The Break of the Day

Her footsteps echoed around the dark space, the only sound in the otherwise silent place. Her brown eyes skimmed the familiar surroundings of her favourite hide out.

Soft, and silent down in the catacombs there was no where the young girl liked better to collect her thoughts, to regroup. To heal.

Everything had changed since she had last been down there. Back then she had been convinced... convinced that her next visit to a place like this would be her final visit anywhere.

And now... and now...

It was like a weight had been lifted off her chest, and yet. She wasn't entirely sure what to do with herself. What to do with... her life.

For the last year and a half she had been so focused on coming to terms with not having one, she was at a lost for what else to do. There was so many things to deal with... so many...

Everything was just so different now. She was different now.

A hand reached up and fingered a strand of her now deep brown hair. A change had felt appropriate - a need to look as different on the outside as she now felt on the inside. She hoped that the people she cared for wouldn't think it looked too different. That she had been too impulsive.

There were so many aspects to think about.

But for now...

She just wanted to walk.

He'd always liked the catacombs. They had been one of the first places he'd found while exploring here, and Zander loved exploring more than he loved most things. When he walked, it was more than a walk. It was a journey to find something. A search.

He didn't know what he was looking for.

The dark and cold of the place was something he was oddly used to, now. The presence of the old lives around him was... comforting. Other things that were no longer prominent. Other beings that were not present in the lives of others. They were long forgotten.

Just like him.

Biting down on the sleeve of the sweater he was wearing as he stood over one of the tombs, his brown eyes taking in the name engraved on stone, Zander swept his fingers along the surname. It was faded, but still legible. It used to mean something.

He wished he had meant something.

This family was all here, all around them both. Him and Mr. Skeleton. But Zander... he was always alone, wasn't he?

"Hello?" He called softly, speaking out. "Is someone there?"

She hadn't noticed another set of footsteps echoing along the space. It was so silent amongst the tombs one would think that it would be easy to tell when was alone, and when they weren't.

But Faye had been completely lost in her own thoughts, and memories, that she had noticed nothing until she had heard a soft voice call out.

Which was when she startled, jumping, and letting out the tiniest squeal of a scream. Holding a hand up to her wildly beating heart - another brief moment of panic where she had to remind herself that she was no longer sick, and this was a perfectly normal thing for hearts to do - the girl straighted and looked back towards where the voice had come from. It had been close, but not quite in the same room as her.

"Hello?" she questioned back, her voice hesitant, almost mirroring the voice that had spoken up first, "Yes. I suppose I count as somebody, don't I?"

Following back the way she came, the girl slowly approached the voice, her foot steps careful, still hesitant. She had always been more than a little cautious.

After a moment her slim figure - although she was healthy now, her brown eyes sparkling with a life she had barely been able to produce befoer - she still bore the signs of someone long sick - appeared before a young boy, a few years older than her from the looks of it. She'd ballpark closer to Tre's age than her own, though that would always just be a guess.

"Was it you that called out? Or were the skeletons talking on us?"