John buried himself in his tasks that day. He took readings with the overattentiveness of a greenhorn keeper, wiped down lenses until not a single speck of dust was left, scrubbed the windows of the lantern room as if he were trying to scrub not just the glass, but the whole world spotless. He worked quickly too, his singular focus speeding his routine to the point that he was done with his daily list and oiling the squeaky door at the base of the stairs by the time the clock hit midafternoon. Once he'd applied a liberal dose of oil to both hinges, he stepped back and closed the door. It glided soundless and smooth as anything. Satisfied, John looked at his watch.

"Fuck."

The hour hand was just past the three, which was a good two hours earlier than where he wanted it to be. Wait. No. John frowned and shook his head at his own melodrama. Things weren't that bad. Unsure of what else to do, he took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He hadn't seen Aradia since breakfast, after which she'd disappeared off to do who knew what, claiming she didn't want to get in the way. As if her presence around the house itself weren't a massive obstacle all on its own.

John groaned and leaned back against the newly oiled door in frustration. The door, which he had never clicked shut, flew open on its newly oiled hinges and hurled him to the ground. He groaned again, this time in pain, but made no effort to get up. He didn't want to be done with work. There were tasks he could do, of course (there always were), but those would require his going outside. He wasn't sure if maintenancing the shitty temporary launch was worth the risk of having to deal with an insane semi-zombie. He weighed his options for a moment, wondering if maybe he could justify taking off the rest of the afternoon to go hide in the bedroom. It had been a while since he'd looked over the launch, though, so he didn't think he could.

John pushed up from the floor and brushed himself off, turning away from the light tower door. He had gotten dirty from the fall, and he made a mental note to clean the floors soon. Not yet, though. He was committed to facing his fears and dragging himself outside.

Once he was out, it took no time at all for him to locate Aradia. She was facing away from him, sitting down the beach on a towel that she must've stolen stolen from John's closet. He crept over the pebbles towards the shed, testing how far he could get without her noticing and watching her hair fly like a massive black flag in the wind.

By some miracle, he reached the launch by the side of the shed without being noticed, but just as he feared, she turned her head towards him the moment he touched the loud, crinkly tarp that covered it. She waved and stood up, and John watched in horror as she rolled up her (his) towel and set off toward him. He did not want to talk to her.

"Hello!" Aradia waved again as she got close. "I hope you don't mind that I borrowed a towel."

"It's fine I guess."

"Okay, thanks." John brushed off the smile that she shot his way, and she went quiet as he finished uncovering the launch. Of course, Aradia being Aradia, she couldn't stay that way.

"So, are you going out on the water?"

"No. I just have to do some maintenance on the launch."

"Launch?"

"The lighthouse boat. It's what we use if we have to go out on the water to help people."

"Oh. Is that how you got me out of the water?"

John frowned. He hadn't, and for good reason. Just the thought of the launch out in a storm like that was enough to make him shiver. Images of his dad filled his mind, and he bit his lip as he tried to dispel them.

"No. I, um. There's some bad rocks toward the sides of our beach and I don't trust boats in storms that bad. You were close enough to shore to swim for."

Aradia looked at him eyes wide, and even John could tell that there were questions brewing in that expression. He did not want to linger on the subject, so he held up a finger, gesturing for her to hold on while he got up to fetch his toolbox from the shed. The boat was in the middle of the shed as always when he opened the door, and he averted his eyes as he grabbed the toolbox and left. He didn't want to deal with that line of thought.

Back outside, he found that had Aradia stretched out on the towel next to the launch. She smiled at him when he looked at her, but she didn't say anything until John had climbed into the launch with his tools and started to examine the motor.

"Hey, thank you again. You risked my life for me. I didn't realize before."

"It's fine. That's my job."

John pulled off a panel with a twist of his screwdriver and peered into the engine, listening to Aradia stir on the towel beside him as he did. He wasn't used to the sounds of other people.

"You know, all the wind and waves out here have some really cool effects on stuff."

"Effects on stuff?"

