The sun was just about in full site as Katarina led Locke to the gates of the cemetery. The area was completely surrounded by a short black-iron fence and met at large gates with the words "Hope Cemetery" written simply above it. The grounds were quiet and empty, the only noise being the creak in the gate's hindges as Katarina opened one.

The cemetery was large and green, but perhaps only half of it held statues of stones and other materials as gravemarkers. None of them seemed incredibly old where the markers were crumbling or withered.

She refused to wear black. Her simple dress was navy blue and short-sleeved, with the neck that could have been buttoned up left down to create a unique diagonal collar. Holding a small bouquet of marigolds in one hand, she gave Locke a warm smile as she held the gate open for him.

The only thing Hope Cemetery and Rhydin's graveyard had in common was the grass and the gravestones, and even the gravestones differed a great deal from those back home. Many of the ones in RhyDin were crumbling, while others showed signs of obvious vandalism. Hope's markers were all written in Common, and had similar iconography in the designs. In RhyDin, one could construct a Rosetta Stone from the languages carved into the granite and marble there, and sociologists would have a field day studying the images present here.

This was Locke's first time visiting a graveyard for anything other than a lark, or morbid curiosity on Halloween. As such, he'd tried to dress as soberly as he could, but decided against traditional mourning colors for fear they would exacerbate the sun's effects on his body temperature. He wore a simple dark blue dress shirt and black pants instead, with appropriate dress shoes and belt. He dipped a nod to Katarina in gratitude as she opened the gate for him, then stepped inside.

Once the gate was shut again, Katarina moved left and started walking through different markers. They all varied in sizes and symbols, but were kept in orderly rows. Most had flowers, some had candles, but they all seemed to be well taken care of.

Weaving a bit through different crypts, she finally stopped in front of a medium-sized stone statue of a horse in mid-gallop. Etched in the based of the stone said, "Caleb Ryan Miller 1980-2004". Placed on the neck of the horse was a thin leather strap that held a locket identical to Katarina's. She placed the handful of flowers into a small hole in front of the stone, and gingerly touched the locket, "Johnny made on' fer Cal, bu' it neva go' ta 'im, so he mus'ta sen' it ta his folks. They mus'ta placed it here." This explanation to show that it was a new item to the statue as well.

He looked closely at the locket, but didn't dare touch it. He felt a shiver creep through his body, but didn't say anything about it. He turned his head slightly, away from the memorial and towards her. "His family?" His eyes dipped down toward the marigolds, briefly.

"Yeah, jist his parents. Didn' hav' any siblin's. They're still livin' here 'n Hope." She straightened from her crouched position and stood, "Cal built a ranch several years ago, an' they keep it up an' runnin'."

Locke looked up and nodded his understanding. "It must be quite difficult." He let the statement hang there, open for interpretation.

"Time has healed th' wors' o' it, I thin'." Her voice was quiet as she looked back down to the horse again. "I saw 'em las' year when I was here."

An arm reached out towards her, hovering around her shoulders. The desire to comfort conflicted with the worry of doing something inappropriate or insulting to her or the deceased. "Did it go well?"

She gave a slight chuckle, "Not particularly." While that hand was meant to cover shoulder, she slipped past it and put her arm loosely around his waist and used it for a half embrace instead. "Ya see, righ' afta ya an' I were.. startin' ta spend more time togetha, Johnny sat me down an' we talked 'bout ya, an' well.. Johnny gav' me th' ring tha' he had made fer Cal ta giv' ta me. I.." she stopped looking at the statue, but kept her eyes down, staring off into nothing, "I neva tol' Johnny. 'n fact, I didn' tell anyone. It was fer a lot o' reasons, some real silly now, bu' we had decided to keep our relationship a secre'. Only Cal had tol' Johnny. Anyway, I wen' ta giv' Cal's folks th' ring, 'cause I didn' wan'ta hol' 'n ta somethin' tha' really wasn' mine, yeah?" She gave a deep sigh, "It was hard, tellin' 'em th' whole story."

