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"Jesus, fuck!" Sollux yelled, jumping up in fright at the spectral figure looming over his shoulder. Yes, he had the vaguest sense that someone was behind him, and yes, he understood the innate risks that came with showing up at a graveyard at night as a spiritual medium, particularly one just awakening to their powers, but it still took some getting used to seeing actual, honest to god ghosts. Particularly pretty ghost girls with their bedraggled hair draped over their somber faces like curtains, tattered rags hanging off loose, pale, translucent skin. "Scared the fucking shit out of me. Fuck. Jesus."
"Can you chill?" The girl whispered, her voice a cold winter wind on Sollux's pierced ears, making the various bits and bobs of metal ache in his skin. That was a side effect nobody had told him about. He adjusted his glasses, shutting his "sees-living-people" eye so he could take a good look at her. "You've got... a problem... with dead people?" Her voice wasn't accusatory, more curious than anything else, but it still carried with it the thinnest veil of threat that could be possibly achieved in the lustrous murmur. Sollux rubbed some fog off of his glasses.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Whatever." Sollux blithely lisped through his front teeth, wincing at the feeling of his snakebites cooling down rapidly in his lips. "So, you're a ghost." He stated, matter-of-factly, bending down to read off her gravestone. "Uh-Ray-Dee-Uh, uh, Muh-Gee-Do. Right? That's the dead schoolgirl I'm talking to?"
"Uh-Rah-Dee-Uh, actually." She corrected, rolling her eyes, gently floating back down to sit on the top of her stone-hewn marker of death, dress shoes gently swishing back and forth through it. "Why do you care? It's not every day I see someone who can actually see me back. Are you here to... make fun of me?" Her voice was quiet and tonal, more like the soft ringing of a church bell than any actual vocal timbre.
Sollux cackled, a witchy, ugly little cackle absolutely befitting his gremlin-like face and beanpole stature. It just made sense for that kind of vibrating, noxious sound to echo out of the throat of someone like him. He fixed his glasses once more, perpetually slipping off of his face (although the condensation in the air wasn't helping matters one bit). "Of course not. That would be fucking cruel. I'm going to help you."
This time, it was Aradia's turn to laugh. "Help me...? How can you help a dead girl? Don't be silly." Aradia replied, reaching over to pat Sollux's head. He could feel her hand more than enough, in the form of icy cold pressure in his hair, making him instinctively swat her away. "There is no helping, dumb... Dummy."
"You can call me a dumbass, it's okay. I'm used to it." Sollux said, gently bowing his head in her direction. "My mentor said that Dybbuk are kept on this earth by strong regrets that tie them here, and they attempt to enact possession in order to fulfill those regrets, so they can finally pass on."
Aradia laughed again, reedy, willowy, a hint of nasality. "What's a Dybbuk? I'm just a regular old dead Japanese schoolgirl. Nothing more, nothing less."
Sollux shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "That's just what she calls ghosts. Either way, it's a better option than just being stuck to this gravestone forever, don't you think?"
Aradia considered the option for a moment. Then, she tried to smile, judging by the pained cracking sounds her face made, the flakes of spectral detritus floating from her face, but it ended up as just an upturned sort of narrow line. "Very well. Do you want me to pass on, exorcist? Willing to help these old bones finally let go?"
Sollux shrugged again. "I want what will make the ghosts around me happiest. Passing on would probably be part of that, if it gets you all to stop hassling me while I'm asleep."
Aradia's face cracked, very literally, into a grin. She reached out, plunging an icy hand into Sollux's shoulders, and then another. "Great. I'll play along with your teacher's theories then."
Sollux took a deep breath, bowing his entire body down onto the ground. He could feel frost forming inside him as Aradia's body easily passed through his, before light no longer delivered to his eyes.