The Stories of Latia, Vol. 2: Demon's Curse

Chapter 24: We Gather Here Today

Chapter 24: We Gather Here Today

The Narrator

Late September. None of them had heard from Cassidy or Avery in nearly three months, but they could make guesses as to what happened.

"Is that it?" Alex asks, sitting on Jayme's bed, his guitar in their lap.

"Almost..." Jayme whispers, looking at Alex's fingering on the guitar's fretboard and moving their first finger up one string. "There ya go. That's your A minor chord."

"Cool." Alex looks down at their fingers, strumming the guitar twice, then looking back up at Jayme with a smile.

"Okay. The next chord is a C, so you're gonna wanna-" Jayme softly instructs, but he's interrupted by a knock at the door downstairs.

"I got it," Jayme mouths, getting up from his spot on the floor and walking over to the door.

He hears Alex practicing switching between the A minor and C chords as he walks down the stairs and into the office, now being able to see who was knocking through the door's window.

"Alex!" Avery's back!" Jayme shouts, rushing the rest of the way over to the door and pulling it open for her.

The two stand there for a moment, Avery, on one side of the doorframe, her teary eyes fixated on the ground in front of her, and Jayme on the other, his eyes fixated on her. She didn't even seem to flinch when Jayme opened the door. 

Without saying another word, Jayme steps out onto the porch, wrapping Avery in a tight hug that she barely reciprocates.

'Hey, Jayme..." she mumbles, pulling away from the hug as he leads her inside.

"Sit down, I'll make you some tea, okay?" Jayme offers when they reach the kitchen.

"Okay." Avery sits down at the corner seat of the kitchen table.

A second after she'd sat down, Alex came rushing down the stairs, nearly running over to her the second their eyes landed on Avery. She gets up, sharing another hug with them, before sitting back down. Alex takes a seat across from her while Jayme boils some water.

"Are you okay?" Alex softly asks.

"If I told you I was, would you believe me?" Avery cynically jokes.

Avery's words are only met with Alex's teary eyes and quivering lip. "How is... how was she?"

"She was... she was good. We got lucky. She didn't suffer long." Every single 'was' or 'didn't' feels like a dagger in Avery's chest.

"That's good. As good as it could be."

Jayme slowly steps over from the kitchen to the table, placing a cup of hot tea in front of Avery, and another in between Alex and the seat he eventually sat in.

Avery places a stack of envelopes on the table when she reaches for her tea cup. "Thanks."

"No problem. What are those?" Jayme asks.

"Cass... Cass wrote them. For us. She saw it as a way to have a proper goodbye, I guess." Avery stares down into her tea cup, wiping the tears coming out of her eyes with one hand and sliding the stack across the table with the other.

Alex reaches over, picking up the pile. There were 6 envelopes, each adorned with a different name, scrawled on the front. All except one, which was just blank, but it definitely had something in it.

Alex placed the one with their name on it in front of them, handing the one with Jayme's name to Jayme, and putting the one with Avery's name and the one with no one's back on the table in front of Avery.

"I'll give James and Elek theirs when I see them next," Alex says with tears running down their face.

"Thanks."

Avery was never the same after that.

I mean, how could she be?

The funeral was only a little over a month later, in early November. Alex and Jayme planned it, and they tried to get at least a little input from Avery, but she hasn't said a single word since she got back.

The funeral was held at an old cemetery, out on the outskirts of the Financial District on a dark, gloomy day, and only consisted of 6 people. Avery, Alex, Jayme, James, Elek and the officiant.

"Is this everybody?" The officiant asks, looking around at the five of them. They all nod.

"Okay, then we can get started." The officiant clears his throat. "We gather here today, to say goodbye to a close friend, a sister, a partner, Cassidy Locke. She lived a long life, although still one that was unfortunately cut short..."

As the officiant continued, James glanced over his shoulder, doing a double take when he saw a large group of people, all dressed in black, slowly approaching where they're gathered.

James pulls up his coat lapels to try and hide his face as best as possible when he sees them.

"Oh, I see a few more are joining us," the officiant says as the large group formed a half-circle around where he stood. "Does anyone wish to speak?"

After a few seconds, a little girl steps up next to the officiant from the crowd of people who had just arrived.

"Hi. M-My name is Monika Green, and we're the residents of Eighwell," she shakenly begins. "Almost a year ago, our village was attacked by a cruel man in a tank... He had killed neighbors of mine, and destroyed many homes, but Mrs. Locke was there to protect us. Mrs. Locke personally threw herself in front of that tank to save my life. If she wasn't there... Who knows what else he would've done. So on the behalf of Eighwell, I want to thank Cassidy Locke for all you've done for us, and may you rest in eternal peace."

Her little speech is met with scattered applause as she rejoins the small crowd.

"Thank you, Monika. Would anyone else like to speak?"

Jayme looks over at Avery, who is just staring at Cassidy's headstone, reading the words over and over again, before stepping up to stand beside the officiant.

"Hi, I'm Jayme Tuffin. For a while, Cassidy was just... A girl, who my coworker had a crush on." He tearfully laughs a little. "But eventually, that coworker became my best friend, and... That girl became her wife, but they both became people I considered to be my family. Because I learned a long time ago that blood makes you related, but loyalty, and love... That's what makes you family." Jayme's short speech was responded to by soft, scattered applause like Monika's.

No one else wanted to speak, and so the funeral was over. Just like that.

Avery appreciated every 'I'm sorry for your loss,' but at the same time she swore if she got another, she'd throw up.

"Should we check up on her?" Alex whispers to Jayme, Avery standing a few feet from them in front of the headstone.

"She just needs some space. I trust she'll come to us when she's ready." Jayme wraps his arm around Alex's shoulders, and they start heading back home.

James was one of the first people to leave, Elek left not long after Alex and Jayme did, and everyone else slowly filtered out, until it was just Avery, standing a few feet from the headstone.

When she was sure she was alone, Avery knelt down where she stood, pulling a sealed envelope with her name written on the front from her coat pocket.

With a deep, shuddering breath, she carefully opened it.