It feels to River as though everyone she loves tends to leave her.
Her parents… then her aunt… and in between that, her boyfriend. It doesn’t help that she’s lived in her cousin’s shadow for as long as she can remember, heck, only a few people know she can sing. Just as it feels like her life is truly falling apart, three phantoms fall into her life… literally.
They drift in through the chipped window of the abandoned church she’s hiding in, glowing like fireflies. One is a man with wings of ash, another is a girl with skin like polished stone, and the third… is a boy who looks like he’s been stitched together from shadows.
“You… you can see us?” The boy asks, his voice a rasp of static.
River stares. She’s been hiding in this church for hours, trying to avoid her mom’s calls and the pitying glances of her neighbors. The church is falling apart, the stained glass shattered, the roof leaking. It’s perfect.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I can see you.”
The girl with skin like stone rolls her eyes. “Great. Another one who can see us. Wonderful.”
“Be nice, Lyra,” the man with ash wings says, his voice deep and resonant. “We’re here to help.”
River doesn’t want help. She wants to disappear. She wants to crawl into a hole and never come out. She wants to pretend that none of this is happening. But the phantoms are here now, and they’re looking at her with a kind of desperate hope that makes her stomach twist.
“Help?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What kind of help?”
The boy with shadow skin smiles, a slow, unsettling grin that makes River shiver. “The kind you desperately need.”
River looks at the three phantoms, their ethereal forms glowing in the dim light of the church. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she knows one thing: her life just got a whole lot stranger. She’s lost everything, and now she’s stuck with three ghosts who claim they can help.
It's a terrible beginning, she thinks, and a terrible joke. She wonders if she should just run. But something in their eyes—a shared loneliness—stops her. Maybe, just maybe, these ghosts are the only thing she has left. Maybe they can help her find her way through the mess she calls her life.