Morning at last, and a pounding headache.
I’d woken at whatever time it was, and levered myself up from my rumpled bed to wash myself. (Again, not something we strictly need to do, but… old habits…)
And then I’d sat at my table, waiting for my tea to brew.
Caitlyn was on the move.
I had no idea where or for what reason, just that her location in existence was not the same as the night before.
I wondered what she was up to.
Probably buying new pencils and paper, my conscience muttered.
I flushed.
I could… probably… get back to her room and return her book.
But… part of me didn’t want to. Part of me wanted to keep it and the brief contact it represented, the brief touch of something illicit and deeply, deeply private.
But I knew that would be unwise.
So I resolved to place it back where I’d found it.
But first…
I staggered back into my sleeping area.
I pulled off my cotton shift.
I concentrated a moment, and opened a drawer. I lifted the black denim jeans out and stepped into them. I didn’t usually go about in denim, but I felt off and needed a change.
I adjusted my bra, added some embroidery to it on a whim. Then I manifested a faded peach low-cut tee-shirt of the sort so many girls seemed to wear in this day and age. All the better to camouflage myself from anyone who might notice me.
Into my pink sneakers, and then a moment to calm myself.
I glance in the mirror.
I looked almost… normal. A somewhat-attractive human girl, young, but not remarkable in any particular way. Small breasts, narrow hips, nice but forgettable face.
Well-camouflaged.
I sighed.
I retrieved her drawing book from my book case, then walked to the small clear section of floor near my table.
I focussed.
My wings curved, cupping the currents of reality.
It was hard to visualise where I wanted to be, but I managed it in the end. It’s more difficult for me when it’s a place, not a person.
Papers rustled in her tiny, stuffy room as I made my entry. She’d clearly been searching for her drawing pad; I mentally kicked myself.
I moved to her desk and set the pad down gently in front of her laptop. I felt like leaving a note or something, but the idea was ridiculous when viewed dispassionately. What could I possibly say?
Better to pretend she’d just… not seen it.
Like that would work, my inner cynic muttered.
I took one last look around the semi-dark… sarcophagus, it felt like. A place where she came to entomb herself at the end of every horrid day.
I wondered where she was.
What she was doing.
I pretended, briefly, that I wasn’t about to break even more rules.
Because, of course, if I concentrated, I would know precisely where she was.
Precisely.
So I took a breath and did just that.
She wasn’t far away, by my standards. A few miles.
Maybe I could… drop by.
Just… look in on her from a distance. Make sure she was okay.
It would hardly make things worse; they were already just about as bad as they could be.
And… anyway…
I… needed to see her.
For her sake, I hurriedly pretended to myself, still making excuses, still not prepared to admit that it was actually for me.
So I focussed again, and shifted again, careful this time to hold myself in the in-between, apart from it all until I could find a spot I could manifest where I would not be noticed.
A puff of wind; yew branches stirred and creaked above me.
I crouched down, eased out from under the boughs, and stood.
And realisation dawned.
Ah.
Of course.
A graveyard.
A less-disordered me would have been amused at the irony.
I, however, was not in the mood.
I stalked slowly down a narrow gravel walkway, winding by wide conic sections slowly closer to where I knew I would find her. The land curved and sloped; an old hillside farm bought and repurposed as a cemetery when the soil grew too unproductive and the farmer too old to work it.
Aged stones surrounded me; reminding me uncomfortably of the marker stones outside the Celestial city.
For humans, this place was as final and as disturbing.
I felt a pang of sympathy – many of the graves were unkempt, but many also had flowers, or balloons, or soft toys, or a million other different types of tokens of love and loss left by the bereft.
I slunk around a pruned and ordered stretch of holly, the red berries bright against the green-black leaves.
And I saw her.
She stood, buried in a black coat several sizes too large for her, hunched up, staring down at a plain wooden cross between the lines of newer headstones.
I eased carefully backwards until the holly screened me, and began my… vigil, for lack of a better word.
