Fay and Tess and a false start with their hungry ghosts

"Come to me, you lovely sad children. I love you. Feed on my love. I want you. Feed on my desire. I must have you. Come to me."

In the main room of Beavertail's secret apartment tucked inside a magically twisted pocket of space, you declare yourself as food for the hungry ghosts. Trembling from Tess's magical orgasm explosion, transported by your realization that the threatening throng of thought-forms embodied sad, hungry parts of yourselves, made solid in this space between the worlds, more solid yet as they absorbed Tess's waves of magic, you call them to you. And they answer, crying out their sadness and hunger, their forms and features becoming more distinctly Tess and more distinctly Fay. You know those faces as they advance on you, reaching out with clutching fingers, soft, short, and pale, your fingers, Tess's fingers.

Tess herself, close beside you, staggers upright and rushes to embrace you before the creatures close in. She tilts her head far to one side as she goes in for the kiss, but the flame-patterned edge of her big eyeglasses digs into your face with a biting pain. A good pain. A sharpening pain, as Fiammetta Hawk said to you more than once. The kiss lights you up from the inside, and you feel that good warm squishiness down there again, already moist and now moist and warm. It's steamy under your robes, both of you, the energies of fear, desire, of the magic flowing through you, all these things not just in your auras, but wafting into the atmosphere, scents very human, warm, musky and sharp joining the scents from the mermaid bathtub.

And then they're all round you, crowding close, tugging at your robes, whining, pleading, clutching your side, your shoulder, your buttocks.

Tess flinches and shrieks, "Ah it's up my robe!"

"Tess! They're thought-forms. They can't really hurt you! Be gentle."

You don't think they can, anyway. But these are very solid thought-forms.

But Tess, even under your CHARM, is still out of sorts. She starts slapping and kicking the seemings of herself, the copper-haired, goggle-faced love children of the Abyss and the sad bits of her soul, and everything goes sideways. Tess falls under a mass of Tess-creatures, kicking and screaming. Cloth tears as they pull at her brown House Beavertail robe, and shreds of cloth fly out from the scrum. Fay-creatures clutch at you, pulling you off balance as you struggle to keep upright.

"STOP, EVERYONE!" you command.

Things stop. Mostly. Thought-forms are very attentive, that way, when under a CHARM.

Tess is sobbing and struggling, but you can't see her under a pile of her doubles. Your own seemings, your little chorus of Fay-things, mimes your motions, giving worried looks at the pile of Tess, Tess, Tess, and more Tess.

With everything stopped except Tess herself, you pause and look. Tess times seven? times ten? Naked Tess, glasses aside. A pile of lovely naked Tess-things all together actually does pique your interest in the way a platter heaped messily with ginger cream cakes would be. Such creamy curves, such lovely grooves, so many pretty pink lips and nipples, oh.

"Ohhhhh," your little group of Fay-thoughts breathes aloud, a ragged chorus. For of course, they're thinking the same thing. Just when you were about to set that thought aside, your little band of pervy bitches breathes it right back into your head.

You clear your throat. "Tess, baby, it's alright," you say loudly and distinctly.

"Get them OFF me, Fay!" Tess says, muffled by the creamy bum cheeks of one of her naked likenesses.

"Tess I'm coming right to you," you say. "SLOW, everyone," you say, "Slowly, all." Keeps the thought-forms from flying off the handle, they way they're apt to when anyone is distressed. You shuffle your feet in the direction of Tess, the floor sliding under your bare soles.

Your Fay-creatures moan and clutch at you, still hungry and unsatisfied. Puffing out a sigh, you stop to deal with them. To deal with your own bad selves.

"Fay dear?" you say, taking the nearest and cradling her head in your hands. She whines and looks at you with sadness and so much hunger in her eyes. It's, well. It is what it is. "Fay, I'm going to give you a kiss. You pass it to your sisters, now, mind. Fill yourself full up and share. Share."

You crush her close to you and kiss her hard, kiss her deeply, hold her tightly until she relaxes in your embrace and takes in that desire, that love. You can't fill her full but you can fill her enough. When you feel her filling up, glowing from the inside, you break the kiss and grasp her shoulders, turning her to the next closest Fay. Framing the intention in your mind, as you would instruct a summoned creature, you squeeze her shoulders and speak your will.

"Now kiss!"

It's working.

There follows a happy little knot of moaning and cooing as the Fays share your love. It's a little creepy, but in a nice way. They have the same curves, more or less, that Tess has, and they jiggle as they press themselves together.

You always did like watching yourself in the mirror. Well.

Hopefully that will hold them for long enough. You don't feel like disaster is hanging by a thread, but well, there are six ways from moondark this could all get badly, badly messy. Even thinking of them is tempting fate, especially thinking of them here.

You kneel as close to Tess as you can, coaxing Tess's duplicates to make way until you discover the Real of which they are only Shadows. Tess is trembling under her look-alikes, breathing shallowly and unsteadily under their weight.

"Fay please," Tess says. "Please."

"Please," her seemings echo aloud. Tess's expression twists in horror, and she snaps her lips shut. "Please," they say again.

You take your finger and press it to Tess's forehead, projecting calm. Tess isn't soothed, exactly, but her shallow breaths even out and her wide-eyed panic subsides. You get the duplicates to shift aside, giving Tess air, but they still clutch at her wrists, her shoulder, her now-bare breasts as Tess lies on the floor in her shredded robes. You see a few scratches oozing blood, and a few red marks that are certainly headed toward bruising.

Very solid thought-forms.

But you get them to budge enough that Tess has one arm free, and you raise her hand to your forehead to complete the connection. Eyes to eyes, finger to forehead, forehead to finger.

Fay, what? Tess stares at you, frightened, from behind her big lenses with their flame-edged rims.

They're hungry ghosts, Tess, seemings of ourselves, shreds of fears, self-hate, unsatisfied hungers.

Banish them, Fay! Get them away!

Tess baby, I'm not going to do that. That would blast a hole in us. In our souls.

Terror in Tess's eyes. Fear in her aura. But what? What, Fay, what are you going to do?

You mean, what are we going to do, Tess?

Tess is getting panicky again. What, Fay, what?

We're going to take care of them...

You share your plan. A ripple goes through the seemings of Tess gathered close around, and the seemings of Fay, who seem to be getting hungry again.