Scary

Near the entrance to the burial ground, where the pines are grown bent and bound into an archway of sap green needles, Scary waits. She is alone, but then she is often alone while Spooky is working. Someone has to be lookout and it may as well be her. Were she anyone else, she might shiver against the cold fog that's rolled in with the night. It looms around the edges of the forest, softening the dark shadows of the trees and the grave markers into a gloomy murk that warms the ghoul's heart. She looks back down the path leading to the countryside's main road, but the night is empty except for her and the moon and her mate.

All at once playing lookout loses interest. There is no one coming. The night is too cold for midnight strolls. Soon it will snow and anyone with half an ounce of hot blood in their veins is nestled indoors.

Abandoning her post, Scary picks her way into the cemetery.

The lives of countless dragons all end here - among these rolling hills, under the gentle guard of pines. Hundreds of stone markers pop up like broken teeth in the frozen, rocky ground but Spooky is easy to find. She need only listen for the sound of his rummaging; only follow her nose to the smells of fresh, upturned earth and the faint miasma of dusty old remains.

----

The only true complaint Spooky has about his 'job' - such as it is - is the heavy lifting. Stone and earth are heavy. Even the occasional casket is heavy, though by the time he likes to find these the wood is worm eaten and soft with rot. But tonight is not such a night. Tonight the things he came for have been hidden well behind sturdy locks (defeated with a judicious application of his hacksaw), impossibly heavy granite vault lids (no match for gravity and a short fall) and now, finally, a rich maple casket lid (split neatly by the selfsame hacksaw).

From inside the treasure box, Spooky jiggles a clavicle free from its sternum and brushes the desiccated meat and dulled scales from the nooks and crannies. He holds it up, illuminated in the guttering candlelight of his oil lamp, and inspects it closely for defect.

"We-- We should get going," Scary says from the steps behind him. Her voice is so quiet - hardly more than a whisper. Spooky smiles to hear it but when he turns the sweet emotion is hidden under a scoundrel's grin and a flick of his tail.

"Nearly through here, love. Do you think this will do? Come closer." Perched on the exposed casket, nestled inside the ruined stone vault, he holds the clavicle out to her.

She sighs, looks behind her once more for sign of anyone but themselves, and then slips down the steps toward him. It is such a small tomb, having room only for two vaults and hardly anything else. Roots break through the low ceiling, grasping in the stale underground chamber, but where they brush her inky black feathers they find nothing to hold. She passes beneath them with only the tiniest ripple in her illusion to give away the truth.

"Here, try it." He holds the bone up to her breast, turns it one way or the other.

"It goes t-this way," she says, turning it over. And so it does. Scary fits the bone into place among the others - all stolen. Her image warbles over her chest as the intruder hands cut through the image of a dragon whole and living. "See?"

"Yes," he smiles.

She looks back at him and says in her best stern voice: "We should go."

Spooky bows his head. "Anything for you, love." He hands her the lantern and gathers together his tools, each one fitting neatly into a black rucksack. In an easy bound, he drops down onto the dusty stone ground and follows behind her up the shallow steps to the land of the living.

He stops only to turn the tomb's door shut, to jiggle the rusted old lock into place so that it might appear as yet unbroken and to brush cobwebs from the edge of his bag.

"I got you something else," Spooky says as he joins her on the footpath.

"A f-fibula?"

"Mm, no. Not this time."

"Oh-- What then?"

"This," he says. From the crook of his feathers, nestled neatly between the folds of his scarf, he pulls a small silver cuff with a brooding black gem on its face.

The female's eyes light up, "Oh." She takes it carefully, brushes the dust from the gem, picks a fleck of detritus from the filigree and smiles to him. "It's lovely."

"Not half as much as you, though."

Scary snorts and holds out her wrist that he might clasp on the shiny new treasure. "I won't tell any-anyone."

"Where it came from? -- I would hope not." He fixes it about her slim wrist, she turns her hand, watches the stone gleam. Together they turn down the path.

"N-No. What a, a romantic you are."

"You love it."
-Written by the wonderful Isobel