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Alicia Wilkershire was mowing the lawn.
The lawn hadn't grown particularly unruly, but it was habit, to mow it on a biweekly basis. Having mowed the lawns, she then went on to trim the hedges with a careful hand, and then to pull out the weeds with a careful eye. She felt, on these occasions, somewhat like a gardener.
It was only a small graveyard. The people that came by were few and far between, and they were quiet besides.
"Alicia! Fancy seeing you here."
The living people, that was.
Lillian smiled at Alicia, dangling her legs over her head stone upon which she had perched herself, hands braced.
"Lillian," Alicia greeted as she inspected the headstone. It was pristine, the stone sharply cut, engraved with curling patterns that followed its edges. The lettering was precise, chiselled with a sure hand. Lillian Canute, it read in an elegantly scrawling script. Most headstones preferred neat block letters, separate and non-cursive at the very least. Easier to carve. It seemed fitting, somehow, that Lillian's should be cursive, flowing like the silvery fall of her dress about her knees, like the drape of her hair, like the spill of her laughter. Alicia moved on to the next headstone. Lillian followed her, hopping down from her headstone lightly. She affected a little stumble, and Alicia had come to know her well enough that she knew to extend an arm as though to catch her, playing along.
Lillian closed her hand around Alicia's forearm. It was cold, as it always was. Alicia wondered, sometimes, if she had spent too much time alone, if her mind had begun to play tricks on her. She found that the idea didn't alarm her. The ghost of Lillian Canute never did her any harm. She was playful, and she smiled with all her face, and her hands were cold. Lillian leaned the rest of her body against Alicia's, her head settling on Alicia's shoulder. Alicia politely did not remark on the fact that Lillian had to hover in order to do so.
"Doesn't this get boring?" Lillian asked when Alicia had reached the fifth headstone.
Alicia inspected it. Undamaged. She moved on. "It's routine," she answered, which wasn't an answer to the question at all, but was true nevertheless. "Besides," she added, for reasons she did not understand and did not care to inspect, "I seem to fare better with the dead than the living."
Lillian was quiet for a long moment, floating by Alicia's side as she went around, checking each headstone, the only sound Alicia's footsteps and their shared soft breathing. Lillian did not, as far as Alicia could tell, need to breathe, but she liked to match Alicia's flow of breath, liked to play at life. "Is that how you see it?"
Alicia raised an eyebrow at her. It occurred to her, as it sometimes did, that this must be a strange vision from the outside. Alicia, arm held out and crooked, her pace slow, talking to nothing but thin air. None of the visitors had ever shown any signs of being aware of Lillian's presence. "How else would you describe it?"
Alicia felt the cold breeze of Lillian's shrug against her arm. "Sometimes, unfortunate things happen, and it's not your fault."
Alicia felt the wry ends of a small smile twist her lips. "You've always been too lenient with me."
"You've let me be lenient with you," Lillian countered.
"Hm," Alicia replied, and did not try to fill the silence that fell between them. It was peaceful, to walk like this, arm in arm, as Lillian had always loved to, in their comfortable and familiar silence.
Alicia's job was not glamorous, and it was not dangerous, not anymore. The little graveyard was sparse, and the headstones were securely carved, and the hedges and lawns were easy enough to maintain. Alicia could, she supposed, change career paths. She'd been here long enough that horticulture would come easily enough to her, and she'd been in her previous job long enough that she could pick that up again without any trouble. There was nothing special about this job, really, a mere dull repetition of every day. Nothing special at all, except for the slab of stone in the centre that bore Lillian Canute's name.
Alicia tried not to think about it. She was usually good at that.
"Who would you be, otherwise?" Lillian asked out of the blue. Alicia didn't need to ask her to specify what she meant. It wasn't a question that she gave much thought to, but Lillian liked to dream. She had always been something of a dreamer, her mind wandering clouds and realms and realities that Alicia could only follow her into with stilted steps. It did not come as easily to Alicia.
"I wouldn't," Alicia answered.
Lillian hit Alicia lightly on the shoulder. "Come on. Humour me."
Alicia shrugged. "A detective, maybe."
Lillian made an appreciative hum. "Oh, yes. You would look stunning in a trench coat. Tan or black?"
Alicia considered. "Tan," she decided, because she thought it was the more detective-like of the two. "And you?"
Lillian laughed. "I'd be a princess, of course. And you, my loyal knight. Or perhaps a prince?" She let go of Alicia's arm just long enough to dip into a dainty curtsy.
Alicia allowed herself a soft huff of a laugh. "I thought we were being realistic."
Lillian gasped in mock offence. "I'd make a lovely real-life princess, mind you."
Alicia didn't have any trouble imagining it, despite never having boasted of an overactive imagination the way Lillian always had. "I don't doubt it," she said truthfully.
"And you would make such a dashing knight. A perfect one."
That was harder to envisage. "Mm," Alicia said for the sake of avoiding argument.
"You don't believe me," Lillian noted carefully. She did not sound upset, but she had always been skilled in crafting masks. It wasn't always easy to tell, even for Alicia.
"It's not that," Alicia denied, although it absolutely was that.
"Isn't it?" Lillian asked lightly.
"Well," Alicia said, looking away from Lillian, casting her gaze about the orderly littering of stone across the graveyard. "Would we be here if that was the case?"