[scoarta] but a part of me knows that I'm growing too old [zviad]

“There are several reasons?” Zviad asked, sounding intrigued. “Do tell me more about the dangers here.” He knew he probably didn’t have to encourage Mihaela but he still liked to show it when he was really interested in something – it did not happen all that much, at least it had not happened a lot at school. However, Zviad wasn’t indifferent, he liked to learn about some things he was not family with. It could be quite fascinating and actually useful to listen sometimes.

They made their way down the path and Zviad grinned at Mihaela, quite enjoying that she seemed a little tipsy already. The boy himself would claim that he was still entirely sober if asked but, truth be told, he could tell that his reactions were slower now and if he transformed into his magpie shape he’d certainly end up injured badly enough that an animal loving girl might take a pity on him again.

“Boring stuff at a dangerous place, eh?” Zviad asked, softly nudging Mihaela’s shoulder. “I guess it’s a lot about safety measures and such?”

Zviad nodded approvingly. “Looks like a cosy place to live. You’re already getting own place, though?! That’s amazing. Do you already know where? I guess you’ll always be close to your family in Scoarta.” An own place sounded so intriguing. Zviad hoped that once he’d graduate from Durmstrang he’d be able to somehow make that possible for himself as well. However, his plans for the time after graduation were still pretty vague at this moment.

“Oh yes, graveyards are always fun,” Zviad teased with a grin. “You could tell me some scary stories of the Strigoi there.”

"Every-damn-thang here is dangerous," Mihaela said with a giggle, taking another swig from her bottle and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. "The chickens peck, the children run in gangs, flying bugs bitin' your neck, and that's just in the village." She led him toward the little path that headed in the direction of the forest. "Out there is way worse, monsters, dragons, acromantula, zgriptors, strigoi, you name it, we got it," Mihaela was proud of where she lived. So proud, in fact, that she'd probably never live anywhere else her entire life. Even though the love of her life was miles and miles away.

"You ever saw a zgriptor?" She asked him as they reached the graveyard. It was chock full of tombstones, crypts, and things that go bump in the night. In Romania, it was commonplace for the Cemeteries to be quite colorful, and Scoarta was no different. Flowers, beads, and decorations hung around the cracked and aging tombstones. The crypts were painted in reds and golds and magically sealed. Mihaela brought Zvad to a rather large and imposing statue with an inscription on the bottom. "This be my bunicul," She told him, tipping the bottle over a little as an offering before leaning against the statue.

"Died during a strigoi attack, but don't worry, he'll be 'round tonight for the feast." Ghosts were also quite common in Scoarta. "Da old man never misses a party,"

Mihaela stated that everything here was dangerous and giggled. It seemed quite natural to her that she was living in such dangerous surroundings. When his friend drank some more, he, too, lifted the bottle to his lips to take another sip. He didn’t mind an adventure, he liked the thrill but living in surroundings this dangerous was an entirely different thing. The young wizard wasn’t entirely sure if he’d like that. Then again, he knew he didn’t like living where he now lived either. Sukhumi was a nice enough town but Zviad doubted that he wanted to go and live there after graduation. It would feel like he had achieved nothing if he stayed in his hometown.

As Mihaela mentioned all the scary creatures that lived in the forest, Zviad shivered slightly. He took another sip from his bottle and stared into the direction of the forest, almost imagining an army of dangerous beasts coming out of it to hunt them down. He shook his head. The alcohol was strong. Too strong probably.

“Nope,” Zviad said, swaying slightly. “Never saw one and,” he snorted, “I think I am not eager to meet one either. Have you seen one?” He assumed she had, at least from afar and was impressed already before she had answered his question.

The young wizard frowned a little as Mihaela spoke of her grandfather. “That must be…” his voice trailed off. Was it cool to have a ghost grandfather? “Is he... “ he paused and tried to get his brain to produce a sensible question but he felt that he was slowing down a little because of the alcohol he had already consumed. “Is he still the same? I mean, he is a ghost, I understand, but what about his personality? I’d think having died changes people.” He nodded thoughtfully to himself. He didn’t know, though. How could he anyway.

"Only up in the mountains, never up close, and I ain't itchin' ta' change that none," Mihaela answered Zviad's return question with another grin. The alcohol started a party in between her ears, it was loud and buzzing, and she felt warmer than normal. The Romanian loved the airy powerful feeling that came from drinking, like she could do anything as if she could fly, but she knew better than to try. Still, she pretended to be a Zygriptor for a moment, holding her arms out beside her and acting like she was soaring through the crowd as she circled her friend. "Mean sons'a', well, you know what," She wiggled her eyebrows and laughed again. This stuff was really working.

"Well, I never met him before, so he's the same he's ever been ta' me... does that make sense?" Mihaela couldn't' stop giggling; she held the back of her hand over her mouth as her eyes crinkled and then took another swig. This was going to be a great night! She was in such high spirits. Rationally she understood what Zviad was getting at, and if she wasn't half in the bag already, she might have answered more in-depth, but such conversations were further out of reach the more alcohol she consumed. "Hope I don't change when I die," She mused, leaning against one of the old tombstones and nodding.

