Graveyards + Thunderstorms = /Perfect/ [open]

[Ghost]

The irony of the overall situation should have made him smirk. The fact that he-- he, who had come to respond to Ghost more than he responded to the name his mother had given him-- found himself looking over a graveyard was, if nothing else, ironic. Had it been night, he might have been a little less comfortable with the sight of the uneven rows of headstones swimming before his vision. But the knowledge that the sun hung in the sky above the thick, swirling grey clouds-- evidenced by shafts of golden light miraculously breaking through the barrier and lighting patches of grass-- gave him confidence that nothing he couldn’t handle was hanging around.

The thick, wet drops of rain falling diagonally to the ground, however, dampened his mood. Pun intended.

He’d stayed pressed flat to the wall of one of the houses just outside of the graveyard in an attempt to stay dry. After realizing that this wasn’t going to be a short spurt of rain, he’d sunk down to the ground and still found himself there, long legs stretched out in front of him; well, one was propped at the knee with his arm draped lazily over it. The rain had still managed to seep through the material of his clothes so that it clung to his skin and made him feel heavier than he actually was. And yet somehow, even though he was soaked from head to toe, with water droplets dripping down the contours of his face, his hair was still managing to defy gravity. He didn’t need to be able to see it to know that it was a wild mess. When he ran his fingers through the raven locks, it probably actually helped rather than made things worse.

“For a spring day, this isn’t as nice as it should be.” Ghost muttered to himself, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. A drop of water, colder than the rest, splashed against the hollow of his throat. He glared at the sky in response, just as a bolt of lightning cracked across the sky and thunder rolled through the relative silence.

[.::rumor]

Rainstorms and cold weather was nothing new for Rumor, and therefore she was perfectly at ease wandering through the abandonned village she had found. This was the furthest south she had ever wandered into Ombra, and the familiar weather was comforting to her. She was quite enjoying herself, tramping through the rain, climbing up the broken down walls of houses, and jumping off of them on the other side. She was careful to keep Rosmerta safe, but still insitant on having fun, so instead of leaving the glass woman to dangle from the sling around her neck, she had tucked her securely into the dry inside of her small leather bag, which she now wore on her front side, instead of slung over her back. She placed her hand under the bag, supportively, before jumping from the roof of what looked like it had once been a stable.

Despite the fun she was having, the fact remained that she was hopelessly loss. In all the spinning, running, climbing and jumping that she had done, she had lost track of which was north was. Without the aid of the sun, and with the mountains sheilded from view by the plentiful tree's, she didn't know what way she was going. She decided to worry about that when the weather cleared up though, and for the first time since she had decided to go south from Ombra, instead of retreating back into the mountains, she felt at ease, even happy.

She climbed onto one of the last houses in the village, using the windowsill as the step, before jumping, and pulling herself up onto the flat, shabby roof. She looked off curiously at the view this last roof gave her. She had never seen an actual grave-yard up close before. Only in illustrations in the books she used to look through in her home village. The villages in the north were too small to bother with tombstones, and engraving, and anything else of the sort. Even if they were large enough to bother, half of them didn't even house anyone literate enough to scratch their name into the bark of a tree, let alone engrave a stone, which, admittedly, the mountains had plenty of. Where she was from, people were buried in their backyards, with wooded crosses marking their place, and the families relied on memory to tell them who was who.

Seeing those crosses in the yards of those kind enough to house her had always creeped her out, but looking down on this mass of stone markers, she felt nothing of the sort. Instead she was mildly curious about it, and she walked, instead of hopping like she had been, over the run down roof, aiming to get a better look. Her boots thuded gently over the time-softened wood as she approached the other side, then sat on the edge looking out over the graveyard, her feet dangling over the side. "Who would live in a place with a view like this?" She wondered out loud. Having ears nearby to pick up her question was the last thing Rumor expected to find.

[[Spellcheck hates me. fyi.]]

[Ghost]

The soft thudding, louder and with more of a pulse than the sporadic pitter patter of the rain, alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t alone. That was it. Nothing else gave her away. She’d made no sound when she’d gotten up onto the roof-- unusual, as he’d expected the rotten wood of the village houses to collapse under any amount of weight greater than that of a bird’s. The heels of her boots hadn’t grazed the spikes of his hair when she’d swung her legs over the edge of the roof because he hadn’t been standing up. And yes, if he had been standing up, her heels would have come close to connecting with his forehead because he was just that tall and the house was that small, only about eight feet from floor to ceiling.

“Who would live in a place with a view like this?” Magnus tilted his head to the side, his way of displaying curiosity in the girl to whom the boots and the feet and legs inside of them belonged to while his dark eyes remained blank as he watched the bottoms of the boots. The same girl who apparently asked herself questions about the people who had once resided in the house they both found themselves either leaning or sitting on.

He stood up slowly, pressing close to the house while ducking away from the girl’s legs. Though his life outside of his occupation didn’t have much chance to prove it, there were benefits to thieving for a living. Stealth just so happened to be one of them. The window was found more by accident rather than by actual knowledge that it was there; his elbow bumped against the edge of the frame that jutted out from the rest of the wall. The thief turned his head, considered his possibilities, and decided what the hell?

