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This is a quiet cemetery on most days.
A lot of times, however, the spirits would ascend to play with the living. It's quite often that one might find Finn peering through the window, searching for shadows who can no longer walk in the light. Certainly, little Leif intruded upon such sights often, and the knight's longing reverie would be replaced with a smile-- warm, but still somehow sad.
After all, the child was perhaps the spitting image of his father, and Finn would not forget. Finn would never be allowed the tentative peace of pretending that somehow, someway, his heart would piece itself back together again. However, this was the final task his lord had entrusted him with. He must suffer through this, all of this, to see to Leif's future. He was to push aside the heartsickness of loss, endure the injustices plaguing the world around him, until the son was strong, and far beyond. It was a particularly cruel fate, but Cuan trusted him with this. He was bestowed with the belief that he could accomplish this.
But it was so difficult sometimes, the way ghosts wandered the halls. He could peer into a room and see Cuan and Ethlyn in the essence that ever they were, as real as the walls he might cling to. Their laughter is audible, scratching at the back of his eyelids, leaving streaks of choking anguish inside and out. The way Cuan beckons him to join their merriment is just the same as always, and he can almost see himself consenting. It's ingrained into his being that he must comply. So he takes a step, and they vanish. The room is dark and cold once again.
And who could say what Raquesis saw, what she tortured herself with? Somedays she couldn't even be considered alive, herself. She would lay in bed and stare unblinkingly at the wall, silent and resolute in her own absence. It was so very rare that she would retain even a spark of herself-- for him, even, as he was also lost in history. But he loved her so. And he knew she loved him, too. It was just that their hearts were mangled by the talons of the crows, of death and silence come to take away the ones who had gripped them so tightly on cold nights without ever having touched them. They loved each other, but there were other people they loved more. Other people they longed for.
Other people who would never return.
Sometimes, the two of them shared in silent company; sitting, unquestioning, thoughtful. They had a certain closeness that none could ever match, all simply because they could take comfort in these moments that would cause most people to cry out in madness or in misery.
Raquesis was a strong woman, far stronger a woman than ever Finn would consider himself were he in her shoes. Far stronger a woman than he was a man, even. Beyond the pale smoke that drifted unseen between and around them, coating them with deathly mists of their own, they could sometimes convince almost anyone that they were fine. They were each other's strength, and they were always there. So it was that they could hold themselves and each other together just enough that others might not see the cracks. And behind closed doors, to pieces they would once again fall.
Sometimes, Finn believes they have mixed up fragments. He feels parts of her inside him, feels her every breath from maybe rooms away. He feels her shifting from blank emptiness to roilling waves of misery and tempests of fury, feels her shattering things against the walls.
And even then, she's a complete mystery. He likes that. No matter how much she fades away, how much he fades away, he can hold her close at night and she's real and tangible, not like any of the other wraiths in this place.
His thoughts are often scattered. He thinks often about what she has become, what he has become, what the children will become. He thinks often about them, and everyone who followed to join them shortly after they departed. And he can't ever tell from behind the thick veil of self-imposed grief how many days pass or even if time moves at all. There are motions to simply imitate, and he has become excellent at them. He speaks whatever flows from his lips, think whatever thoughts tumble on one after the other, doesn't care if they make sense, though they make far more sense than he wishes to admit. He is up and down; she is down and up. She isn't quite as adept with motions and the imitations they require. Princess of Nodion, the last chance he has, the very last breath he will take.
He isn't truly so lost in broken memories, and he feels guilty for it. The two of them, they hover under parting clouds because they do not wish to let go of hands long since turned to dust. They feel they have no right to cease mourning. So they continue to mourn. Some might call it childish, but they have never cared particularly much what anyone thought. But there simply was nothing left to mourn, and in place were lives to lead. They could easily forget to mourn when they fell together, and in the long seconds after when, out of breath, they would remain in each other's arms.
No, while Finn mostly thinks about the more depressing matters of how she can't get out of bed and he can't get into bed to begin with, he also thinks about more comforting things. He thinks about the fire in her eyes (or what used to be there; now, he stares into frigid, glowing ice); he thinks about the ethereal curves of her body, how every touch feels like home. And after all, things aren't always so bad. He just focuses in on them. It's almost as though thinking about anything else causes them to lose their beloved joy. The castle wasn't half as melancholy as he has led himself to believe, and he wasn't half so depressed. Raquesis, too, was more lively than he'd allow himself to admit, but remembering more than a flash of their sacred moments of joining simply seemed treasonous, dangerous. Those were the moments he cherished most now, and he would preserve them as such. He would find himself happier in her company if he was worse off at other times. So in honesty, the phantoms were infrequent and their desolation was fleeting.
This is a silent graveyard almost all the time, but only because they make it so.