Going from bubbly to solemn in a heartbeat was another side effect of the liquor, and Mihaela was in its grips now. "Probably die up there, and be buried right there, and that'll be that." While the Romanian absolutely loved her town and her responsibilities, there was something to be said about her life basically already having been written. She wanted adventure, she wanted surprises, but even Mihaela was smart enough to know she was more likely to be a cautionary tale than a legend.

“Yeah, I bet,” Zviad responded quickly. It was cool to be able to talk about these dangerous creatures and quite impressive if one met one and lived to tell the tale. However, Zviad assumed that most encounters did end deadly and thus only a ghost self could talk about that and that, certainly, wasn’t a good prospect.

As Mihaela pretended to be a Zygriptor and circled him, Zviad realised that he was quite drunk by now himself. Following her movements with his gaze he almost lost balance and swayed a little. “Woah,” he said as he found a steady position again, grinning slightly. “Didn’t think this would kick in quite so much,” he admitted, his words sounding a bit slurred now.

“Yeah,” Zviad said, nodding his head a little longer than necessary. “Shame though. That you never met him alive, I mean.”

The graveyard was somewhat a strange place to be at in their drunk state. While Zviad did not mind it much under normal circumstances, he felt a shiver run down his spine when Mihaela said that she hoped she wouldn’t change when she died. He tried for a grin but it was more a grimace.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “and I wonder…” he made a few steps closer to Mihaela, almost stumbling over a small tombstone. “I don’t think I’d like to become a ghost… but… at least then you’d know what’s coming.” He took a sip from his bottle again, knowing that this was hardly a sensible thing to do as he was already drunk enough. However, the talk about death was making him somewhat uncomfortable.

“Do you think it’s all over when you’re not becoming a ghost? You die and you cease to exist just like that?”

Snickering playfully when Zviad almost tripped, Mihaela leaned against the crooked stone pine tree that seemed out of place in the middle of a graveyard. "Do we get the choice?" Mihaela asked, honestly unaware that not every magical person was destined to become a ghost that never left their home town. For all the knowledge she had of magical creatures and mystical legends, Mihaela was clueless when it came to most everyday things. Life in Scoarta was small; they had their traditions, their beliefs, and other than Durmstrang and the few travelers that passed through on their way to the dragon reserve, the rest of the world didn't really exist.

The next thing that Zviad said made Mihaela wonder more and more, the alcohol mixing with everything she hadn't learned at Durmstrang and making her head spin. "Would like ta' think there would be more to it than that," She said, shrugging into the tree and sliding down a little until she was seated on the cold dirt. Standing was becoming more difficult the more she drank. "Like, that can't just be it," Up until two minutes ago, she thought the only option was to become a ghost, but now that there were other possibilities, it seemed limitless.

"What do you tink?"

“No,” Zviad said thoughtfully, shaking his head as he pondered over a more elaborate response. He felt that he needed to say something to explain himself, but, ultimately, he was just as clueless as Mihaela if not even more so given that she had a ghost grandfather. “I don’t think you get a choice. Not an actual one anyway.” He threw his hands up in a gesture that implied that he was just guessing now, spilling some of the booze from his bottle as he did so.

“Yeah…” the Georgian stared at a tombstone and shuddered. “I hope so, for sure. But if we do not cease to exist I hope we do not…” he kicked a little stone that was lying on the ground and almost lost his balance doing so. “I hope we do not, like, stay in our body and feel how the grubs eat our flesh.” His expression was disgusted at the thought of that and he lifted the bottle to his lips as if to scour himself from these thoughts he just had.

“I kinda hope that a new life begins when the current one is over,” he offered, grinning sheepishly. Maybe it was silly to hope for such a thing, but death didn’t seem quite so threatening with the prospect of a new life ahead.

"Come get buried in my town, Zviad, I will no let you become strigoi," Mihaela cut in as the wizard pondered feeling the bugs eating his rotten flesh. "A bit of verbena," The Romanian began as she shot up from the table and lost her balance. Skinning her knees a little on a stone as she wobbled to the ground, Mihaela barely missed a beat.

"At the head, the legs, and the arms, and you will be safe and sound for all of your afterlives." Making a symbolic cross over her body as she spoke, Mihaela gave him a sharp nod. While her family was not strictly religious, they did believe in a great many things and had seen more legends made flesh than most of her peers back at Durmstrang. Mihaela may not have understood everything she had been taught, but she practiced the same magics that had been a part of life in rural Romania for centuries.

"A new life?" She asked, nursing the little beads of blood trickling down her tanned knees. She'd fallen harder than she realized, but being drunk did that. Mihaela used her sleeve to cover the wound, the bright red staining her white blouse, and ignored her mother's scorns in the back of her head. "Like ya' want ta' become another person and start it all over?"

Zviad felt how his thoughts slowed down and were not quite clear anymore. He definitely had drunk more than he should have and he knew it. Since it couldn’t be changed anymore now he lifted the bottle to his lips again, taking another sip - were there even different stages of ‘too much alcohol’?

