[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/531999698001592323/532975919825027113/Illustration.png[/img][/center] [center][img]http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo63/NMShape/coollogo_com-13921598_zpsbde23e32.png[/img][/center] Alan Coghlan pulled an aged album from its sleeve. Within a stack of albums that were covered in dust, this one was spotless from frequent use. He flipped the album longwise, inspecting it, as he approached the small turntable mounted on the soundsystem. He lifted the needle and the platform rotated at speed automatically as he placed the album. With a gentle, precise drop of the needle the orchestra, conducted by Gordon Jenkins, broke in. A few seconds later the familiar jazz croonings of the girl Lester Young called Lady Day, the woman born as Eleanora Fagan, the legend the world would know as Billie Holliday began to rasp intimately over the tune. [h3][i]“You’re my thrill, You do something to me… You send chills right through me When I look at you ‘cause you’re my thrill…”[/i][/h3] Amazing what music could do to a man’s soul. He remembered dancing to this song with Margaret years after Billie Holiday sang it, when she’d first introduced him to it. It was a gem unearthed in his lost years, but Margie had known him well enough to know that he would have liked it. A song performed almost twenty years before he’d ever been able to hear it, became “their song”. There was a sense of mystical timelessness that appealed to him. Over three decades after Jay Gorney wrote it with Sidney Clare. A decade after Lena Horne had sung it. A year after Doris Day had sung it. Countless others had sung it since, but none were able to truly make it their own like Billie Holliday. He remembered the pair of them in a jazz hall downtown, sweeping across the dance floor. He remembered the look in the older woman’s eyes, the sparkle and glow as she looked back at him adoringly. Loving him and the second chances they both had together. He remembered and he could have sworn it was the only time he’d ever flown without the power of the Golden Rod. There was another power between them that night. [center]* * * * *[/center] Dennis walked through the cemetery with a plastic shopping bag. He trod the familiar path down towards a familial plot. He reached into the bag and pulled out a bundle of white lillies and placed them in a vase set into the marble of the tombstone, removing a bunch of dead stems and throwing them in a bin that was under a tree several plots down. The stems that were left from his own last trip. People were starting to visit less frequently now. In the early days there were letterman jackets from old LHU friends, pennant flags left by cheerleaders, photographs and mail. The most recent thing he’d seen that he hadn’t left himself was an orange crayon - presumably some grade school kid had come along on an excursion and made an etching of the tombstone. These days it was generally all his dead white lillies. The death of innocence. Again. He’d asked the florist about what would be the most suitable and she had told him that lillies represented innocence, peace and purity. That sounded as suitable as anything else in regards to Sean, so that’s what he went with. Now everytime he came here it was like he was collecting the dregs of what happens when peace, purity and innocence die. If he hadn’t gotten the phone number off the florist on that day and a cheap one-night stand entailed afterwards he probably wouldn’t feel the need to justify his decision by persisting with the white lillies. But he did, and here he was. Another shame spiral, where Dennis felt guilty so he persisted with another thankless burden from his brother. If he kept buying them it meant he didn’t ask the florist just because he was trying to get in her pants. [color=fff200]“Hey Sean, it’s me again. Just me, I mean. No Grampa. No Mum. No-- well, you get the point.” “Grampa’s getting another year older, another year crankier. Well, I mean I guess you always got on fine with him, so that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot. Mom’s still back in Seattle with Dad. She says they’re doing fine. I think Dad’s up for some kind of promotion thing over there, according to Mom. I don’t know exactly know what it entails, but that was news, I guess.” [/color] [color=fff200]“I’m-- well, I’m Ok, I guess. I mean I’m not dead, so I guess I can’t really complain...” [/color] A gentle breeze blew through the cemetery, holding his awkward words in stark bare relief. [color=fff200]“It’s… exhausting. Sean, honestly. It’s exhausting trying to live up to being just a fraction of you. I know I didn’t really say it enough when you were around, and you probably wouldn’t want to hear it now… but I miss you. I miss you and I don’t know if I really can. I think it’ll kill me faster than anyone else can.” [/color] He held an awkward pause. Dragging out the time. He always felt he should stay longer than felt comfortable. Always felt he owed him more. [color=fff200]“I guess I’ll see you next month. Same time, same place. Heh.”[/color] Dennis let out a deep sigh, and after another three beats left the gravesite. On the way out he passed by the Wall. The Wall contained a number of cemented in metal drawer “urns” that held the cremated remains of the deceased. Once a drawer was used, it would then be cemented closed and a plaque would adorn the urn instead of an ugly drawer-handle. Dennis reached into his plastic bag and removed a small bouquet of yellow daffodils and tulips, there was no room for vases on the Wall so Dennis leaned a plaque forward and wedged the stems in behind to hold them in place. The remains of the last bouquet had long dried up, fallen and been cleared away by caretakers. The plaque belonged to the sole resident on this wall whose remains were never cremated. The plaque bore the man’s name, years of birth and death, the emblem of the LHPD and the message “Thank you for your years of unflinching service”, which if anybody bothered to chase down hard enough they would find it had been paid for by a private citizen and not by the Lost Haven Police Department. They might also find that the small eagle symbol that was next to the LHPD emblem was not affiliated with any branch or unit within the city’s police department. No words were exchanged. There was nothing to say. Dennis had only ever known the man from stories passed down by his grandfather. Truth be told he couldn’t recall ever so much as meeting the man. But nobody else ever visited this urn so Dennis figured he should. The florist had said that yellow tulips and daffodils symbolized renewal. It sounded as suitable as anything else.