"I can just barely remember my first parade… it was a lot of fun… At least, I think it was from all of the pictures I've seen. I mean, yeah, I remember it, but the pictures tell me a lot more than my memories. I remember my father's sweaty palm as he held onto my hand, the heat bearing down onto my back, and the way that my dad would swing me up onto his shoulders so that I could see some of the floats. It was hot and sticky and my shirt was stuck to my back for hours and I got a stomach ache afterwards from all of the free candy I caught. Everyone was smiling and laughing and just… happy. But, I can see from the pictures, the floats. The costumes. And just how much make up the lady beside us had been wearing and, most importantly, I can see my dad's face again… man, it's a blast from the past…"
Andrew let out a soft chuckle as he stopped peering through the photo album he'd found in the old floor boards and then he blinked down at the little necklace he always wore around his neck. It was a simple thing. The chain was golden, like sweet honey, and the pendant that hung off of it was a grinning skull, also made of gold, and it had eyes made of emeralds. Okay… so it wasn't so simple. It was worth fortunes to any jeweler, but it was worth a lot more to its current owner.
"I wonder what else I can find…" He muttered as he rummaged about in the hay beneath the floorboards. He was currently in the living room of his old house. He hadn't dared venture back to that place till now. It wasn't that he had been scared to (Andrew wasn't scared of anything!), but that he really hadn't had a reason to go back till now.
"Hey! Matt!", Andrew suddenly exclaimed. "Whaddya think of this?" He held up an old sack that had been a brilliant shade of red once upon a time… that is, before the hands of time had slowly sipped away at the once ribbon red color and then gnawed away at a few strands here and there.
"Hey! Hold it better! It looks like it'll break apart in your hands if you keep handling like that!", Matt grumbled quietly, his jaw moving just enough for his golden coat to shine in the faint light coming from the torch that Andrew had painstakingly attached to a wall that was most definitely not designed for a torch. Electricity was such a tricky thing… Andrew saw no reason for him to deal with the futuristic idea.
"Oh, calm down. Keep going like that and your paint will start flaking off again." Andrew muttered and the head replied with a simple huff of indignation while the teenager ever so carefully pulled at the draw string and the whole thing did indeed collapse in his hands. Needles and coins and tiny jewels that glinted in the torchlight of the room sputtered across the floor like tiny, metallic raindrops.
Matt let out a sharp laugh that almost sounded like a cough. "I told you so! But does anyone listen to the talking head? Nooooo."
Andrew silenced him by shoving him down his shirt, where he let out a muffled choking sound and then the room became quiet once again. Andrew's companion was often welcome company, but he seemed a bit grouchy today… or maybe he was always this grouchy… Andrew never did bother to pay much attention to the talking skull anyways. It was normally Andrew who did the talking after all.
He began the tedious task of picking up everything he'd spilt on the floor and he used the hem of his shirt as a make shift bag which, in hindsight, wasn't all that good of an idea due to the fact that the needles kept jabbing him in the stomach when he didn't bother to take care with how lightly he stepped. However, something made him lurch to a stop when he came near the window. He let out a sharp yelp of pain when a particularly large group of needles prodded him in the stomach once more and he rubbed his pale tummy while he examined what had caught his attention the first time. It was a jewel he couldn't identify… which was incredibly rare due to the fact that his parents were jewelers. He squinted in the light and picked up this stray oddity and held it up to the moonlight that was now brighter than the torch he had going inside. Its outside was as clear as a diamond but it slowly grew more and more opaque towards the center, where swirls of rainbow-like colors swam about within. He tilted his head like a bird does when it examines something interesting, as if that would help to reveal whatever this… thing was, but he only grew more curious about it the more he examined it. His hair flopped into his face as it always did when it got the opportunity and he huffed and shoved it back into place. The inky black locks felt slightly greasy under his touch.
Bathing wasn't something that Andrew particularly enjoyed doing. As aforementioned, electricity was nothing but a nuisance to Andrew and the cold water he had to bathe with was definitely not a welcome object. There was a shade of pale skin underneath the layers of grime that had accumulated on him in the past few weeks. His soot covered skin and dark black hair that curled annoying around his face and ears were oddly in contrast with his icy blue eyes. One might think of them as a shade of blue lighting. They were a very light and frothy teal that seemed to always reflect the world around him with curiosity instead of displaying his emotions like eyes would on the average person. His cheekbones stuck out a little bit to put emphasis on just how skinny he was. He was also an obvious teenager due to the fact that he was tall and lanky and most definitely hadn't grown into manhood quite yet. He was something around sixteen… maybe even fifteen, but he had an odd habit of acting and speaking much younger than he actually was.
