pearl84 on ffn again, this time from Dawning of a Sun. (It’s a very good, very dark, and very long story and you should definitely read it.) Specifically, I think I took the idea that ghosts can feel one another's essence, as it were, by touching their chests. Probably also the term “formed” to describe the creation of a new ghost, and the term “nova” or “energy nova” to describe the swirling green things in the ghost zone, and maybe some other vague things about the world. Again, tho, this isn’t necessarily meant to be set in that universe.

#danny phantom #phanniemay #phanniemay19 #phandom #my writing #looking back it was probably a mistake not to give the characters names #the dialogue tags and actions all feel very awkward #but i was trying to have the focus be on the #you know #worldbuilding #that is to say on the dialogue #rather than the characters themselves #there may have been a better way to do that #i may have omitted the internal commentary on the son's behaviour #and how fast he was growing up #for instance #i guess i really just cant help but write about characters #even when i'm trying to write about lore #maybe i'll do something like a script sometime #just dialogue and stage directions #no internal monologue #or even an excerpt from a book or something like that #pure exposition #that would have worked well for this prompt #and probably wouldn't fit any of the others #missed opportunity #ah well

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