"But you did it, hard as it may have been. You faced down something painful in your past and you got through it, and here we are." Locke shook his head, trying to get a grasp on the millions of thoughts that seemed to be bubbling in his brain. "Do you ever wonder what it would have been like? If he hadn't died, if you had stayed together. Do you think you would have stayed here for the rest of your life?"

"Yes, I thin' I would hav'." The tone of her voice was soft, but with conviction, "I thin' I would'a danced a few years afta we go' married until we wanted ta hav' kids. Then I thin' I'd stay a' home an' help 'im wit' his business." She gave a slight shrug.

"And is it...strange to think about?" An instant wince betrayed the fact that Locke felt like he had selected the wrong word after that pause.

"It is, yes." She gave a soft, reassuring smile at his wince, "Bu'.. I dun really thin' 'bout it much anymore, yeah? I 'member th' times wit' great fondness, an' 'm mos' certain tha' Cal saved me fra a wrong path tha' I was headin'. It has taken until th' momen' I firs' tol' ya 'bout his death 'lmost a year 'go ta see tha' mah life has moved on, 'n great ways tha' I neva 'pected, yeah?"

"I guess that's what's good about it, yeah? The unexpected good. I guess...it was a touch weird still seeing those pictures of him in your room." It didn't take much detective work for him to figure out who they were. "It makes sense that you kept them- that your family kept them as well - but that you didn't bring them with you when you first came to RhyDin." He felt a bit like he was rambling, and he couldn't help but laugh. "Listen to me, running my gob, in every bloody direction I can. Simply dreadful."

Her smile was slightly apologetic, "If I'd a though' 'bout it, I'd a' least o' warned ya er taken 'im down. I's real hard to erase someone tha' 've known mah whole life, and was so dear ta nah only me, bu' mah family as well. An'.." she grinned slightly, "I dun min' yer questions, yeah? I's only fair, I feel like I know so much 'bout ya, an' yer pas', an' tha' ya've been hones' wit' me. I dun mean ta hav' secrets 'n purpose, yeah? Bu' when all I did was keep secrets 'bout this, i's a bi' hard ta throw 'em ou' there withou' prompt, yeah?"

"We all keep secrets, and we all have our reasons for keeping them. I am just glad that you have let me in on this one, even if it may be painful at times. I would hope that by sharing it with me, it alleviated some of the hurt, and that my actions assisted as well." He focused all of his attention on her when he spoke and even after he had finished.

Her smile was slow and soft, "Locke.." she cleared her throat as his words made her sentimental, "Don't you know that you've healed my heart? Before you even told me you loved me. And even still, you have never made me feel like I am broken, or that there is a part of me that can't be returned. You have restored my brokeness and make me overflow." Tears started to pool in her eyes.

Whatever hesitation or tentativeness may have been present earlier was gone. He went for a full hug, wordlessly offering her his shoulder to cry on.

Long after the rest of the Smiths, even Katarina, had gone to bed, Locke was still awake. He stood in the darkened room ? Katarina's old bedroom ? and looked at the pictures of her that hung on the wall. Without light, the colors were washed out and faded, but he could recognize that bright, beaming smile even in the dead of night, even though she was younger in these photographs. There were the images of her in several different costumes on the collage, at various ages. Most of them were immediately recognizable as her, but one or two of them showed her looking much skinnier than she was currently, much thinner then he could ever remember her being. It made him frown slightly, before he moved on to the next set of images. There were photos of her with her siblings, all with their slight variations on the Smith smile, standing in front of their house with their best clothes on. There were copies of pictures he had already seen in her photo album, of her as a baby, a toddler, a child on her first day of school. And there were the pictures with Cal in them. Most of them had Johnny as well, and the sheer wattage of the cousins' grins (strong enough that Locke almost swore it could light up the room) very nearly overwhelmed Cal's more reserved features. There was only one photograph with just Cal and Katarina, and it seemed to echo everything he knew about them. They didn't dare get too close to each other, lest their secret leak, but the way they stood, the way they looked at the camera, said volumes. They were in love. Locke touched the clear plastic covering the frame delicately. He was reaching for a moment in time he could never experience fully, only see through the distorted lens of history, memory, and recollection.

