Anniversaries - Robin and John Stoker

John glances at Robin, who’s been remarkably quiet in the passenger seat of the Mustang for the past hour. The kid’s folding his origami, but the last swan unraveled when he set it on the dash, and the edges aren’t the normal clean fold lines John is accustomed to seeing Robin make.
“Okay, I can’t take this anymore. What’s going on?” John asks, pulling over into a parking lot.
Robin looks down at his hands. “It’s…” He swallows and looks up, and John realizes his eyes have gone a grief-stricken purple. “My mom died thirteen years ago today.”
“Oh kiddo.” John shuts off the car. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment he thinks about telling the kid he should have taken the day off. They have personal days for a reason, especially in this line of work. He always takes the day of Gabe’s death off if he can.
But Robin would probably take that as a criticism, especially in the headspace he’s in, so John decides not to say it. Instead, he reaches over and takes the half-folded dove out of Robin’s hand. “Not much happening tonight. I’ll call in and say we’re gonna go off rotation early if Maira approves it. Then we can go do whatever you want to.”
He doesn’t know what fae do, exactly, to grieve. That’s a pretty private ritual for them. He always goes to La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora church and lights a candle for Gabe, but he doubts that’s also Robin’s tradition. And if the kid tells him to back off and let him do this by himself, John will respect that.
Robin blinks. “She’d do that?”
John nods. “Of course she will. There’s no sense in having a distracted team out there. Carmelino and Diaz can cover our sector for the rest of the night. There hasn’t been anything big this side of town all week.”
It only takes a minute to make the call and get their approval. John sets his phone down and glances at Robin. “Okay, you’re in charge, kiddo. What’s the plan?”
“Could you…do you mind driving me to the cemetery where she’s buried?” Robin asks. “It’s the Wilderness.” John recognizes the name of the unofficial fae burial ground. It’s outside city limits but not on glamoured lands, a concession to the number of city residents who are part-fae, whose human family members want to visit their graves. Fae burial practices can be followed there, but it’s not technically sanctioned by the fae themselves. It’s a limbo. A no-man’s land, for those who are neither one species nor the other.
“Of course I’ll take you.” John pulls out of the lot and drives out of the city, watching the houses get sparser and be replaced with fields and fruit groves, the sun rising and turning the sky ahead of the car pink and gold and orange. He pulls off the road into the rutted dirt trail covered by interlacing tree branches. There’s a sense of something magical hanging in the air, although it’s not the overwhelming feeling of being in the warded space of Rowan House. But the trees feel a little more alive somehow.
John parks in a small dirt lot, with the carved wooden sign “NO motor vehicles beyond this point” sitting beside the road pointing in. He and Robin step out.
“You want me to stay or come?” John asks.
“You can come. I want you to meet her.” Robin’s voice is subdued, but doesn’t sound broken or tear-choked. John nods and follows Robin as they walk in the rest of the way on foot.
The gate swings open on its own when they approach, the vines unraveling and the branches, woven together like the overhead arch, moving aside to let them pass. Robin walks in, past rows of old headstones, then turns to his right down a small lane shaded by a couple of hawthorn trees.
He kneels down in front of a grey granite stone with small pinkish flecks in its depths. The name “Eleanor Robinson” and the small poem fragment below it are completely filled in with rich green moss, and while in most cemeteries that would be a sign of neglect, John figures for fae, that’s the exact opposite.
Robin bends down, brushing a few leaves off the headstone and pulling a red-and-grey striped rock out of his pocket to lay on top of it.
A few faint rays of sunlight are creeping through the trees, landing on Robin and the stone, and the clusters of soft white flowers around its base. John blinks, he didn’t think those were there a minute ago. He notices Robin’s hand resting on the moss and grass over the grave and wonders if he made them grow, or at least blossom.
Robin is whispering something, John thinks in Seelie, his eyes closed. When he’s finished, he stands up and traces the moss on the letters in the stone, and tiny yellow flowers leap out from its surface, gilding the words in the sunlight.
John smiles. “It’s beautiful,” He says gently, putting an arm around Robin’s shoulders.
Robin nods.
John leans over to touch the moss with one finger. He was wrong about the sunlight hitting it, the beams aren’t yet high enough in the sky to touch so close to the ground. The little flowers in the moss are glowing on their own, a soft pulsing light.
“You raised a good kid, Eleanor,” John whispers. “And I’m gonna look after him. I promise you that.”