the bones of our past - Lockwood x Lucy

The Sun Drawing Near

A/N: If you like to listen to music while you read, then I really recommend playing this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cscuCIzItZQ) after the first page break since I can promise it will improve your reading experience significantly. However, you should probably turn it off as soon as the next page break comes around, otherwise, the juxtaposition between the music and the text might give you whiplash.

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Despite apparently standing amidst a fog made of ectoplasm, Mary Carlyle was, quite honestly, bored.

At the start of their night, she'd been frightened, sure. With pure darkness enveloping her, every breaking twig had made her jump. It wasn't that she wasn't brave, or that she was a very fearful girl overall - no, it was more the knowledge that, should any danger arise, she wouldn't even be able to sense it.

There was a certain horror in this realisation: She could walk straight into a ghost, arms open wide, and not feel a thing until it was too late.

It was this helplessness that made her stomach turn.

However, now that she was safely standing inside of an iron circle, there really wasn't much to be afraid of. To be fair though, Mary wasn't sure it would have even been possible to feel scared with Anthony Lockwood and George Karim bickering overhead, whatever the circumstances.

"So, fake-relationship, eh?" George just asked Lockwood with a gleeful grin on his face, and Mary had to admit that she liked this guy.

"Yes. Just to protect Lucy from Jacobs and his brother, of course," Lockwood stated matter of factly, but even if George couldn't see the tension in his face, Mary very well could.

That was a definite upside to her predicament: The very fact that she had no discernable talent also meant that her vision wasn't blocked by the apparent fog the other three agents had talked about. She couldn't even see it. No, all Mary saw was a slight shimmer in the air where the fog probably was and three people standing dumbstruck in the road.

"Oh, come on, Lockwood," George shouted, a bit too loud for Mary's taste. "Lucy can't hear us if you're scared of that. My theory is that as much as the fog clouds our vision, it also clouds our hearing - if we have the correlating ability, that is."

Lockwood seemed to think about that for a few seconds. "Lucy?" He finally called out, testing out George's theory.

No answer came.

"She's just standing there, wide-eyed," Mary supplied. "She hears something, that's for sure, but not us."

"You see?" George called out to Lockwood again. "I mean, my listening isn't all that great, and even my hearing is slightly impacted. Lucy won't be able to hear anything from any of us right now until the fog lifts."

It unnerved Mary that Lockwood and George, albeit being turned in each other's direction, didn't directly look at each other. Lockwood had directed his eyes a bit too much to the left, George a bit too much to the right.

With a shake of her head, she looked down to where the tea and biscuits were standing. They had told her about the 'biscuit-rule' on their way here, that apparently being more important than basic ghost-fighting strategy. But would they really notice if she took one out of turn? It would be quite the risk actually to try and sneak one out because she hadn't been able to make sure yet that all of the cookies were nut-free - which they would need to be if she didn't want to end up having to stab herself with pure adrenaline. But, then again, that definitely would solve her boredom.

"Alright," George continued, "so, about this fake-relationship..."

"Oh, shut up," came Lockwood's answer.