He turned his back on the picture and, after putting on some shoes, sweatpants, and a black long-sleeved shirt, snuck down the stairs and out of the house effortlessly. The moon hung high and clear in the cloudless night sky, illuminating the house, barn, glass-blowing studio, and fields. Other than the cattle occasionally lowing, it was still and quiet outside. It was nothing like RhyDin in the evening, where even in the less crowded neighborhoods, one could still hear the conversations of passers-by, church bells in the distance, and the occasional bucket brigade clanging and screaming its way to another fire. Locke walked over to one of the fences on the edge of the property, sitting on the top rail carefully. He looked to the sky, marveling at the different stars and constellations visible on Hope as he tried to collect his thoughts.

***

It was five years ago, nearly to the day, that Kaylin had rejected him and disappeared from his life. His train of thought carried him from there to another vivid memory of her. It was May, four months before she broke his heart. Locke was standing outside a classroom, finishing up a conversation with one of his professors. As soon as they had said their goodbyes, and right before Locke was about to follow the man outside, Kaylin practically ran the ice elf over in her approach. Before he could say anything, she pressed a stapled sheaf of papers into his hand, told him to read it, and hustled away just as quickly as she had arrived. Startled, it took him a few minutes to stop staring after her and to look at what she'd given him.

They were pages photocopied out of a book, aligned horizontally with the crease between the book's pagination curving and partially obscuring the words in the middle. What must have been the first page of the section she'd selected had the words ?The Dead? in a large font, and above that, Kaylin had scribbled in what must have been the author's name: James Joyce. As Locke skimmed through the document, he noticed that towards the end, she had highlighted certain quotes and phrases in yellow. ? 'I think he died for me.' ? ?One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.? ?His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.? He had gone home that night and read it, then re-read it, trying to discover the meaning of the story and the reason why she had given it to him. The next day, he cornered her as she sat at a table in the student union, preparing to open up the lunch she'd packed.

?What does this mean?? he asked, shaking the sheets of paper in his hand.

?What do you think it means?? she said. It was a moment or two, once he realized he had been grinding his teeth unintentionally, before he answered.

?Well...it seems to me that you give about as much of a toss about the issues facing the Irish and Ireland as I do, if I am to believe that you underlined the passages you did for a reason, as opposed to ones earlier in the story.?

?What else?? she prodded, prompting a sigh from him.

?It seems to me that this bloke wants his wife in the worst way, after all that malarkey back at the party ? Christmas, was it??

?No. The Epiphany.?

?Never heard of that,? Locke said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. ?At any rate, the whole evening conspires to make him randy. He thinks he's going to have a shag, but she's all out of sorts for some reason. And then she starts weeping, and he asks why, and he finds out some song some bloke or bird played at the party reminded her of a lad she knew when she was younger, who had loved her. And as she's telling the story, he realizes that she loved him in a way that she'll never love him. The lad died for him, waited out in the rain for her when she was about to leave for somewhere else, and caught his death of cold. Compared to that, he was nothing. He had never loved like that.?

Kaylin sat there motionless looking at Locke, her face blank. He waited for a smile, a frown, a word, anything to gauge her reaction. Right when he felt like he couldn't take it anymore, she nodded simply. ?I see.? Without any further explanation, she stood up, grabbed her lunch, turned around, and walked away. Dumbfounded, Locke did nothing but stand there holding the story. He eventually called after her, but she did not stop or turn around. He never did figure out why she'd asked him to read the story, or tell her his interpretation; he tried asking her about it a couple of times that summer, but she always changed the subject.

((Author's note: Bolded section comes from "The Dead", by James Joyce.))