“Do you think I’ll die before you?” Zviad asked, feeling that Mihaela’s reaction seemed to imply that, but at the same time not quite sure he really got her right. His friend lived here, in this dangerous place, he felt that she was at more danger than he was - at least for as long as he still attended school which wouldn’t be forever, thankfully.

“You okay?” he asked, after Miha had lost her balance and hurt her knees. He thought about offering to heal her knees but he wasn’t sure if in his drunk state he’d even be able to do so.

Mihaela started nursing her wounds and, at the same time, responded to his mention of a new life. The young wizard felt how he, quite uncharacteristically, blushed and turned his gaze down.

“Ugh well, yeah,” he started, shrugging his shoulders. “Kinda like that. I mean, I really don’t know what happens when we’re dying. Maybe our… souls come back in a way. Maybe in a newborn child, maybe in some creature.” He shrugged again and then shook his head. “I suppose whatever happens, we’ll lose our memories of this life so it probably doesn’t really matter, after all.” His voice sounded slurred but Zviad was rather impressed with himself for articulating this thought anyway.

Mihaela was pretty far gone now. The alcohol coursing through her system, slowing her down and making her skin feel like it was numb. She looked back up at the table where she had been sitting and then at the ground, she was currently on and shrugged. It would be a lot of work to get back up there. "Of course," She answered gingerly, an impish smile on her freckled face. "I'm in great shape, and you're a wizard. Boys die first." She said with a shrug, every one of her words more slurred and accented than normal.

"Dats' just the facts." Talking about death was easier for Mihaela than it might have been for some of her peers. She had grown up around the notion, it was a part of every day in Scoarta, but they didn't fear it. Her people embraced it. Death was just another stage of existing; it wasn't the end.

"Woahh, so you mean..." This was a lot for her to contemplate, especially as far past drunk as Mihaela was, and she took a deep breath. "You got mah' head spinning.' You mean ta' say that I might be the second comin' of my great aunt or something?" It was a wild thing to think of, but she supposed it made some sense. Everyone said she looked like her great aunt Melita; maybe there was a reason for that.

“Is that so?” Zviad asked when Mihaela said that boys died first. He didn’t believe in that. Well, maybe if it was a natural death but with Mihaela’s home being a dangerous place, he thought that her chances of dying prematurely were about as high as his. Or maybe not… he might end up in far more trouble even if he chose to live in a safer place.

It was probably the first time that Zviad had a conversation about death with anyone, especially with a friend, a girl even. Although he wasn’t really aware of it, the alcohol had served him to talk about it far more than he’d usually do.

He tried to stifle a yawn, feeling very tired all of a sudden. He nodded at Mihaela’s question that she might be a reincarnation of her great aunt. “Yup,” he mumbled, “something like that.”

The young wizard felt close to passing out and he could tell that Mihaela was in a similarly bad state by now. He held out his hand for Mihaela to take. “Come on, lead me back to the party,” he said, though at the word party he felt that he was close to being sick. If he drank any more he’d surely pass out. However, anything was better than to stay here, at a graveyard that was already scary by day but really dangerous at night.

\"Sur-is," Mihaela answered, slurring her words together until they sounded like one and then giggling. Maybe he wouldn't die first, Merlin knew she lived far more dangerously, but it was a silly thing to contemplate anyway. And as drunk as she was, it was hard for Miha to think about death and not laugh. Maybe she should have drunk more slowly, but it was far too late for that now. The only hope she had of not throwing up would be to get some food, and luckily, there was a whole party back in town waiting for them.

Almost as if he read her mind, Zviad asked Mihaela to bring him back to the party, and she was quick to acquiesce. Well, in her mind, she was moving fast, but in reality, it took her a full minute to find her way to her feet. She struggled, turning over on her knees and looking for something to pull herself upon. A tombstone would do, the craggy surface of a hundred-year-old carved stone digging into her palms as she stood up. Mihaela brushed her hands off on her shorts, little bits of rock and debris rubbing onto the fabric, and smiled up at Zviad. "Come on, then," She instructed and began the arduous journey of wobbling back into the village. She hoped her bunică wouldn't notice how drunk she was, but even Mihaela was smart enough to know that was unrealistic.

[/end]

Zviad watched Mihaela as she got back to her feet. He put the hand he had outstretched for his friend into the pocket of his jeans as she didn’t take it. She probably hadn’t noticed it and he didn’t mind. Had she pulled on his hand strongly he might have lost his balance anyway, seeing how drunk and unsteady he felt.

He nodded as she instructed him to come and tentatively made a first step. He felt a little like he was on deck of a ship on a stormy day but they’d make it back to the village, he was sure of it. He hoped that he could sleep there somewhere because while he might make it back into the village now, he knew for sure that he wouldn’t be able to apparate home tonight. Now wasn’t the time to address this, though. While the thought came to his mind he felt quite unable to put it into words and so he just stumbled alongside Mihaela away from the cemetery.

[out]