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The sun was rising. It was hard to tell at first, that tell tale red glow still present in the deepest midnight. And still that midnight chill clung to air, air that tasted of iron, metallic and sweet.
Winter was coming. The nipping of frost in those quiet moments when one had the luxury of thinking about it. And now that Cleo thought about it, there had been a lot more of those quiet moments as of late. Cleo often found themself humming or mumbling to try to fill the hollow silence.
This morning however, there was the sound of a bird calling. It wasn’t singing so much as it was squawking. An ill and violent noise. A crow maybe, or a raven, or some other dark and winged creature that had come to fill the vacuum. Cleo had never learned to identify birds, and she had no real intention of doing so. These omens were all the same, squawking.
But still, it was better than the complete and utter quiet.
Cleo stepped outside. Pearl was still sleeping, her body still convinced that it needed rest. Even if it was not a true sleep, and even if Cleo kept reminding her that she couldn’t really sleep, Pearl still kept trying. But if it gave Pearl some sense of peace, then Cleo supposed that was enough.
Routine helped, for both of them. Even now after all this time the chaos of before still clung to them, still echoed at the edge of vision and behind closed eyes. But routine said ‘it's okay, there’s nothing left to fight.’
So Cleo started walking to the edge of town. They had rebuilt it, cleaned away all the signs of fire and struggle, raised walls and patched roofs. Cleo didn’t know what Oakhurst looked like before they came here. She had heard stories of course, passed down in the family, and she imagined it had been some bright and bustling town. That’s what had Owen implied, in those few moments when his guard had dropped enough to hint at the past.
A town of two thousand seven hundred and ninety nine.
While it was mad to think they had brought it back to exactly what it had been, Cleo liked to think it was close. At least now, it looked like a real town. A real town that lived and breathed and wasn’t braced for war.
Cleo made their way to Ren’s old cabin, the first stop on their weekly walk. The cabin had been kept in good shape, Ren had built it well and any of the boards that began to rot or wear away were swiftly replaced. But Cleo wasn’t here to check on the cabin.
Cleo was here to check on the two graves beside it.
The banners wavered lazily in the slight breeze. The colour had been bleached a bit by time and the cloudy sun, their edges fraying. But Cleo and Pearl had talked and they both agreed that the banners should not be replaced. Those banners were a symbol of time, those were Ren and Martyn’s banners, and some other piece of cloth bearing the same colours would be a fraud.
Cleo knelt down and brushed the dirt from the stone. She plucked the weeds that started to sprout around their base, careful not to disturb the twin black flowers still growing in the soil, nor the small field of sunflowers that she had planted behind them a long while ago, and replanted when they started to wilt and die over and over again. The names were beginning to fade, the stone worn. Martyn. Ren. Written in Sausage’s neat and cursive script. That was why they still hesitated to carve the names deeper, because Cleo was certain, no matter how carefully they traced those flowing letters, it wouldn’t look the same.
And who was Cleo to lay claim to Sausage’s tribute? He was the one who had dug those graves. He was the one who had dragged their bodies out of the town, one far more broken than the other. He was the one who laid them to rest and who carved those names into stone. Immortality in the way that only an author can grant.
So Cleo wiped away the dust and pulled the weeds and took a long, quiet moment to watch those banners wavering and think about what could have been.
And then Cleo left and made their way to the front of town. Here stood another pair of graves. Graves that held no bodies and were instead a monument. These were different. Cleo hadn’t known Abolish’s parents. And from what Cleo heard they had died when he was very young. Alaric and Reiah Veylocke.
That was when she noticed a single flower sitting between the two graves. A rose, freshly cut. Abolish must have been here in the last couple of days. He had come to pay his respects every once and a while, quietly, without letting Cleo or Pearl know he was there. The only sign was that single flower. Though by now, it must have been a descendant of his that visited. Even if Abolish had lived long and well, as far as Cleo was aware there was no way he could have lived this long. Still, it was nice to imagine it was still him, still somehow young and unchanged.
Cleo did the same, brushing away the dirt and dust, careful to not disturb the rose. They pulled the weeds that started to sprout, as well as the blades of grass that grew tall enough, threatening to cover the stone. She gently pruned the lilacs that grew tall beside the headstones. They didn’t need to be watered, the rain was frequent enough. The reason the flowers grew and the stone wore away.
Abolish’s writing was less flowery than Sausage’s, but still neat and careful. Impossibly neat, Cleo still wondered how a human hand could write so perfectly.
“Thank you for raising me. Your son, Abolish.”
Those words were starting to fade, but again, it didn’t seem right to write them again. Cleo was not the one mourning them. It wasn’t Cleo’s place. But still, Cleo took a moment of silence. A moment to think about what could have been.
Yes, thank you Alaric and Reiah. You raised a great son.
