Narrative: Prickling of Thumbs WHO: Unknown WHEN: Night of Graduation, June 5 WHERE: The sports field, the graveyard
The podium had been put away. The confetti of celebration was swept off the newly made turf. The stands that had been packed with supportive underclassmen and parents during the commencement ceremony were now empty. Where earlier the athletic field had erupted with cheers and applause, the large open area was quiet. Somewhere a flier with the registrar of names of graduating Experts and St. Margaret's official school emblem fluttered in a passing breeze from the ocean.
Reperio, cresco et dirigo.
Speeches had been given, tears had been shed, graduation gowns and handshakes with the Headmistress were all passed. The page had turned. St. Margaret's Experts had ceremoniously passed their torch onto the next graduating class and had marched off the field to begin new chapters of their lives. There was a spirit of hope in the air. St. Margaret's Academy was sending her newly vested alumni out of its safe haven and into the world to integrate. They would be ambassadors, better prepared to coexist with humans as masters of their supernatural parts.
~
Not far from the field, a mist was gathering in the cemetery, as mist tended to do. An overgrown tombstone, its engraving strangely dating back to before America was colonized, looked especially consumed by slowly roiling vapors. A hush fell over the area. The cemetery was naturally quiet out of respect for the dead, but the silence that descended on the grave markers in that moment was as though the corpses had once again exhaled their last breath. Grave statues looked on with their empty stone eyes.
All was still.
And then the old tombstone cracked down the middle, sundered in half.