Blink and You're Dead

Sometimes, it takes something like death to make you grateful to be alive. Sometimes that just wasn't enough. Luckily, this was not one such time. Zander was... well he supposed the word would be happy, but sometimes it didn't quite work out for him. In the moments between his growing facade with Ninette and writing to Juliet, he was nothing. Even the rumor mill forgot his name every so often, and if it didn't, sometimes he felt alone.

"Mother, Lover, Friend, Sister." He read, gazing down at a tombstone. He supposed that's what everyone was, in the end. The connections they made with others. That was the kind of thing he'd want on his grave, he reckoned. "Brother, Friend, Lover." Not that he was anyone's lover at the moment. Sadly, no one seemed interested in the slightest.

Continueing on, he came across another, smaller. A baby. 'Gone before His time.' There was a moment, sad and slow, in which he fancied that if he had done the noble thing and just not been born, she would still be alive. He was under the firm belief that this was true, for everyone who knew her sang her praises, and they remarked upon the similarity of their names. He had been named after "Alex Dawson", and this was why he'd never let anyone call him that. His name was Zander. He didn't deserve to have her name.

He never would.

Sitting on the soft grass, he faced the somber statue of an angel, hands covering its face in apparent grief. Staring up at it, he frowned slightly. Hadn't this statue been... no that couldn't be right. It wouldn't have moved. There were at least six other angels in the small cemetery, and so there was a chance he'd been mistaken.

Slowly, he rose to his knees, a soft half song, half prayer flowed from his lips. The italian sounded foreign in the French air, but he was used to being an irregularity. He was used to being this way.

His voice was pure, innocent, though with a tremor of maturity and bass. He wasn't one of the best, in his own opinion, but the kids had loved to hear his voice, and Italian just made everyone sound more magical.

His tattoo shined in the fading sunlight as dusk started to settle, but he could not bring himself to move.

The cemetery was as good a place as any.

Ondrea looked down at the rather pretentious collection of small floral bouquets and small garlands that her aunt had owled overnight. Be a dear and leave these on the family graves there in Palaisvue, won't you? -Auntie Carole

It seemed an odd endeavor, leaving flowers for people so long dead. Most of the graves in the cemetery were for people who had died before even her aunt would have known them. Nonetheless, the teen made her way to the graveyard and visited the odd assortment of Garneau graves (and a couple with other names), leaving the flowers her aunt had sent on each.

The werewolf found herself frowning down at an extra bundle. Clearly, either she had miscounted or her aunt had done so. As she wondered what the squib would have her do with the extra bouquet, the breeze shifted and a familiar scent reached her nose. Ondrea turned, gaze soon settling on her friend even as his voice also reached her.

Wending her way silently between the stones, she stopped short distance behind him. Ondrea leaned back against a tree, waiting for him to finish or notice her.

His voice drifted into silence, even as he opened his eyes and looked up at the angel once more. She peered down at him from above her fingers. Frowning, he rose to his feet, sure for a fact that this angel had been hiding behind her hands when he'd begun singing. For whatever reason, he didn't want to take his eyes off of hers. There he stood, staring up at the statue for a time most immeasurable, fancying that he could detect some sort of emotion from it.

All at once, he felt the presence of someone behind him and turned sharply, and facing that way. The shout died on his lips as he noticed it was Ondrea, and a smile replaced it instead. "Hello friend!" He called, a grin growing on his face before he paused again, and it slipped off. "What are you doing in a cemetery?"

"They say some of the statues come alive," Ondrea remarked, rather than immediately return the greeting. She did smile warmly back as she moved forward. "Hardly a surprise in a magical cemetery, really." Withdrawing her wand from her pocket, she pointed it at the angel. "Stupefy.

"I don't trust anything that makes me second-guess my senses," the lycan offered by way of explanation. She wrapped her arms around the boy in a hug before stepping back and holding up the extra bouquet. "Putting flowers on family plots for my aunt," she answered. "Know a place for this bundle?"

“They do?” Zander frowned slightly, glancing over his shoulder to gaze up at the angel, shoving his hands in his pockets as he did. He didn’t remember seeing any statue movement, but then again he’d been kneeled at its feet, singing a song. Perhaps the angels liked his singing.

“Does Stupefy work on statues?” He asked, frowning up at the thing before shrugging and turning back to her, smiling widely as he wrapped his arms around her. He hesitated briefly before letting her pull away, the goofy grin that had grown across his face unaffected by the distance between them. “I feel as if I haven’t seen you in a long while, Ondrea.” Zander told her, a slight frown almost knocking the grin from its perch, but not quite succeeding. “Have you been busy?”

He glanced around, gaze eventually stopping at the angel’s feet. “How about the Ponds?” He asked, gesturing to the grave the angel stood upon. “They don’t have any flowers. Usually someone comes along every once in a while and leaves a bunch, but I haven’t seen him lately.” He shrugged, glancing up at the angel again. It hadn’t moved since Ondrea’s stunning spell, but one could never be too careful. Not trusting that which made you second guess your senses was a good instinct, he decided, and he would do the same from now on.

"Only if they're really alive," Ondrea replied.

She canted her head in acknowledgment. "You have not idea how busy," the werewolf stated dryly. "Not only have I been attending to schoolwork, but I've been spending a rather significant portion of free time at the pack house. Apparently, I'm learning something important, just don't ask me what it might be."

The girl crouched down beside the marker, a hand reaching out to brush away the dust that had gathered in the engraved letters. Laying the bouquet at its base, she stood again, casting one last wary glance at the angel before stepping away and linking arms with Zander.

"So what have you been up to?" Ondrea asked. "It's practically summer, now. Got any plans?"