The Ghost Wing — What the In-Between Keeps
The Ghost Wing — Crystal Orb Wing Pendant Necklace is a retro gothic pendant in three finishes — silvery, red, and pink — a crystal orb cradled in dark wings, aged in character. It came from the upper reaches of the Ashen Plains, from the high grey country above the Corrupt Forest and the Tri-City both, from the place that has no name because the people who go there do not come back in a condition to name things.
Luna does not go looking for things that belong to the in-between. They find her. That is the arrangement, and it has been the arrangement since before she understood what she was. She has stopped trying to determine whether this is a gift or a consequence. It is simply the terms.
The upper Plains are not the Plains the way most people understand the Plains. The lower reaches — the Corrupt Forest, the Tri-City crossing market, the Laughing Dark Carnival with its lights always on and its music always playing — those are places with logic. Dark logic, strange logic, the logic of things that have made their peace with proximity to the worst thing in the world and decided to put up lights and conduct transactions about it. But they have logic. You can navigate them if you understand the rules. You can come back from them if you are careful and you do not look back at the Carnival when you are leaving it and you do not reach for anything in the Corrupt Forest that has not already decided to let go.
The upper Plains have different rules. Or rather: the upper Plains have the same rules as everything else, but the rules apply differently up there, in the high grey country where the light does not quite reach the ground and the air has the particular quality of places that exist between one thing and another without fully committing to either. The in-between. The threshold. The place where the veil runs thinnest not because something tore it but because it was never fully closed here to begin with — because this is the seam, the join, the place where whatever is on the other side of everything presses closest to whatever is on this side, and the pressure has been going on long enough that the boundary has gone soft.
Luna goes up there when she needs to think. This is not a healthy coping mechanism. She is aware of this. She goes anyway, because the upper Plains have the particular quality of places that are honest — not kind, not safe, but honest — and she has always found honesty more useful than comfort, even when the honesty is coming from a place that does not have her best interests at heart and is not pretending otherwise.
She had gone up for a different reason that day. She came back with the Ghost Wing.
It was on a stone shelf in the high grey country — not placed, not displayed, not offered. Resting. The way things rest in the upper Plains when they have been there long enough to stop being somewhere and start simply being. The wing was closed around the orb the way wings close around something being kept — not displayed, not offered, but held. Protected, or contained. The distinction, in the high grey country, is not always clear, and she has learned not to press it.
She worked it free carefully. Things in the upper Plains that have been resting somewhere long enough to look like they belong there sometimes object to being moved — not aggressively, not with intent, but with the particular resistance of something that has been still for a very long time and has opinions about continuing to be still. This one did not object. The wing opened slightly in her hand — just enough to show the orb inside, the crystal catching what little light the grey country offers and doing something with it that the grey country itself does not do. Holding it. Warming it. Returning it changed.
She stood there for a long time. The high grey country pressed around her with its particular quality of patient, indifferent attention — the attention of a place that has been watching things come and go since before the arc existed and has developed no opinions about any of them. She looked at the orb. The orb caught the grey light and held it and gave it back warmer than it arrived. She put it in her coat pocket. Then the red one, from the next shelf. Then the pink, from the shadow below the overhang where the grey country goes darker without going black.
Three finishes. Three registers of the same thing: the light that gets in, and what happens to it once the wing closes around it.
Cinder was at the door when she came through the portal. He looked at her coat pocket. He looked at her face — the particular look he gives her when she has been in the upper Plains, the one that is not worry exactly but is adjacent to it, the one that he would deny giving if anyone mentioned it. He stepped aside without comment, which is how Cinder says I am not going to ask what the upper Plains were like today and I trust you made the right calls and I am going to stand here by the door for a while longer just in case.
Ash materialized from somewhere near the back of the shop and pressed her flank against Luna's leg for exactly three steps before peeling off to investigate something on the lower shelf that turned out to be nothing, or possibly everything. It was hard to tell with Ash, and harder still when Luna had just come back from the in-between, when the boundary between nothing and everything was still slightly blurred at the edges.
Midnight lowered his great sapphire head through the skylight when she set them on the counter. He looked at the silvery one for a long time. Then the red. Then the pink. He rumbled once — the third rumble, the one he reserves for things that have been in the in-between long enough to carry it with them. He tilted his great head. He did not elaborate. He never does about the upper Plains. Some things he has been keeping since before the grey country had its current shape, and he is not going to start explaining them now.
Chelle came from the crystal shelf. She looked at the three pendants on the counter. She looked at the orbs — the way the crystal held the candlelight differently than it should, warmer than the room warranted, as if it was still holding something it had caught in the grey country and had not yet decided to release. She looked at Luna.
"The in-between again," she said. Not a question.
Luna said nothing. Which is how Luna says yes, and I am fine, and please do not make it a conversation.
Chelle did not make it a conversation. She picked up the silvery one, held it for a moment with the particular attention she gives to things that carry a frequency she recognizes, and set it back down. The orb caught the candlelight and held it and gave it back changed. She nodded once — the nod of someone who has understood something she was not going to say out loud — and went back to the crystal shelf.
The wing holds what it holds. The orb keeps the light it catches. The in-between is still up there in the high grey country, neither one thing nor another, and these pendants came from it and carry that quality — the particular warmth of something that has been kept in the dark and is still, somehow, luminous. Three finishes. Three ways the light comes back. The wing does not choose what it holds. It simply closes around what finds its way in.
The upper Plains are still there. The stone shelf is still there. The grey country is still pressing against the boundary with the patient, indifferent attention of something that has been doing it since before the arc existed. Luna has already been back twice since. She does not explain why. She does not need to. The in-between finds her. That is the arrangement. It has always been the arrangement.
The question is which color of light is yours.
→ The Ghost Wing — Crystal Orb Wing Pendant Necklace, three finishes
More from the Ashen Plains: The Ashen Plains — World File & Canon Index | The Laughing Dark — A Relic of the Far-Fair | The Weaver of Shadows — The Collector's Shroud | What the Forest Grows — Corrupt Forest Thorn & Web Bracelet | Necklaces: Moonlit Adornments
What is the Ghost Wing?
A retro gothic crystal orb pendant cradled in dark wings — three finishes: silvery, red, and pink. Found in the upper reaches of the Ashen Plains, in the high grey country where the in-between presses closest to this side. The orb catches light and returns it warmer than it arrived. Fashion jewelry — aged aesthetic, gothic construction.
What are the three finishes?
Silvery, red, and pink — each orb a different register of the same thing: the light that gets in, and what happens to it once the wing closes around it. Select at checkout.
What is the upper Plains?
The high grey country above the Corrupt Forest and the Tri-City — the in-between, the threshold, the place where the veil between this side and the other runs thinnest. Not because something tore it. Because it was never fully closed here to begin with. Luna goes there when she needs to think. This is not a healthy coping mechanism. She goes anyway.
Who is Luna?
Dark fairy living in human form. Black hair, piercing green eyes. Heavy boots. The Attic's authority on everything gothic, dark, and alternative — and the one who navigates the Ashen Plains. Things that belong to the in-between find her. That is the arrangement. It has been the arrangement since before she understood what she was.
What is the Ashen Plains?
The dark region on the other side of the portal — two centuries of industrial poison meeting ancient evil at the place where the boundary runs thinnest. The Corrupt Forest in the south. The Tri-City at the tripoint. The Laughing Dark Carnival in the western interior. And above all of it, the high grey country where the in-between lives. Read the full World File.
What will you find?: The Ghost Wing — Crystal Orb Wing Pendant Necklace