theattic | Weird-looking, half blind, spook wrangling world-walkers that smoke.

Ginko's eyebrows rose a little further. Part of him found that to be a bit of an odd way of looking at it, given that they had only met twice - three times, counting today - but not enough so for him to protest. "Guess so."

He examined the antlers thoughtfully. "Do they shed and regrow like this every year?" He hadn't been sure whether faerie-inflicted antlers would work like a regular deer's, but maybe they did.

"Eyup." This was honestly his best set so far so he was doubly excited to show them off. Them not looking like a couple of sick twigs meant he'd been at least partially taking care of himself and eating his veggies.

He finally shook off the vines and twigs from his shoes and shivered.

"Picked a good time for it, huh? What's this? The tip of winter?"

Ginko gave a quiet hum of agreement, glancing around them and tugging his scarf a little higher over his mouth. "Mm. Isn't exactly the best weather we get around here. Is it different in Hawksaw?"

JW dipped his antlers. "We're not really done with fall yet. On the other side of the world and all. Pumpkin-flavored everything!"

He started to clamber up the dead riverbank.

"Is that a future thing or an America thing?"

Ginko walked over to the edge of the bank, offering a hand to help JW up the rest of the way.

JW's brows sprang up. Usually, he'd snub any form of help because he was stubborn and prideful, but Ginko had these huge hands that he hadn't been able to stop staring at so he flung up his arm and took hold. He was far lighter than the bug master, but his backpack made him cumbersome to pull the rest of the way up.

"Little of both, I think!" He steadied himself with a nearby sapling, then continued hanging onto Ginko and shook his hand. "Nice t'see ya!"

James was not a subtle man.

Meanwhile, Ginko was, at least socially speaking, not a particularly perceptive man. He helped JW up and, while he looked vaguely startled at the handshake, he didn't seem to think much of it. After all, he already knew James tended to be a good bit more tactile than he was used to. "Yeah; good to see you, too."

Ginko was finally released and JW took hold of his backpack straps.

"So, where'd that road go?" He wanted to hear more about the strange places and strange creatures in this version of the past. He wasn't even sure it was the right past. With some help from Noelle, he'd crawled the internet and found no traces of the mushi. However they had spelled it wrong and there was a very good chance that was why.

"North." Not much of a reply, and Ginko's face showed pretty well that he knew it. He gestured for JW to follow him as he continued toward the well - it wasn't too far, now that the snow was starting to clear up a little.

"I can tell you on the way, if you're alright with walking for a bit. I really should get this done today."

Brows up, JW followed. That was a pretty clipped answer and only made JW curious. He eyed the clumps of snow with wonder. It was so strange to see it so early in the year. Hawksaw didn't get snow until February.

When he saw the well he had a decent idea of what Ginko was doing. "I walked all the way here, didn't I?"

Ginko gave a quiet hum of confirmation, walking over to the old well and peering inside. He gave the rope a couple quick tugs, giving a satisfied nod when it actually moved. Good. This would have been a lot harder if he couldn't get the bucket up.

He started pulling on the rope, hauling up the pail as he spoke over his shoulder. "Main reason I decided to go that way was to visit a friend - see, she's lived up there nearly all her life, and doesn't really have the option of going anywhere else, and it had been a while since I'd seen her. On the way between here and there, though, there are a few villages - about the size of this one, a couple slightly bigger. So it was a good chance to look for some work on the way up."

He rounded the well, hands still tucked in his pockets, leaning like a curious bird--close enough to see but not so far that he couldn't bound away like a spooked deer at the first sign of trouble.

"You're a regular Orkin Man, huh?" JW felt the smallest pang of jealousy at the mention of this 'friend' of Ginko's. Who was she? Was she hot? Why couldn't she leave her house? "So, what's the damage? Still haunted?"

Unfortunately, if JW wanted to hear more about said friend, he would have to wait a bit. Ginko fully intended to tell this chronologically.

He pulled the pail up and peered into it. There was a thin layer of ice along the top of the water in it, and he hummed disapprovingly for a moment. Great. That meant either dead or dormant Suiko, and he couldn't be sure which. He'd check the liquid water in the meantime.

He started talking again as he scooped some water into a jar, then set both it and his pack down on the ground to swing open the box and start pulling open drawers. "If you're asking about the mushi, yeah, there were a few infestations... now, most of them were pretty run-of-the-mill. One place had a few Un infections - mushi that eat sound. This time of year, it's not uncommon for them to hide in people's ears. Easy to diagnose, easy to cure... it was mostly things like that.

