The Graveyard | Early Afternoon | Sunday | May 16

[therewaslife]

Bod always seemed to find a measure of calmness upon visiting the graveyard, even if it wasn't the one he wanted it to be. Still, he'd been here enough lately to have memorized epitaphs, both in Latin and English. He'd created simple stories in his head for just from those words, made the names more than just etchings on granite.

Today, he needed the calmness. He hesitated to call his life tumultuous but it had been confusing. And it'd been the kind of confusing that he didn't really know how to deal with. When he'd left home, he wanted to experience everything. Now, he was realizing how idealistic that had been. He still wanted that, wanted everything, but he was having to adapt and adjust to some of the more unexpected things that hadn't really figured into that original statement.

He felt tired. Worn. It was ridiculous, he knew, to be feeling like this when Silas and a graveyard full of ghosts had done so much to make sure that he was safe and that he could be in public without looking over his shoulder. Bod could hear Silas in his mind, telling him in that quiet, precise tone that life isn't and wouldn't ever be easy.

His fingers brushed the top of a tombstone, letting the cold of the granite seep through his fingers. Silas was right, Bod knew. Life wasn't just one side of things. Life was everything. And he just had to figure things out.

[boy is thoughtful but the graveyard's an open place in town!]

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[funnyways.livejournal.com]

While she always found the iconography a bit chilling, Mina did enjoy visiting the graveyard. And today, she visited that afternoon to pay her respects to the dead. She did not know any of them personally, but she still had reverence for them. A reverence that bordered on jealousy.

She did not expect to encounter anyone, but when she stumbled across Bod she gave a quiet nod. "Good day, young sir," she greeted.

[therewaslife]

"Hullo, ma'am," said Bod, giving Mina a brief nod. He didn't think to ask why she was in the graveyard. He was there, after all. One didn't need a reason. "How are you today?"

[funnyways.livejournal.com]

"Quite well, on the whole," Mina said pleasantly, rather impressed by the boy's manners. "It is always nice to take a moment to reflect in the most tranquil of places on this island. I must apologize if I have interrupted any meditation."

[therewaslife]

"You haven't, don't worry," Bod said, shaking his head at that. "I was thinking but it isn't anything I haven't been thinking about for days now. I suppose I was after quiet more than anything. I like the stillness a graveyard can present sometimes."

[funnyways.livejournal.com]

"It is a place of peace, or at least it is meant to be," Mina agreed, fascinated by the composure with which Bod carried himself. "They do call it a final resting place. Hardly a place for rest if it were not quiet and still."

[therewaslife]

"They don't always rest," Bod said, smiling a bit fondly at a few errant memories. "Not that I can see these ghosts but where I'm from, the ghosts I know have lives, hobbies, chores, and various other things to do despite being dead. They remain active even in death."

[funnyways.livejournal.com]

"Active even in death?" Mina said with a little chuckle. "What will the universe think of next." It was a private joke, and she knew it was rude to make it when Bod could have no idea that she was amongst the ambulatory deceased herself. "Where are you from, that has such ghosts?"

Her curiosity would always get the best of her. In her case, curiosity did kill the cat. She just had had the fortune to stick around after that.

[therewaslife]

"England," Bod told her, leaning against a headstone and nodding. "I was raised in a graveyard that's a great deal larger than this. The ghosts that were at rest there, they raised me. So, I was given the ability to see what their everyday lives were like."

[funnyways.livejournal.com]

"I am from England myself," Mina said. "Though long ago."

She paused, knowing that she could not ask why he was raised in a graveyard by ghosts. The implications involved deceased parents, and that was hardly proper conversation for a first meeting.

"I am Wilhelmina Murray, landlady at one of the apartment buildings and nurse at the local clinic. But you may call me Mina for short."

[chosehumanity]

Because Bod's milkshake brought all the vampires to the graveyard Mitchell wasn't skulking in the graveyard, or anything. He was just... going for a walk, after a quick and early portal back from Bristol.

All right: so maybe Annie's mood was starting to bleed into his, and a moody ghost was hard enough to deal with without an equally moody werewolf.

Peace and quiet was needed, but with the convention guests in town, there were few places left to turn to for some of that. Crows followed him into the graveyard; he took a perch against a tree, and lingered for a while.

