The sun was high in the sky, birds chirped and soft wind rustled through the grass, through the branches of the few trees scattered throughout the cemetery. It didn’t take a lot of focus to be able to hear the murmuring inside the church across the way. Prayers, too loud hymns, some hypocritical sermon, none of it mattered. He tried to pick out Thea’s singing voice, his eyes closed, hands placed behind his head where he rested in the shade of a particularly tall headstone.
It was always a bit of a hassle, waiting for mass to let out. The chapel grounds weren’t somewhere he could enter and so he’d wait just outside them, pace back and forth. The gates were made of silver, as if just to spite him, and he’d watch Thea disappear beyond them and try not be be annoyed. It said a lot that he was there at all, that he wasn’t shying away from it. Sometimes he’d see her off as far as he could and other days he’d meet her afterwards unannounced. Today was one of those days and he’d situated himself in the graveyard across the way from the actual chapel itself.
The story went that the cemetery came first, had a road separating it from actually being a part of the church grounds, and so he could enter it. The place was quiet, peaceful enough that he could actually rest before inevitably getting worked up over Thea speaking to him about what the mass had entailed.
Sermons, hymns, he paid more attention to them now than he ever did when he was alive. How could he not when it was being preached that he was some despicable, lustful creature hellbent on turning innocent humans to sin? If it weren’t so damn amusing how worked up the humans got over them, he would have been more annoyed by it. What the citizens of Tenea thought of his kind didn’t bother him so much as what they thought of everything else. Religious fanaticism had overtaken an entire country, forced a whole monarchy of vampires into hiding. And he wondered what Thea thought of it all, what she pondered about as she sat there begrudgingly rubbing elbows with nobility.
Jamie sat up and opened his eyes as he heard the congregation being dismissed, his elbows on his knees, fingers idly spinning his daylight ring around his finger. The gold of it gleamed in the sun and for just a moment as he tried to discern Thea from the crowd of humans gathering on the chapel steps, he wondered what she thought about in there. If she chose to just daydream like he had as a human, if she believed even a shred of what was being spewn.
“Took you long enough, lass. Thought they’d decided tae baptize you a second time just tae spite me.” And there she was, beautiful at the edge of the cemetery as he rose to his feet and strode toward her. Despite his grin, there was always and an under layer of worry about meeting after such an event. It was a different headspace she had to be in, a different mask to put on when he wasn’t around but everyone else was. Jamie resisted the urge to hold her face in his hands as he came to a stop in front of her. “Y’alright, highness?” It was still teasing, but it was customary, he had to be sure. @hermajestyvengeance