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Ever since he got the job, Ruskin liked working as a graveyard keeper. It was a quiet and peaceful position, he was grateful for it. He never got along with the living and the world was too noisy for him - but in the cemetery, he was filled with calmness, breathing in the fresh air that the wind gently blew and which was filled with the scent of flowers. It was clean from the smoke. Here, he was close to the nature and the dead never called him on names if he acted awkwardly. In the graveyard, Ruskin felt home.
Ruskin's job was to keep the cemetery clean and make sure that no one disturbed the rest of those who were lying in the graves. He took his responsibilities seriously, no one could find a better tended graveyard in London. Ruskin walked across the entire cemetery several times a day. At dusk, he wished the dead a good morning and before the sun set on the horizon, he told them good night. For Ruskin, the dead who were sleeping their eternal sleep, were family. He liked spending his time near them, sitting next to the graves and watching. But his favourite place was the grave at one of the corners.
It was the final resting place of a man called Charles Augustus Milverton - at least, that was what was carved into the marble. Ruskin didn't know him, he passed away before he started working in the cemetery, but he always felt a strange connection to him since the first time his gaze fell onto the grave. There was a relief engraving on the gravestone above the name which showed how the man looked like while he was alive and it mesmerized Ruskin. He thought that he never saw anyone more beautiful than the late Mr. Milverton, he kept coming back to his grave and spent hours staring at that picture while his heart was beating fast from the awe - and the love. Ruskin knew, no matter how impossible it seemed, but he somehow ended up falling in love with the dead man.
Mr. Milverton used to have curly hair which reminded Ruskin of the hair of the angels on those paintings he once saw in an art gallery. The man's face was ethereal and soft and there was something in his eyes that spoke to Ruskin. He had no idea whether it was just a beautified picture or this was how the man really looked, but it didn't really matter. Ruskin imagined him like that when he daydreamed about the two of them sitting together and watching how the sun set above the cemetery. He spent most of his time at Mr. Milverton's grave, thinking of him, sometimes even talking to him, wishing that he would hear him somehow. When the cemetery was painted by the golden-scarlet light of the setting sun, it suddenly didn't seem so impossible. Those times, he felt that something really tied them together. Maybe, in another life, they knew each other and they mutually meant something to the other.
Maybe, once they were actually meant to be.
Ruskin knew well that this was not that life, yet, he kept sitting at the dead man's grave like they were not strangers. And in his heart, they were not.
He never knew him while he was alive, but Mr. Milverton was still the love of his life.