"I knew morbid was the in-thing these days," he called, after a short period of watching the boy mill about. "But don't you think you're taking it a little bit too far?"

[therewaslife]

Bod didn't startle (it took a lot for him to actually startle) but he did look up, eyes finding the owner of the voice. It took a moment to recognize him as one of his teachers due to being so far into his thoughts.

"Too far?" he questioned, resting one hand on the top of a tombstone. "Why? I like graveyards. They're quiet."

[chosehumanity]

"Might be because everyone's dead," Mitchell granted him. He raised his shoulder in a shrug. "Did you lose someone?"

One day, Mitchell would figure out this 'boundaries' thing. Somehow.

[therewaslife]

"I was raised by the dead so that doesn't much bother me," Bod said, looking over at Mitchell. "And my answer to that question would depend on your definition of losing, I suppose. There are different kinds of loss."

Not that he didn't think Mitchell had experienced that more than even he had but Bod said it anyway.

[chosehumanity]

"Of course there are," he said, and took a drag off his cigarette. Thoughtfully.

He'd be back to the snarky twenty-something human tone tomorrow morning. "But it takes a few particular kinds of loss to send someone your age skulking around a graveyard by themselves." He gave the cigarette a tap. "But at the end of the road the only thing that's just as simple as loss at the core of it is the fear of losing something or someone, the thought that you might have lost another layer of protection against whatever's lurking on the edge of your circle."

Kate would have been mocking him by now, but he wasn't in the jocular mood.

[therewaslife]

Bod cast his eyes down for a few moments, fingers scraping at the granite before he looked back up, still thoughtful but about different things than he had before.

"I feel comfortable here," he said, explaining his presence. "It feels like home even if it's not. I've lost a lot of people in the past, all because of me. I'm always afraid of that happening again, no matter how the loss happens. Though, doesn't just living your life mean your stripping away layers of protection so you can live?"

Odd, he thought, that those words had come out so easily when he Mitchell more from talking to Kate than anything else. "It's nice to have some familiarity, though. It's centering."

[chosehumanity]

"Figuring out who you are, that's what lets you live," Mitchell said. He pushed away from the tree, figuring it'd get him some more air. Metaphorically speaking. "At least in the sense that the lights are that much brighter and life really feels like life."

He came to a stop a few feet down, against a fence.

"Everyone needs their layers of protection. It's frightening out in the dark by yourself. For most people, anyway." He glanced at one of the headstones. "Most people would say this place was creepy."

He didn't sound like he was particularly agreeing with that fact.

[therewaslife]

"So I've heard," he said and smiled at that. Bod couldn't remember how many times he'd heard the words 'creepy' or 'scary' or 'weird' applied to his situation. After awhile, it was almost a comforting familiarity. "You don't look like you're particularly uncomfortable with being here. Does that mean you're not afraid, light notwithstanding?"

[chosehumanity]

Mitchell offered him a shrug, and a slight smile. "I don't think it's creepy," he said, simply. "Although I don't make a habit of hanging around it."

[loyal-type.livejournal.com]

It might be odd to some people, but Oz sometimes felt nostalgic for cemeteries. Of course most of the time he'd been in them was at night. But he wasn't feeling that nostalgic.

Right now he just sort of wandered aimlessly, marveling at how someplace that could be so spooky after dark, could be so peaceful during the day.

[therewaslife]

With how quiet and still the graveyard was, it wasn't hard to hear the approach of another. Bod looked up, glancing over towards Oz but saying nothing. He didn't know why the other man was here and he was loathe to interrupt someone's mourning.

So, he looked back down, eyes on the headstone and thoughts flitting off elsewhere.

[loyal-type.livejournal.com]

Not mourning per se, though he did sort of miss his high school days and just after.

He also didn't want to interrupt someone if they were mourning, and Bod looked like he might be. Still, he nodded amiably to the kid.

[therewaslife]

Bod wasn't in mourning, not for anyone here, and he was more thoughtful than anything else. Still, he'd learned manners at a young age and that meant Oz got a returned nod.

[loyal-type.livejournal.com]

"Visiting anyone?" Oz asked politely.

[therewaslife]

"I don't know anyone here," answered Bod, giving a brief shake of his head. "All of my loved ones are back home. I come here to think and rest."

[loyal-type.livejournal.com]

"Nice place for it." Oz nodded. "Peaceful."