Rostislav Zelenka (ghostsongs) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-01-14 21:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | #november 2017, rostislav, rostislav x zania, zania |
Who: Zania and Rost
When: Sunday, Nov 26th, midday
Where: the cemetery
Status: Complete
Rost had woken up cold in his trailer, and he lingered for a while under his layered blankets, watching the snow fall outside of the small window near his bed. It wasn’t a heavy snow, and he didn’t think it would cover anything, but it was nice to look at for a while. Eventually he dragged himself out of bed and to the coffee machine. By the time he was dressed and breakfasted, he felt good, rested and ready to start the day. He layered a couple of jackets over his coveralls, tucked his whiskey flask into one pocket, and set out to start his day.
That good feeling dissipated rather quickly as Rost found the first damaged headstone. ‘Damaged’ was an understatement, really -- it had been blown apart. Like someone had made it explode somehow. But there was no damage to the stones around it, no burn-marks on the grass ... Rost just stood there for a long time, surveying the damage. He hadn’t heard anything at all the night before, and he hadn’t even been that drunk. How could someone do this silently? Magic was the answer, of course, or some sort of supernatural influence. Maybe there was a demon infestation. Maybe there was some dark necromancy purpose to all of this. Maybe ...
It took a while, but he found five more, some more damaged than others. The more he found, the heavier his heart felt. There was definitely something evil going on in this place, and Rost had no idea what to do about it. Except clean up, of course. So, he tugged his hat down over the tips of his ears and trudged his way to fetch the wheelbarrow and get started.
There was only so much Zania could harvest from the wild once snow began to fall. What few leaves were left would likely be gone before the week was through, and then the snow would start to pile up and she’d lose the plants completely. She could rely on her greenhouse for most things, but those that needed to be grown in a cemetery were always a bit more tricky. They relied on the death around them, lingering spirits and those that mourned their passing. So when the day seemed it’s warmest, she headed over to the cemetery to collect her last batch of the season.
She’d only just arrived when she spotted Rost and called out to him before giving him a wave. As cold as it was, she’d enjoy the chance to catch up with him, if he wasn’t too busy. And even then, from the look on his face, he looked like maybe he could use a little cheering up, or at least someone to talk to.
Lost in his thoughts as he was, hearing his name called out made Rost jump a tiny bit. He straightened up from where he was picking up pieces of marble from the damp dead grass, and saw Zania Castell headed toward him. She was smiling and had her hand up. Part of Rost was relieved to have some distraction land in his lap, and part of him wanted to warn her away from this place. She was a talented witch, however, so perhaps she could shed some light on what had happened. Rost tossed the chunk of stone into the wheelbarrow and took a few steps in Zania’s direction to meet her, hunching his shoulders a bit. “Hello,” he greeted once she was close enough, giving her a nod. “Good to see a friendly face today.”
“Hey,” Zania said, her smile falling a bit once she realized what he was dealing with. A broken headstone was one thing, but this one had been completely destroyed. “What the fuck happened?” she asked, skipping the pleasantries and jumping straight to the issue he was dealing with. “Kids blowing up tombstones?” That was her first guess, though the longer she looked at it, the less she thought that was the case. A homemade bomb would have scorched the grass and left burn marks on the marble. These looked like they’d been… smashed? Maybe if someone came at it with a sledgehammer, but that would’ve taken a good bit of strength and effort.
Rost sighed heavily, putting his hands on his hips as he looked back at the destruction himself. “I do not know,” he admitted, though it pained him to do it. It was his job to know, that was why he was there in the first place. The job was much more than just keeping the grass cut and the weeds away. He was a guardian of sorts, and for the past few months he’d been feeling like a piss-poor one. “I do not believe. There are five more like this, all smashed, in different places.” Rost gestured around vaguely, then swiped at his nose with the back of his wrist. “And I hear nothing last night. No peeps, not a mouse fart all night.” He shook his head, looking bewildered and perturbed and worried.
“Six total?” Zania asked, the number standing out to her, even without the names. Maybe it was random, but in a place that spoke of the Point Pleasant Six she had to ask. “Who are they? Same families? Different families?” It might not explain what happened, but it might give them a hint at who did it. The part about no noise, however, continued to set off alarms. She couldn’t think of any possible way someone could manage this sort of destruction quietly… Not without magic. Zania knelt by the tombstone, placing one of her hands on the cool marble. She couldn’t feel any lingering traces, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t used. “Maybe it wasn’t done naturally,” she suggested softly.
