The breeze stirred the leaves high above me, and played with one or two loose strands of my scruffy brown ponytail.
A butterfly of some sort got briefly tossed around in an eddy before fluttering off in irritation.
I dug my fingers into the grass, enjoying the cool green scent of my garden.
Arcadia is a strange part of Above. It can be whatever you want it to be; a memory, a perfect representation of a real place, a surreal world of oil pastel and golden light… whatever you need. It can be affected by your mood, who you’re with, what you ate…
It’s a blank canvas, but what it ends up presenting you is not always what you expected.
So I sat on the gentle slope and stared at the old oak that had been a young oak when I was buried beneath it.
I hadn’t consciously meant to come here, and yet here I was.
By my graveside, as such.
How stereotypical – an Angel of Death lurking somewhere like this.
Though I doubt even the most stoned romantic would have visualised my Hello Kitty tee shirt and pink cotton shorts.
I thought about Rhiannon.
And then, of course, my thoughts slid onwards like a school of minnows.
To Caitlyn.
And how strange it had been to feel her, alive, in my arms for that brief, supremely-unwise period.
I sighed.
Lucius was somewhere, I suddenly knew. Looking for me. I’d need to announce myself before he’d find me. Arcadia has rules, see: no voyeurs allowed.
My lip twisted upwards into something someone who didn’t know me might have mistaken for a smile.
“I’m here,” I said, softly.
“Hello, Gwen. May I join you?”
“Yeah, come on in.”
The trees and woodland grasses of my scene blurred and rippled as Lucius shifted into my version of Arcadia. He glanced around, frowned, then squatted down on his haunches beside me, his aquiline ebony face creasing with stark lines of concern.
“I know this place,” he said softly.
“This is where it happened. This is where they did it.”
He frowned at me..
“Right over there,” I added, pointing towards a small patch of wild-flowers. “Give or take slippage. Two knives, I think, but it was three different men. I was so young. So innocent. So… stupid. Not much has changed, I guess.”
“This is not wise,” my friend said in his rich, rolling intonation of the highlands of Ethiopia.
“I know,” I whispered. “But… I can’t help it. Not now, and not today.”
He reached out and wrapped his wizened arm around me, pulling me in towards him; I buried my face in his neck and let out a single soft sound of… quite what, I don’t know. Sadness? Regret? Something along those lines, anyway.
“Ugh. You reek of Tequila,” he complained. “And… oh, of her too. Lucky girl.”
No judgement in his words; Lucius knew how the game was played. It wasn’t like he and Jezebel hadn’t had their own little shared and sordid moments back before I came along.
A little touch of jealousy that I quickly suppressed; I had no right.
I sniffed, rubbed at my eyes.
“Sorry. I’m… fragile today.”
“You should leave this place, Gwenhwyfar. Come back to Wales if you must, but stop coming here to Kilryden. It just hurts you, my dear friend. Why are you even here?”
“Because of Caitlyn Monroe,” I said. “That’s her name, you know. The girl at the passing… I needed somewhere to think. To deal with it, where fewer eyes are watching. And… I guess my subconscious decided I needed to be here.”
“You shouldn’t be thinking of her.”
“I’ve messed up her life…”
“Thinking of her will not change that. It will just create newer, greater problems…”
“I should check….”
“No, you shouldn’t. Gwenhwyfar, my dearest friend. Listen to an older and wiser voice. We are not meant to mingle with them. Wash your hands of it and walk away. Nothing good will come of this.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I whispered. “The sound of the pain in her voice when her… when the love of her life died. She’s twenty two, Lucius. Barely a woman.”
His eyes were ancient; dark and sad.
“We cannot fix them,” he said, softly, at last. “However much we might wish to, it’s not our place.”
“It’s not right,” I whispered. “It wasn’t her fault.”
“Nor was it yours. Sometimes… sometimes there’s nobody to fix it, and nobody to blame.”
“The Boss could fix it…”
“Perhaps. It’s certainly within his power to change everything, of course – but what would the second order effects be? The third order? The ninth? He’s the only one who sees it all. There must be a reason he lets this happen this way. I have to believe that.”
I slumped forward and hid my face in my arms.
He stayed by my side, in that wonderful silent way he had of not intruding but just being there if I needed him.