With a swift, fluid movement, Ghost swung himself up onto the roof with the agility of a thief who had years of practice in maneuvers very similar to the one just preformed. He found himself towering over a girl no older than seventeen with wild red hair, a pretty face, and a sack worn in the front instead of the back. A lesson he’d learned long ago went something along the lines of: if you don’t really want to know, don’t ask. “The dead.” He said simply, falling down into a cross-legged position with his elbows resting on his knees. The palm of his left hand held his chin up as he slouched forward, eyeing the girl and the strange yet complimentary attire she wore. “You asked who would live in a place that overlooks a graveyard,” he elaborated. “The dead.” Rain continued to impale into his skin, a sharp sting with each single drop that stuck collected on any angle it could; his ears, his sleeves, his boots, the palm of his hand, his eyelashes so that when he blinked the raindrops looked like shed tears.

The dark ghost sighed, holding his head on his own long enough to run his fingers through his hair again before once again propping his chin on his palm.

[.::rumor]

The shock of suddenly having someone swing onto the roof caused Rumor too duck her head in alarm. She sat hunched at the edge of the roof now, eyes clenched shut, breathing steady to calm her nerves. As brave a front as she put up in the wilderness, she was a coward when there were other's around. Being surprised in such a way in a supposed-to-be abandonned village, looking out over a graveyard, was enough to almost make her yell out in frieght. Where had he come from. From what she had seen, there was no one else in sight.

"You couldn't have announced yourself first?" She all but hollered at him. Scared, but still Rumor. She looked up in time to see him drop into a cross legged position near her, holding his head up with his hand. She was annoyed at his responce, and hardly kept herself from voicing as much. "The dead don't live in houses," she told him, rolling her eyes, "I already know who lives, in the view."

She sat straight again, and put her hands on the edge of the roof, leaning foreward. She peeked into the bag, and noticed that Rosmerta had somehow, in all her being bumped around in there, fallen asleep. She was curled up in a scrap piece of fabric.

"What are you doing here anyways?" Rumor spat the words, then spat quite literally into the mud, "I thought this place was abandonned. Doesn't seem like the most fun place to hang out. 'Specially not here." She nodded toward the graves. "Not the most talkitive of friends."

||Really short! So Sorry!

[Ghost]

He hadn’t meant to scare the girl. Though he could think of a long list of things that he’d want to do to different people in different situations, scaring someone didn’t even scratch the top hundred. His eyes softened in sympathy for a second, changing from hard chips of near black diamond to pools of coffee. In an instant, though, it was gone, back to the hard, bored expression that he usually always wore.

Announced himself first? Ghost looked at her as if he didn’t understand, ignoring the harsh tone in her voice. Then his crooked grin made its appearance as he shook his head in such a manner that indicated he thought her to be at least a little crazed. “How smart is it, darling,” he started slowly, a dangerous tone in his voice, “to announce to someone else that they’re not alone when you have absolutely no idea who they are or if they could mean you harm?” Had she been a boy, he would have smacked her soundly in the back of the head. Forgetting that surprise was one of the best elements to have on your side was a rookie mistake for anyone travelling on their own.

There was no keeping his building annoyance out of his voice when he answered her smart-alecky retort. “Where do you think the dead lived before they lived in the view?” The childish urge to add the word “huh?” to the end of his sentence nagged at his tongue, but he bit down the urge. Quite literally, actually. Mag turned his head to look into the view, swallowing down some of the blood that he’d drawn from biting down too hard on his tongue and some of the annoyance so that when he spoke again it wouldn’t sound as if he hated this girl whom he’d never met. The rain that kept pecking at his eyes, however, was making it hard to not be annoyed at something.

“I got caught up in the storm while passing through.” The thief found himself quite pleased at how calm he sounded. He glanced at the redhead out of the corner of his eye just in time to see her spit into the mud. “How lady-like.” His mind made the comment of its own accord. “I’m not usually the most talkative person.” Ghost shrugged. “So talkative friends would be having a one way conversation.”

[.::rumor]

"I've survived this long announcing myself before popping out of nowhere," she thought back. There were only a few situations where she had to announce her presence, and all of them in the north. People there didn't exactly walk around thinking everyone was out to get them. Unless they were Rumor, of course.

This was possibly one of the most annoying conversations Rumor had ever taken part in. He seemed to either take things far too literally, or to take them completely the wrong way. "Never mind then," she said finally, "It was a rhetorical question anyway." She pushed herself off the edge of the roof. The mud squelched under her as she landed in a crouch, almost slipping in it.

"You seem to be doing a good job of talking now," she commented to him. "I'm not much for conversation either, but I'll take it when I get it." She turned her head to look up at him on the roof. "Ya' look bothered." Turning completely to face him, she crossed her ankles, and leaned back casually. "Did I say something wrong?" She smirked somewhat cruelly. If she had annoyed him, all the better. She wasn't exactly enjoying his company either.