He had already assumed that much, at least. Rost watched Zania kneel with a furrowed brow, hoping somehow that she would just know what happened and stand up and tell him. That didn’t seem to be the case though. “I am sure not. Uh ...” he stalled, squinting a bit. “Different families. I will have to look at map for most, but two of them ...” Rost listed off the family names of the two headstones he solidly remembered. They didn’t mean much of anything to him, but he had never really researched the histories or lineage of the Point Pleasant Six.
Zania’s frown deepened a she stood back up, both of those names standing out to her. She’d have to review her grandmother’s notes to be a hundred percent sure, but she thought they fell in the lineage of two of the six. Things sometimes got hazy when it came to daughters marrying off—the names changed along the way, making it harder to trace than if it had been a line of males heirs. Even if they weren’t part of the six, she knew for certain they were magical lines. She had their names in a book somewhere. “Those are both witching lines,” she sighed. “There wouldn’t happen to be a Woodberry on the list, would there? Or a Lyttle?” The Lyttles were one of the few families whose surname had survived the test of time. It made them the easiest to identify, for better or for worse.
That was somehow not surprising to hear and made Rost even more worried at the same time. First Reagan had come digging around in the oldest graves, stealing bones, then he’d seen the ghost-woman and felt the heat, and now this. “I do not remember without map,” he told Zania. “Perhaps. It would not shock me.” He had the map with all the cemetery residents on it in his trailer -- at least from the graves that were still readable in the eighties when said map was redrawn; there were a few question marks on it -- and he would get it if she really wanted to check. But Rost was more keen on cleaning up at the moment. “You know Reagan Kelly, yes? Tell her this, it is her and her meddling.” He couldn’t help but sound put out about it, as much as he liked Reagan. She’d promised him there wouldn’t be problems, and now there were.
A part of her really wanted to know if they were all witching families, but then what? What would that even mean? Who would know that kind of thing other than another magical line? Zania gave a little tug to one of her dreads as she thought, but couldn’t come up with anything specific. “Reagan? Why? What’d she do?” she asked, this time bending to help him pick up the pieces and put them in the wheelbarrow. Her mind immediately jumped to the love spell gone wrong, but that wouldn’t make any sense. Other than that, Zania didn’t really know what she’d been up to lately, except for breaking the curse that was on Caius.
Zania starting to help made Rost feel a tiny bit better, and he crouched down to pick up more shattered marble himself. There hadn’t even seemed to be a point of impact on this one, it had to be magic at work, right? Especially since six of them being destroyed hadn’t woken him up. “She and her two men dug up an old grave, Baron, I believe it was,” he explained to Zania. It wasn’t his business and Reagan might be pissed at him for telling, but honestly, it looked like they had a bigger problem on their hands than petty secrets. Perhaps Zania could help set things right. “They took bones to break some curse. There was some trouble before that, but it has made things worse, it seems.”
“Reagan came out here and dug up a grave?” she asked with a tiny hint of amusement, trying to picture Reagan with a shovel in her hands. It sounded like there had been a lot more going on than Zania was aware of, but then Caius didn’t remember and it wasn’t the kind of thing Reagan would’ve needed to share with her. That they were on civil terms was an improvement and it would take a lot more before she shared grave digging stories. “If it was a witch they were digging up, they might have disrupted something. What else has been happening?” The named Baron seemed familiar, but she knew it wasn’t one of the six. She just didn’t know why she knew it, or even where she’d heard it. But then, if it was an old family, the name could’ve been floating around for decades before it disappeared. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been important, back in the day.
Complaining made the work go faster, and Rost was honestly stressed out, so it helped a little to vent to Zania. He told her about the broken tombstones that had already happened, what someone had done to poor Mrs. Mercer, how it had felt so hot and humid after Reagan had dug up the grave, and how he’d seen a ghost-woman walking once or twice and felt that heat again. “And now this,” he ended, tossing some chunks of marble into the wheelbarrow harder than necessary. Rost sighed, rolled his shoulders and his neck, and put his hands on his hips for a moment. “I need vacation. Somewhere far away, with beach, maybe. And my people.” Usually he didn’t mind the weather here, the winters reminded him of home, but with everything going on, Rost felt the need to get away for a while. He up-nodded at Zan. “You did not come to work ... we take a break? Come and we can have a drink and look at the map.”
