Secondhand Garagyre

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

LAITHOG

Another week passes, and she still has not come back to the cemetery.

If I knew how or where to find her, I would have left my pedestal for the first time in several hundred years. She has not ever missed this many visits. As it is, I have no clue how close or far she lives from where I sit. Nor has that information mattered until now.

The best I can do is to stay put and hope she shows back up. I am not sure what I will do if she does not come back soon.

My concern at her absence only grows by the day. Somewhere deep inside me, I know something is wrong. I do not know how, but I know something has happened to her. It has taken me awhile to admit it, even to myself, but a tenuous connection is forming between she and I . Perhaps … perhaps it will allow me to locate her, if she does not arrive on her own.

Lately , I have developed the habit of napping during midday when the sun is at its highest and being ‘awake’ from early evening to moonrise. I do not want to miss her if she comes at an odd time. Not that she ever has before, but I do not want to chance it either.

The sun, in all its fiery glory, has almost fully descended, daylight giving way to the soothing embrace of night. My sensitive ears strain for the slightest sound, hoping today will be the day she resumes her visits. Had my ears been flesh, they would be twitching restlessly, waiting for her arrival.

Faint rustling catches my attention. I identify it as the sound fabric makes as the body moves, and hope rises within my chest. The fact that I am so worried about a human female should cause a moment of concern, but I shrug it off. I feel as though I have gotten to know her over the last few months, and she is the only being on the planet who intrigues me.

Her grief… I understand it. I lost the other half of my soul, and so has she. I knew twins in my past life. The death of one is a wound the surviving twin rarely ever recovers from. It is akin to losing one’s soul-bonded mate.

A soft groan announces her arrival, and I hear her sit on what I have come to think of as her bench. She is the only one who sits on it as far as I am aware. The parents she speaks of so warmly have not come to visit their son’s grave once since I awoke. She is the only one who keeps a vigil over her brother, the only one who comes to his grave and speaks as if he were still here. It angers me that she should be so alone in her grief. As I have been alone in mine.

I tense with anticipation. I have awaited the sound of her soothing voice as she converses with a dead man. The rough croak that comes with her greeting catches me by surprise.

Why does she sound like that?

Allowing the stoneslumber to slip from my eyes, I look at her from under my lashes, ensuring she isn’t looking my way before I open my eyes fully and freeze.

Fury , like I haven’t felt in centuries, fills me as I gaze at her battered form. She sits gingerly, like her ribs are sore, and every exposed piece of skin is mottled with bruises in varying shades of blue, green, purple, and yellow. The garments she wears are loose fitting. I am sure because anything tight would be too much for her fragile body to handle in her current state.

Without conscious thought, my body softens. The stoneslumber I have hidden within for so many years disappears as if it never existed, as the last rays of the fiery sun slip from the sky.