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The graveyard was always so quiet at nighttime. It was quiet most of the time, really, save for the rare occasions when a burial was taking place, or when a groundskeeper was mowing the grass. Hers was a cemetery nearing capacity, so the influx of new residents, so to speak, was rather slow. Aradia was fine with that. She didn’t care either way. New bodies coming in didn’t necessarily mean new ghosts, nor did new ghosts necessarily mean ghosts who would get along with her.
She was bored a lot, with all that quiet. Little that changed, little that provided any measure of entertainment for a ghost tethered to the area. Sometimes she wandered as far as her imaginary leash would allow, observing people at the businesses nearest the cemetery. More often than not though, she didn’t bother. Watching people go in and out of shops or walk down the street on their cell phones wasn’t much more interesting to Aradia than hanging around the familiar confines of the cemetery on her own. It wasn’t as though most people had the ability to see her anyway.
It was fine. Aradia was fine with a lot of things.
She was mulling over just how fine with everything she was while she watched a little toad hop along the rain damp ground. It was cute, she noted, through the hazy veil that all her emotions were dampened by since dying. The toad hopped closer to Aradia’s gravestone, huddling down in a clump of grass that had grown a little taller than the rest surrounding it. It appeared content to stay there for a time, and Aradia was glad. It was nice to have a bit of company.
It lasted only so long. She hadn’t yet come up with a name for her new friend when the sound of a human shriek sent the little creature hopping away into the next row of graves and out of sight, farther away from where the noise was coming from.
Aradia scowled, floating a little higher to get a better look around, and her eyes soon locked onto the culprit. A young woman, probably around her own age at death. She was pretty, Aradia noted through the same fog of detachment. Long hair, cute clothes with a lot of pink, expensive-looking gold jewelry that shone against her dark skin in the moonlight. She knew it was generally pointless to try talking to mortals, but the loss of the toad frustrated her enough to call out anyway.
“Hey! What are you doing? You scared off my toad!”
She expected no reaction at all. The mortal girl would continue on with whatever she was doing without showing any signs of knowing there was a ghost nearby. Instead, even in the nighttime dark, Aradia saw the way she tensed. There was a quiet sound, almost like she was trying to swallow down another scream. Then she turned and started to run, darting between gravestones and bouquets of dying flowers at a desperate speed. Aradia frowned. That necessitated more investigation.
“Wait! Why are you running away?” she called after the girl, already in pursuit. Floating was much faster than using one’s legs, so Aradia was gaining on her quickly. “Can… can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you!” the mortal girl replied breathlessly, whirling around to face her only after Aradia had her cornered against the wall of the mausoleum. “Why are you taunting me like this? I’m not asking to get cursed or anything!”
Huh. Aradia hadn’t taken her for a medium, but perhaps she’d been wrong. She sighed, blowing a few strands of hair out of her face. Deciding that the stranger wasn’t about to bolt immediately, she backed off a little too, enough to let her feel like she had an escape route.
“I’m not going to curse you. I don’t have that ability. I don’t care enough to bother even if I did. But you shouldn’t be wandering around cemeteries in the middle of the night if you’re afraid of ghosts, you know. You could fall and break your neck.”
Defying Aradia’s expectations once again, she laughed. Shaky and breathless still, but an undeniable laugh, one that didn’t seem like it was on the verge of turning to tears.
“I’m not scared of ghosts. You’ve got it all wrong. I’ve just never seen one before. I wasn’t expecting to either. You startled me, that’s all.” She pouted, more and more of the tension melting away from her. It was… cute. “And then you were angry at me for… scaring off your toad? I didn’t need you to take vengeance on me. I have big plans that a curse would probably get in the way of.”
“It’s fine,” Aradia said. “It doesn’t matter. Congratulations, I suppose, on meeting your first ghost. Maybe you won’t be so startled the next time. But,” she continued, not sure why she was bothering, “it’s good to be wary. Not all ghosts are harmless.”
“Oh, but you sound so sad… I can’t leave knowing that it’s my fault your friend left. Why don’t we look for it together? It can’t have gone too far!”
“You don’t need to do that for my sake. It’s really not that big of a deal. I only just met it. We aren’t close.” What a strange mortal, Aradia thought, disregarding the fact that she was a little strange herself by saying she and a toad “weren’t close.”
“But you care, don’t you? You wanted its company a little longer. Let’s give it a try! I’m Feferi, by the way.” She boldly came closer, even extending an arm as if for a handshake. Aradia, uncertain of what to do with that, hovered her hand over Feferi’s, keeping just enough space between them so that her fingers wouldn’t phase through.
“That doesn’t really work for ghosts,” she explained. “But I’m Aradia.”
“Nice to meet you, Aradia! Now, which direction did that toad go in?”