If it had just been the broken tombstones, then maybe Zania would have bought into the idea that it was some local vandal, but there was just too much evidence otherwise. It all started with Reagan digging up a grave, so she was inclined to believe that Reagan had somehow fucked up. She’d always kind of thought that Reagan was a better witch than that, but if she and Caius had been desperate, maybe they’d been sloppy. Or maybe they’d just had too much wine. Zania sighed, tossing the last bit of the tombstone in the wheelbarrow. “It sounds like you’re being haunted. And not just by a ghost, but by a witch. There are things we could do to protect you, and your home, but…” she looked around, gauging the entire size of the cemetery and then shaking her head. “I don’t know that we could stop it completely without setting things right.” And that was bound to be far more complicated. She didn’t have all of the details. She didn’t know who or what Reagan had woken up. But it sounded like a mess. “A drink would be nice,” she said with a little smile. “I can take a look at that map and you can tell me where you’d vacation.”
If he was being honest, Rost wasn’t sure he trusted any of the witches to protect him and his home anymore. He would keep all his talismans and the painted seals all over his trailer, but as far as relying on them to shield the whole place from harm? No. He wanted to vacate the premises as soon as he could, at least for a while. Until this ghost-witch business was sorted out. But he wasn’t going to insult Zania by saying so. He walked her to his trailer and let them both inside, then poured a few fingers of rum for both of them before he pulled the map out and spread it on the small table. Rost found a pencil and circled the graves that had been desecrated for Zania, the names of the deceased listed under them. Then he slumped into a chair with a sigh. “Mykonos, that is where my impulse says right now,” he said then, belatedly answering about the vacation. “I go where the wind takes me, but right now I need the bright sun and blue water and a Mediterranean beach.” Rost smiled faintly.
“Ugh, that would be amazing right now,” Zania smiled, picking up the drink and taking a sip before she began to examine the map. “It’s been years since I got away like that.” Europe was a long way to go for a beach, but she knew he was looking to get closer to his people. Zania would have been fine with the Caribbean and the more she looked at the map, the more a vacation appealed to her. She enjoyed the chaos, but preferred it when she had more knowledge about the threat. “These graves… there’s one for each of the Point Pleasant Six,” she said after a minute. “But some of these lines are old. It’s not the kind of thing that you can just pop by the library and look up real quick. It’s… not very reassuring,” she sighed. “Who did you say Reagan dug up again?”
It had been a long time since Rost had been back to any part of Europe. He’d only passed through Greece, but what he’d seen had been beautiful, and he’d always heard wonderful things about Mykonos. Taking Greer and Devlin and just hanging out on the sand and eating seafood until they dropped sounded like heaven to him at the moment. He tried to drag himself out of the daydreams and focus on Zania. One brow arched at her mention of the Six. That was more than mere coincidence, there was no question about that. “Baron,” he told Zania with a slight nod. “Abigail Baron. You know of her? Reagan said it was to break the curse on her and her husband. Their family.”
Zania gave a slow nod, though she wished she knew more than she did. So much of this knowledge got lost because it didn’t seem to serve a purpose, at least until someone dug up a grave. “It’s an old line. I think it dates back to the six, but I’m pretty sure it died off. Or moved away. That’s always a possibility. You don’t hear anything about them anymore.” She’d never met a Baron herself, but she’d seen their name in one of the books she had back home. It was hard to keep up with the local witches when they left Point Pleasant, especially if their name changed along the way. Most referenced their ancestry if they bought from Zania, and she’d never crossed paths with one. “I heard about the curse, but only after they broke it. And I don’t have the details. I was closer to Reagan’s husband, but things have been weird lately.” She’d be better going to Reagan about this. Caius might not even remember what they did to cause it.
Rost had a passing familiarity with lines being difficult to trace. It wasn’t as though his people kept very detailed records of their family lines, and a lot of information about them had been destroyed by various genocidal racists throughout the centuries. History was so important, but so much of it got lost along the way. He nodded slightly at what Zania said, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip or two of rum. “She pissed someone off, obvious,” he said, his tone wry. “It would be best for it to be fixed as soon as possible. Until then, I am not staying here over the nights. It feels too risky.”