Deciding that it would be best if he just left it for later, he drew open a pouch that hung from the belt around his waist and put the… thing inside of the small container that held all of his most precious belongings before he headed back to where he'd first pulled up the floorboards. He knelt down beside the hole and set down his load of objects, carefully this time, and rummaged about once more until he was sure he'd collected everything. He now had what some might consider a fortune. A plethora of books on the subject of alchemy, two family photo albums, approximately thirty precious jewels and forty faux jewels that could easily fool the untrained eye, plenty of sewing needles, and his new discovery… but not a single dog collar!
"How hard is it to find one thing?" he grumbled quietly and the muffled choking sound came from his shirt once more. He pulled Matt out from within his collar and the golden skull sputtered angrily for a bit and Andrew couldn't catch a word it said for a long while before it began to make sense.
"Why the hellfire did you have to do that? I was just telling you I told you so. You really should listen to me more. I'm not the crazy one here, going through your exparents' stuff just to look for some damn dog collar. You know what you should do? You should get the hellfire out of here. Yeah. That's what I would do if I HAD SOME FREAKING LEGS?! THINK YOU COULD DO—"
Matt was silenced by a giant, pale finger being shoved right between his jaws, which only served to anger Matt further. Andrew glanced around nervously, hoping that the true owners of this place hadn't woken up from the ruckus that Matt had been stirring up. Matt had no intentions of remaining silent and so he did the thing that any sensible skull would do when he was being oppressed by his master… he bit him. Andrew just barely held back a howl of pain as he did a hop/skip around the room, trying to hold back tears. Matt's bite hurt five times worse than twenty paper cuts combined. Andrew let out a soft whimper as he stopped moving about and stared down at his finger and watched as a tiny bulb of blood seeped out of the cut and ran down his finger. He let loose a few whispered curses and shook out his hand and, in doing so, accidentally knocked over a vase.
Andrew was quick to utter a levitation spell to keep both the vase and table from hitting the ground but the combination of his desperation for the spell to work and the fact that there was his blood exposed to the air made the vase and table ram straight up into the rafters. The vase broke with a shattering crash, as did the table… and the roof. There was now a gaping hole where a simple part of a wooden roof had once been and Andrew could hear people, who were very much awake, running out of bed and rushing down stairs. Andrew let fly a few more curses while Matt just sat there grinning, knowing that he'd done his job beautifully.
Andrew gathered his loot together and, with a simple breath, teleported back to the safety of his beautiful island. He let out a loud sigh of relief and let everything fall to the cobblestone path while he leaned down and kissed one of the mausoleums. "That was close…" he whispered to himself for once. Matt just laughed and Andrew shoved him back into his shirt with a vengeance that inadvertently made Andrew's neck ache. He stretched and let out a yawn before glancing back at the horizon and saw that he'd escaped just in time… dawn was only about twenty minutes away.
He gathered together his things once more and made the long trek from his landing platform back home. He'd purposefully chosen to make it long so that pursuers would get lost in the labyrinth of pine trees, headstones, catacombs, mausoleums, weeping angels, and just general lack of light. Andrew just hated traveling in the daylight… too hot… too obvious… and too many people. He slid down the last hill, being too lazy to use the stairs, and he wiped his feet off at the door of his home. He set his new collection down on the empty shelf that still held chunks of decaying bones. A skeletal hand waved at him and he waved back. "Hello Michael… you probably wanna get to sleep. Sunrise is in five minutes."
At that, the sounds of clanking and chattering that had been going on ahead quickly turned into a fast paced fury as the skeletons rushed to get back in bed before the humans could arrive. Andrew pulled the curtain closed over his loot before moving on. The halls were lined with random shelves on which a few figures could be seen. Some were full bodied skeletons that were curling themselves up into balls to mimic the way they had been laid to rest while others were bodiless heads that chatted quietly amongst themselves and wiggled about, shaking off a few layers of dust before relaxing. He smiled politely at everyone and let the few stragglers, whose ear cavities weren't quite what they used to be, know that the sun was coming up before he headed to his bedroom. His home was actually underneath the depths of the catacombs where he wouldn't have the slightest chance of encountering any human-folk. It was a simple mess of rooms… there was no kitchen and all of the furniture was made of wood and stone, save for his bed which used pine needles as a mattress and cedar as a headboard… It always smelled nice…
He let out his loudest yawn yet and stretched once more, popping his back before tugging Matt off and gently setting him down in his own bed, which was a little jewelry box made of red satin and silk. Matt said nothing, snuggled into 'bed', and was soon snoring as loud as a human. Andrew rolled his eyes and pulled off his black over coat, his simple grey shirt, and his old black shoes. He slipped over to his bed, flung off his socks without letting his feet touch the cold stone floors, before crawling his way into bed and falling into a deep sleep with one hand tucked underneath his 'pillow' and the other hand on his ever so precious pouch.