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The night Rerir comes to the cemetery is quiet as it always is. The wind washes old lighthouse bones, brushes sand off the gravestones and for whomever whistles through the shuttered windows. It has long ago become a habit for Flins, not to perceive it through the prism of sinister associations commonly attached but to cope, as only wind alone was here for the chatter among these endless graveyard nights.
Flins sits on the porch steps, loving how the chilling cold of flagstones gradually stops to gnaw at his spine and inherits his body warmth. Nice. The lantern flame dances on the wall while Flins tidies it with a rag, and a tremendous shadow of his palm toys with a house like it's a plaything. He notices Rerir earlier than he gets to the cemetery grounds. Is it the night-dwelling birds and insects who cease their cries, wary of the unknown beast, or is it Flins who got way too sensitive for the abyss — but he looks toward her long before she starts to look at him with her hollow hungry gaze.
Slow steps reveal the heavy weight of the immortal body. Rerir walks the path, idly looking around, as if on a leisurely walk — brought here by curiosity rather than by an insatiable thirst for revenge. Flins finds his spear with the corner of his eye, recalling he left it near the door, though it can hardly be of help; besides, his keen senses, which usually sway him between the need to be cautious around the abyss and the wish to come closer, now fall silent in peaceful slumber.
Rerir halts at the trail’s end, just a few steps from the porch. In the dark, his eyes burn as fiercely as lantern flames. Two lighthouses in the dead of night; do the moth mistake them for a sun, driven closer by the futility of life?
The shutters creak in the ghostly silence.
“I don’t toy with an illusion of being wanted here,“ not used to the newly acquired wholeness, Rerir’s vocal cords scratch and strain and dream of being torn apart. “Didn’t come for a fight, though.”
Madness, insane need for destruction, carved in his broken bones? Flins doesn’t observe it, and only now that he makes himself deeply breath again, can he notice how tense his body became. Flins slowly puts the rag aside, glances at his lantern in search of uncared dusty spots. Content with what he sees, he puts it on the porch as well.
He looks up at Rerir again. Nights can be strange, especially those at the start of the fall, don’t they?
“On the contrary, as far as I know, the cemetery is the best place for the deceased,” Flins tilts his head a little, as if to infuse a simple truth with a meaning known only to the two of them. “The residents here are rather permanent, unaccustomed to new faces, yet always eager to welcome guests.”
He’s being a little sly, as usual. Only Flins, alone among the cemetery dwellers, is able to perceive newcomers: the ghosts are too absorbed in their own sorrows and affairs to pay heed to such a nuisance as the living.
Rerir surveys the cemetery, seemingly pondering the same thoughts, yet remains silent. How often can he enjoy this state of inner peace, when fury neither burns his body nor gnaws his bones from inside out?
“If you were but an ordinary guest, I would offer you tea — though I can hardly call myself a connoisseur of that ancient drink, a respectable collection has found its way here through the years I’ve spent in this place.” Rerir is not one for many words, but Flins got used to even less talkative company. “However, in the case of yours I’m not sure if this invitation would suffice. Perhaps you came for something else, Rerir-san?”
At the sound of his own name Rerir flinches, either startled or slightly annoyed. It seems that after centuries of mental and physical torment, it has grown unfamiliar to him. Before answering, Rerir casts a lingering gaze on the extinguished lighthouse, unmoving and cold in his endless tragedy, and finally speaks when Flins almost stops waiting for it.
“You kept my heart.”
The burning gaze lands on Flins like the blade of a scaffold. And still, there is no threat in it. Flins rolls the words over his tongue, mildly stunned by the phrasing, and nods slowly. This Rerir — calm yet faintly dazed — stirs something curious within.
“Inside my lantern,” the hand descends on the familiar glass curve. Its shadow covers the house like a warm blanket.
Rerir follows the gesture with his eyes and falls in long silence again, static and sinful. In a sudden moment of clarity, Flins finds him akin to the countless items of his collection — like the ancient gems and coins, Rerir carries within himself a long-gone story, one to which he belongs more as an object than a living soul. How must it feel — to be torn apart for centuries? What was the cause of it? Never once before had Flins wondered what the primal sin truly meant.
“What was it like?” The creaky voice is solemn. “My heart.”
The hand falls still on the lantern, and so does its vast shadow behind — then resumes, gently rubbing the glass. Rarely communication made Flins uneasy; he had always tended to believe that there was a way to reach anyone — yet such concepts were rare for him to encounter.
Something swelled against his ribcage, as if the yearning Rerir held for himself had reached Flins somehow and nested in his chest, as if he managed to touch it physically. Is it a dead heart that pulses beneath his palm? And truly, what was it like, when it still lived?
On a sudden, inexplicable impulse, Flins extends the lantern before him.
“You can take your remains, if that is your wish,” the light sways, rolling from one side of the cemetery to the other, attacking Rerir and retreating. “I will not be able to give you the answer you are waiting for. All I know about your heart in the state I was familiar with — it was beautiful.”
Like the stars. And intoxicating. The pain from the abyss, which its fragments once contained, had long gone, yet still on chilly nights like this one, Flins felt her heavy presence in his veins.
Gradually, the lantern ceases to sway, and its light calms. For some moments, it seems to Flins that Rerir will reach out to him, but time slips by and he does not. Instead, Rerir turns and first leaves the circle of light, then the cemetery, without a word.
The wind whistles through the shutters. The night-dwelling birds and insects start to cry again, as they should, and for a long time Flins continues to hold the lantern outstretched, before putting it aside.
A grave is a place where someone's dust rests. Does this term now apply to his lantern? Is he the only one who will remember the dead sinful heart and look after it?
For a cemetery keeper, little else feels as familiar.