One night, Chastity's old headstone was removed. Rubbing out the graffiti would take too long, but with a tip of a few silvers extra, the gravekeeper took a sledgehammer to it and turned it to rubble.

Throughout the morning, only freshly turned red-brown clay and a rectangular discoloration of the grass marked where the young woman had been laid to rest —

— but by the time Alain arrived, at sunset, an angel stood watch over her body, her long hair hiding the face of marble, curled protectively around a harp with delicate fingers resting on the strings. It was achingly beautiful and sad, he realized, as he approached it. For just a moment, he saw Chastity in the divine magician....but reality returned to him when his knuckles brushed not soft, warm skin, but cool stone. His hand recoiled as if stung, and there he paused a long moment. Not sure where to begin.

"Hey," he said finally, setting the dozen China roses in front of the statue. His hands wrung themselves between his knees as he crouched by her. "I, ah....thought you might like these. They reminded me of you." A small grin touched his lips; he stilled his wringing, finally, and played thoughtfully with a blade of grass. "You know....I haven't done this — really, honestly gone to a cemetery to talk — in two years, but....I owe you at least that much. No — I owe you so much more.

"I'm sorry, Chat. I was not much younger a man when I took part in all we shared and then pushed you away....but I would do better now, and should have done better then. If I could not have loved you, I should have been kinder to you....should not have spurned you so...

"...And you're not the only woman I've done that to. So many I've let slip right back out of my life, and some....well, I have no idea what?s become of them. And I didn't just fail to protect you....I protected the wrong woman. I gave up on you, and I saved your killer's life."

He paused, gathering his thoughts, and let loose a slow sigh. "...For that, I never expect to be forgiven. In fact, I ought to go unforgiven....but I won't let you go unavenged..." The grass blade he'd been playing with, he finally plucked from the ground and balled it up. Green oozed onto his fingertips. "Though that won't warm your lips, or make your music play again."

He sat very still, by her grave. His words felt hollow, and he wanted to cry out in anguish and rage, but he sat with her and stared unseeing at the ground. The sun had just dipped by the horizon, when he finally spoke again, quietly: "Sorry." Then he rose slowly, and left the cemetery.

Chastity Colragen "A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love." ~Stendhal