“Yeah, that might be for the best,” Zania said, settling back in the other chair. Things like this were tricky and not always easy to fix. It would take some research and planning, and she’d definitely need to talk to Reagan. There was a part of her that thought this wasn’t her problem, but she considered Rost a friend and this didn’t sound like something that was going to solve itself. She might as well look into it. “Can you stay with your friends?” she asked, recalling that Rost was seeing a couple of people, but not entirely sure what to call them. “What do they think of all this stuff?”
It didn’t matter much to Rost who fixed it, just that it got fixed. He was helpless when it came to stuff like this, but he still felt a responsibility for the cemetery and those who rested there. Most thought the dead could no longer be harmed, but who knew what kind of horrible magic was out there? “Greer and Devlin, yes,” he answered Zania’s question. A faint, warm smile crossed his face. If there was an upside to any of this, spending more time with them would be it. “They know the truth of things, they both have ... sensitivities. But they are not ... huh,” Rost ended in a murmur as something occurred to him. Dev was a medium as well as what his hands could pick up, he’d spoken with Ms. Mercer. “Maybe Dev can help, actually ... he can speak with the dead. I wonder would she speak to someone.”
Zania’s brows rose, as that was a talent she’d not come across yet. It made her want to ask more questions, like could he see the dead, which might be more of a curse than a gift, but that likely wasn’t something to get into now. Maybe someday she’d get a chance to meet Dev and ask. As for talking to the ghost in the cemetery… “If he does talk to her, maybe tell him to be cautious? She blew up six tombstones, which tells me she has some power in our world.” That worried her more than anything else. An angry spirit who could actually hurt someone was something to avoid, even for a witch.
It was definitely worrisome, and Rost nodded solemnly. He kind of didn’t want to put Devlin in the line of fire like that, but if he had any insight ... He would bring it up to them, see what they both thought. He definitely wasn’t going to insist on their help, not when this wasn’t his mess to clean up in the first place. “I will see what he thinks,” he said, then heaved a sigh. Rost tossed back the rum in his glass, then moved to pour himself another. He’d been drinking a lot lately, but he thought he had plenty of reason to. “I did not ask why you came,” he realized belatedly, and chuckled. “Not to pick up stone and talk of ghosts, yes?”
"No, but I'm glad I came when I did," Zania smiled. It had been a while since they'd last caught up and she'd had no idea so much was going on in the cemetery, even though she'd been through there in the last few weeks. It had always held a certain level of energy that she knew was more than normal, but this was far beyond that. She would have to talk to Reagan about it, though she knew Reagan had other things on her mind. It was almost funny how she'd gone years without a decent conversation with the woman, yet was calling her up almost once a week these days. "There's some herbs planted here that I wanted to get one last harvest from before they're covered in snow. Occasionally spells get picky about the ground the herbs are planted on."
Ah yes, the plants. Rost nodded his understanding. He was no witch, unfortunately -- maybe his life would’ve been easier if he had been born with such gifts -- but some of the folk remedies he used and superstitions he followed were also picky about ingredients. “Apologies to take you off track,” he said, even though he knew that wasn’t necessary. Rost knew Zania well enough to know she wasn’t exactly a ‘drop everything and help’ type of person for everybody, but he appreciated that she had that attitude with him. Even if she couldn’t do anything about it just yet. “Would you like company looking for them?”
Zania waved off his apologies with a little laugh and a bat of her hand. “I’m not on a schedule today,” she smiled, not at all bothered about the diversion. If she’d been on a mission, she’d have told him so, but Rost was a friend and his problems were far more interesting. When it came to her people, she wanted to help and would do what she could. She just wasn’t sure what needed to be done yet. “I’d love some company. It makes it feel a little less cold.” So did the drink he’d given her, so there was that plus too. She loved that the winters gave her a good reason to set fires, but without them she felt the chill to the bone. And it was still early in the season. It was only going to get colder as winter settled in.
“Good, then,” Rost said with a little smile. Hunting down herbs would at least be a pleasant distraction for a while. Much more pleasant than picking up bits of marble rubble and worrying about some malicious haunting from a long-dead witch. “We have another round, for the cold,” he added, lifting his glass in something of a toast to Zania. “To good company.” He knocked back what was in it, then picked up the bottle to top both of them off. Being a little buzzed would make the rest of his day go faster and easier, and Rost honestly felt like he needed that.