In one village, though, there was a problem that I had only seen a couple times before... it was getting into winter by then, and as the weather kept getting colder, a few people starting suffering from symptoms as if they were overheated. Nothing seemed to help, and it was getting bad enough for some that they would try to jump into the nearest river to cool down, and it was all their families could do to stop them."

JW wasn't quick enough to hide the worry that flashed across his face. There were mushi that hid in your ears? It made him shudder and he rubbed his arms to chase away the crawling feeling. He had enough problems between his ears, he didn't need spirits too.

He propped his elbows on the edge of the well and listened. This Ginko really knew his craft. The way he spoke, James thought, made him think maybe it was a family business--something he'd done for years and years. It was nice and honestly he felt a little intimidated. JW hadn't been a world-walker for very long and he was still tangling with faeries like a cat with a cactus.

The thought of all those people hurting and not knowing why...he ran a hand over his bandaged arm. He wondered if it was mushi or something yet to be diagnosed.

"What happened?"

"Well, as it turned out..." He paused, tapping a bit of brownish powder from a small jar into the water in the larger one. No algae this time of year, so he would have to go with another method. He swirled it around for a few moments as he continued.

"As it turned out, the mushi was a type that normally didn't live in human bodies at all; it's pretty rare, and usually spends the winter hiding inside the bodies of small birds, sometimes boosting their body temperatures a little to make it more comfortable for themselves. But these ones must have been caught without hosts after most of the birds in the area migrated or went into hiding to escape the snow. So they latched onto humans who were passing through the woods instead.

Trouble is, humans have lower body temperatures than birds do, so the mushi had to push them up higher in order to survive. Unfortunately, that left their hosts with dangerously high fevers.

In the end, the solution turned out to be pretty simple; none of the infected villagers wanted to be anywhere near fire, because of how warm they were already. But, after they were made to sit near a fire for a while and get warmer, the mushi stopped forcing their body temperatures higher. It was kind of a risky move, but the warm room made the mushi more willing to leave their hosts, and they could take medicine to actually force them out. From there, it was just a matter of catching the mushi and letting them go back into the woods. With any luck, they would find proper hosts out of the birds still in the area."

He gave another frustrated hum as he checked the now-green water in the jar. Still not safe, then. That made the answer as to what to do next simpler than if the liquid water had been safe but he hadn't known about the ice, anyway.

The paper catches his attention. He'd seen people use it to test water quality before but he never thought of using it to look for spirits. He'd only visited this time period a few times now and already he was getting new ideas to make spook wrangling back home easier.

But when it came to the story itself, JW listened in a quiet horror.

"It almost sounds like these mushi of yours are sentient viruses..."

"Some are a bit like viruses, I suppose. But most aren't actually dangerous, and those that can be usually aren't unless they end up somewhere they shouldn't be. They don't choose to hurt people."

He carved a second mark on the wooden part of the well, then sealed the jar in his hand and slipped it into his pocket. "That should do it for this one. I'd hoped they would be gone by now, but... no such luck, I guess."

He propped his elbows on the well and thatched his fingers together, stealing a glance at the icy, sentient, man-drowning depths.

"Right, right, but...why isn't the countryside in hysterics over these invisible confused...I don't know. Spirits? Are they spirits?"

"Close enough. Technically, they are alive, just... not quite in the same way we are."

As for the first question, he gave a slight shrug as he picked up his box and hooked the straps back over his shoulders. "Encounters with mushi are rare enough in some places that some people don't even know they exist, so there's that. Those who do usually have enough contact with mushi masters that they can usually find a solution if something happens. It's just a part of life."

"Back up, back up," He lifted his hands. "A mushi master? So you are part of a business...how's that happen? You notice there's a whole lot of weird spirit germs in the area and decide to get rid of them?"

"Not exactly; it's just a general term for people who do this kind of work. We mostly work independently."

Another shrug. "Only if they're causing trouble. Some places get by just fine with high populations of mushi; we only intervene if they become a problem."

"I see..." He wished there was a word for what he was so he could at least put it on a business card. James missed the eighties in their entirety so Ghostbusters went unknown. "Does it pay well?"

Ginko snorted. "Depends. It isn't exactly the most stable business; sometimes I'll get lucky, sometimes not. Some collectors are willing to pay a good bit for artifacts affected by or connected to mushi, so that can help."

"Hmm...you know." He rubbed his chin as he leaned away from the well. "I think there's a market for that back home. Friend a' mine says there's this market called Ebay and people are always sellin' haunted shit on there."

"Really? Around here it's usually just a matter of getting lucky and happening to know someone who's interested. Occasionally other mushi masters will be interested, but... usually, we see enough of that to begin with."

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