Cleo made their way into the woods. The trees had grown back, the forest healing itself. Still some of the trees that had survived bore scars, trunks blackened in places. The kind of ashened history that Cleo and Pearl couldn’t scrub away. Down the path, then off it, to the river’s edge.
This grave was new. Newer than the other graves at least. Every year Scott, Drift, and Shelby came back to visit Avid’s grave, but inevitably they would always make the full circuit, taking a moment by all those headstones. And they would come and stay with Pearl and Cleo in town for a night, or maybe two, and then they would head back to their lives far away from all these memories.
But eventually, forty or fifty years after, Cleo couldn’t quite remember how many, that visit included one more thing.
Shelby had dug Pyro a grave.
There wasn’t a body to bury. By Shelby’s own account Pyro had turned to ash in seconds, what was left of him quickly lost to dust and wind. But still, a headstone had been erected and a name had been inscribed in stone. Pyro.
“Somebody mourned him eventually.”
Shelby’s handwriting was cursive and messy, the letters legible but threatening to disappear into slanted marks that still spoke of anger after all those years. But still, mourning. And still Cleo had been there and still Cleo had seen Shelby crying.
And after that, the breeze blowing near the castle had become a little more tame.
Cleo cleaned the dirt and mud away from the stone. Its proximity to the river meant the stone wore down quicker, nearly always damp. Cleo dried it the best she could. If it had been built at the same time as the others, those words would probably have worn away completely by now.
Cleo took a quiet moment to watch the river. Even with everything that he had done, all of that pain rushing so quickly out of check, he deserved to be mourned. Think about what could have been.
Cleo turned and hiked back up the hill. At its top, a lone grave. Avid. This year’s flowers had wilted. Cleo kept them there for as long as they had some colour left in them, but now the bouquet was completely brown. She picked them up, and brushed away the loose petals that fell. They cleaned away the dirt and plucked the weeds.
This grave held no body. Afterall, vampires did not leave behind anything but dust. That was the trade off for such a long life. When you were gone, you were gone. There was no point in going back to the crypt and seeing if there was any of that dust left, especially since the grave had already been made.
Cleo had been shocked at first when they learned it was Scott who had made that grave, surprised that there was a heart left to mourn. But Scott genuinely seemed to honour his words to a dying man. His handwriting was unlike the other’s, pointed where it should have been more round. And his spelling was off too, with accents above some of the letters. A sign of how much the language had changed in six hundred years.
Cleo took a quiet moment. She had laughed when she heard the news, and while she didn’t feel bad about her reaction, it didn’t mean she didn’t hold any grief. For what could have been.
Cleo made their way across the bridge to the castle. Repairing the bridge had been long and hard work but it had been done. Now there was no need to worry about falling through the gaps or the stone giving out from under them.
They steadied themself. This was always the hardest, even after all these years. Cleo walked past the castle to the cliff edge where there stood a single grave. A single tear fell silent down her cheek.
She knelt down and relit the torch that sat on the stone, illuminating the name on the headstone.
The doctor.
That was how everyone had known him. And that was how Cleo was certain he would want to be known. Legundo was just a name. Legundo could have been anyone. Legundo was the man who followed his orders.
The doctor was more than that. The doctor had a level head and tried so hard to be kind and helpful and in the end did one last graceful thing.
Cleo brushed off the dirt and Cleo pulled the weeds. And very carefully, Cleo refreshed that name carved by their own hand. Their own shaking grieving hand that traced out their own tribute. Handwriting that was plain and simple, not particularly messy and not particularly neat.
And Cleo took a long silent moment. To be mad that she was the one that had to do it. To think about what could have been. To promise, again, to be good.
Cleo steadied themself and concentrated and felt their body twist and mold and crack and burst and then they were flying. She liked to walk most of the way, it felt more caring, but the distance ahead warranted wings. The ground rushed by beneath, trees and dirt and water, greyer and greyer as they continued onwards.
A crumbling tower came into view and Cleo landed. Her body stretched and morphed and again formed its common shape. Its human shape that wasn’t human. Here, a grave. Here, a grave that Abolish had rightfully thought it was necessary to give warning regarding its presence.
Here, lies Owen.
According to Abolish, he had softened in his final moments. He had wanted it. He had given in and moved on. Cleo found that hard to believe at first, but as time passed it seemed like less of an impossibility. But still, all of that pain, seeing the doctor ripped to shreds, a loose end…
Cleo brushed away the dirt and pulled the weeds. Abolish’s perfect handwriting, worn but still clear as the cloudy day through these sharpened eyes.
“He finally got to choose his fate.”
Funny to think that Owen of all people had believed he had no agency. No matter how much of his past had died with him Cleo couldn’t fathom any sort of real equivalent. Anything that came close to the pain that never truly faded even after she stopped fighting.
But still, an empty grave. All that hate gone with him, despite his attempts to the contrary. But still, there was mourning and still there was grief.
And Cleo took a quiet moment to think about what could have been.