Overview
The Moan-Carry Wraith is the lean, quick shape of the moor — thin through the jaw, long through the shade, the head a little high on the body, and the whole of it reading as one low line from crown to nothing, built to move where the moan-line runs and to spend a soul the size of a whisper. It is the second of the Wraiths a stranger meets in The Moaning Moor, and the one the moor keeps for the part of the moor the Shade-Sense wraith will not cross.
Habitat
The Moan-Carry Wraith keeps the deep ground of The Moaning Moor, the moors beyond the moaning-rings where the grey shimmer runs old and the moan is thinnest. It needs three things: a moor old enough to hold the carry, a moan-line long enough to spend the soul, and a soul that is being kept by the Shade-Sense line. The young wraiths are set into the deep moors, where the grey is oldest, and they learn to carry before they learn to stand, because the carry is the only mother the moor has.
Appearance
The silhouette is the lean, quick line — thin through the jaw, the shade long, the head a little high on the body, the whole of it built to slip between the moan-lines. Males stand 1.75 m, lean through the jaw, with the shade longer than the Shade-Sense line; females stand 1.52 m, quicker still, with a longer memory of the moan. The base shade is a pale grey fading to true black at the trailing edge, the black of the deep moor, with a pale bone-white rim at the eye and the carry-mark a wash of sea-black at the throat, the sea-black being the moan made shade, and the depth of the sea-black is the length of the moan.
Behaviour
The Moan-Carry Wraith moves fast and hollow, 6 m/s along the moan-line, and it does not make a sound the moor is not already making. It reads the moor before it moves in it: the shape of a soul by the shade it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a name that has been taken and not kept, all of it arriving before the step is made. It is patient in a different way from the Shade-Sense wraith, patient in the way a held moan is patient, and it will hold a moan in the moor for hours before spending the soul, because a soul spent in the moor is a soul no one can see being spent.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the carry, and the carry is the promise: the Moan-Carry wraith holds one moan, and the moan does not come back until the soul is spent, and the nod that is the soul is the last word of the moor. The second weapon is the hollow, because the carry is not always the soul, and the hollow that does not touch is the word the carry is too quiet for.
Magic Alignment
The Moan-Carry Wraith stands in the service of Omnath, the Last Memory, the deity of the last remembering, and its magic is the carrying of the moan — the power to make the moan into a thing the shade holds and the holding into a soul. Moan-Carry is the primary gift: the moan carried across the moor, the soul spent on the stranger, and the sea-black at the throat that is the moan made shade, because the sea-black is the carry made visible, and a deep sea-black is a long moan.
Society
A Moan-Carry Wraith walks in a deep moor of four to eight, and the deep moor is led by the one who has carried the longest moan, because the deep moor is the only ground in the world where the carrying is the law. The hierarchy is by the length of the carry: the one whose moan goes farthest keeps the deep moor's best moan-mouth, and the one whose sea-black is deepest keeps the moaning-ring. The young wraiths share the moan-line and share the carry, and the carry is the only school the moor has, and the school is the moor, and the moor does not grade, the moor only carries.
Culture & Lore
The Moan-Carry Wraith keeps its lore in the carry, and the carry keeps it better than the soul does, because the carry is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone moans. The old wraiths say the first Moan-Carry wraith was a moan that learned to stand, and the moor gave it a body because the moor had no other way to keep the carrying. They call the strays the carry takes "the ones who were worth the soul," and they keep the best of the moan-mouths — the sea-black of the ones who were quiet enough to be a carry — on the moor, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Moaning Moor, the part of it that is beyond the moaning-rings and older than the standing. The Moan-Carry Wraith is the moor's second voice, and the voice is quiet in the way the deep is quiet, and the quiet is the one thing the moor cannot lose, because the soul needs the carry the way the moan needs the shade. The moan-lines are kept quiet by the young, the deep moors are kept old by the line, and the dead are kept where the nod fell, which is the one law the deep does not break.
Relations
The Moan-Carry Wraith keeps a quiet, moan-kept peace with the Shade-Sense line of The Moaning Moor, a peace of the carried moan and the kept soul that has held since the first stranger fell. To Omnath, the Last Memory, the Moan-Carry line is the first remembering made quick, and the line keeps a single sea-black wisp of the shade at the moan-mouth for the god, which is the one offering the god has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Moan-Carry Wraith is the second hollow test the moor offers, the carry that asks which of them the moan will keep and which of them the moan must spend. It is the figure that carries the moan while the oaths are made above the ground, and the figure whose carrying is the map the war is moaned by, because the moor has heard every approach, and the moor has carried them, and the moor is the one page in the world the war cannot set down. The moor will be carried before the war is over, and the Moan-Carry wraith is the carrying, and the carrying does not lie, and the carrying does not rest.