I watched as she began to speak; the words too soft for me to hear.
I watched as she pulled a small folded sheet of paper out of a pocket, then pressed it to her lips before she knelt and tucked it between the stems of a pot of fading Daffodils.
She stood, and scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes before she turned and stumbled away.
I let her gain some ground on me, waiting until another long arm of hedgerow had obscured her. Then I set off in pursuit, screening myself with plant life and topology.
She meandered slowly back to the graveyard’s wrought-iron maw, and from there lethargically along the street to a bus stop.
She sat under the cantilevered plastic roof, and stared at the ground in front of her.
I leaned against the trunk of a mournful Cypress tree, and watched her until she’d climbed onto a bus.
I rolled the tension out of my back and neck; taking it as a good sign that she’d had somewhere to go.
I couldn’t wait any longer; I needed to get back Above before someone noticed my absence.
But I had one brief detour to make before I left – back to Rhiannon’s grave and all the spilled dreams that had been interred there with her.
I paused a while, staring downwards at the damp, dew-gemmed grass. A strange custom, really. But I supposed it gave them somewhere to come to remember.
Nobody had ever been able to do it for me.
The thought hurt me.
So I frowned, concentrated for a moment, and gently placed the freshly-made blossom of Celandine over Rhiannon’s heart.
Then I turned, gathered my intent, and departed.
I returned to “work”, and Caitlyn became my dirty little secret.
I began to steal little snatches of time so that I could “look in” on her.
Sneaking a glimpse of her on her way to work.
Watching from an alley as she boarded or alighted from a bus.
Taking stock of the tiny circle of emotionally-inadequate friends that she seemed to have.
Following, distantly, as she rambled the country paths of the area, or visited old Churches, or sat, alone, in cheap cafes.
The latter were the worst for me; she’d sit there, staring blankly into the distance as her tea grew cold in front of her.
She seemed utterly alone.
She visited the graveyard once a week, like clockwork. Rain or sun she’d be there, staring down at her friend’s grave as it slowly grew a headstone, foot stone and minimalist, bevelled borders.
Some days she’d talk; no doubt spilling her heart out to the missing half of her.
Other days she was simply silent – cold as ice, pale as moonlight on the distant sea.
I ruefully came to realise that I was a stalker.
So I tried to stay away, for a day, or a week…
But I was never able to.
She compelled me, and I was drawn to her like a moth to the flame.
Thoughts of her began to consume me; an obsession. I’d sit, staring at a wall, thinking of little but the sound of her voice or the feel of the fabric of her coat or the way she’d begged me to stay and talk to her.
The wet of winter arrived down Below, and I’d stand there, hair plastered to my scalp as I shadowed her hither and thither.
Lucius knew I was up to something, but like any good friend in an established bureaucracy, he clearly had assumed the mantra of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell.
He took to visiting when I was not on my extramural activities.
He’d sit silently with me as we stared out at the Celestial skyline, our tea or the bourbon he so liked in vessels by our sides.
It helped that I was far from the only ragged usher in our motley crew, so my… distraction… seemed to sail past Azrael, bar the occasional contemplative look. I did what I needed to, was scrupulously careful not to be noticed by another human, and reported back after each shift with a “Nothing out of the ordinary,” or some variation thereof.
And in those precious, infrequent times I could see Jezebel, I felt almost… normal.
Almost.
Because the lie lay black between us.
So I pretended for her, and lied for her, and lied for me.
And my bleakness grew and grew and grew.
Meanwhile, at least once a week I was following Caitlyn like her own second skin.
Slowly and stupidly I started to take liberties. I’d sidle out of cover, crossing open ground and trusting in Caitlyn’s learned behaviour – she never looked up, never glanced behind herself when leaving certain places; so I felt it safe enough to flit closer to her, to share a space slightly less isolated from her. Being close to her was a compelling need for me; being close enough to see the fine detail of her hair, or the shape of the necklace she might be wearing. What clothes she’d chosen. One or twice, a whiff of her scent…