We all need partners.

Fellow laborers in the work we're doing.

Hands put to the plow alongside our own calloused fingers.

Because you really can't do it alone.

Not if it is something of consequence.

But what happens when the partnership you've relied upon ends?

This is a story about partnership that persists even when we may not perceive it.

It's a story about presence and absence, the scene and the unseen, about blindness and vision,

and what's waiting for you when you move from one to the other.

I'm Justin Gerhardt.

Welcome to Holy Ghost Stories. Elijah Elijah and Elisha, Israel's two premier prophets, walked together across the dusty soil just north of the Dead Sea.

There's an easy air of familiarity between them, but it's charged, too, with the tension of something understood but yet unspoken.

One of the men's faces bears marks of grief, preliminary grief, the kind of grief that precedes loss. The other's face betrays feelings of anticipation.

Elijah moves quickly, but Elisha keeps pace with his mentor, until the end.

Suddenly, the dust at their feet rises, swirling into the air. Grass and trees genuflect as wind seems to blow from every point on the compass.

Sparrows and dragonflies tumble around the pair of prophets flung this way and that.

Elisha squints, shielding his eyes with his forearm, instinctively looking toward the heavens.

When he does, he sees the sun, moving, coming straight toward him.

No, it's not the sun.

It's fire.

And it's not coming toward him.

It's coming toward Elijah.

...