"Yeah!" Aradia reached into the pocket of her tattered skirt and pulled out, (oh god), a tiny bird skull. "I found this little guy on the beach earlier, and look," Aradia held the skull out toward him. "It's all smoothed out by the waves so it feels like driftwood. I've never seen this before."

John frowned deeper than usual. He was afraid that anything he opened his mouth to say would come out too rude and panicky, but she was looking at him with so much expectation in her eyes, and god, he had to say something.

"How can you touch that?" Goddammit.

"Touch what?"

"A dead body!" John's skin was crawling at the thought of picking up something dead bare handed. It was so unsanitary.

"Oh, it's just a skull. Nature already bleached it clean as anything. She smiled, wide and innocent. And besides, you spent a good part of last evening carrying around my corpse."

"Okay ew. Thanks for reminding me, but that's different." John couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten this worked up about something. "You came back fine the next day. You weren't rotting."

"Neither is this bird though. All its flesh was eaten away ages ago."

"That is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me."

Aradia pouted, and John felt bad for a moment before realizing how theatrical and obviously put on her expression was. He rolled his eyes at her and returned to the motor. Then, when he had trouble focusing, he pretended to look at the motor and watched Aradia through his peripheral vision. She'd dropped the pout after a few seconds, looking at him now with something that he thought might have been either curiosity or complete confusion. He was, he was finding, complete crap at reading expressions.

"Hey, so what are you doing?" Aradia broke the lull again, and john decided that she must've been curious after all. He filed the image of her expression away in his brain for later reference.

"I'm just checking over the motor for anything that's getting corroded."

"Corroded."

"Wear and tear. Mechanical parts break down over time, especially ones that touch chemicals a lot."

"Oh." Aradia shifted audibly on the pebbles behind him, then gave him a minor heart attack a moment later when her face popped up next to his from behind.

John took a deep breath to compose himself, wondering why on earth she was so interested in boring maintenance. "Here." He pointed to a small metal clamp attached to the motor's fuel line. "This one's starting to crack on top, so I have to replace it."

"Right." Aradia turned to face him, and John was forced to bite his lip again and try very hard not to panic at how close she had gotten. Mechanics are so interesting. It's impressive how much you know."

"Thanks, I guess, but this is all just the basic stuff that comes with the job." He paused, still pointedly not making eye contact with her. "I have to grab a replacement for this. I'll be right back."

"Okay."

John pushed himself up and stepped out of the boat. He could feel Aradia on him again, looking him over in that way she always was, and he took a deep breath as he tried to adjust to the sensation. He didn't enjoy the sensation of being watched, not by any stretch of imagination, but it no longer left him shivering with horror movie dread in the way it had not long before. He didn't even feel the need to glance behind his shoulder as he opened the door to the shed.

The skiff gave him no trouble that time, his memories all tucked back into their usual crannies, so it didn't take long for him to find the clamp he needed. He supposed that his houseguest was, if nothing else, a good distraction.

Back outside, he found Aradia sprawled out on her (his, he reminded himself) towel and staring up at the sky. She moved at the sound of the doorway though, hefting herself from the rocks to wave at him again and grin. He smiled back as best he could. He had no idea how it looked on him.

John stretched, clamp in hand, and took his own moment to watch the clouds before sitting down in the skiff and returning the brunt of his attention to the motor. Replacing the clamp was easy work, and he was quick to finish and set about greasing all the usual problem areas. Aradia loomed over his shoulder the whole time, watching him as he worked. He wasn't sure what to make of it; he could see no reason for her to act so fascinated by a simple engine repair job. He wondered if she might have an interest in the topic, though she didn't seem like the type.

"Hey, do you want to try this? This part is super easy."

"Oh no. I'm no good at working with my hands." She smiled at him (well, John supposed it was a smile), but it was lacking the air of manic glee that he had already come to expect from her

"Uh, okay." Aradia's grins had been making him uncomfortable all day, but the lack of her creepy intensity was also starting to bother him. He was worried he'd done something wrong; why else would she have reeled herself in like that? That train of thought was a lot to deal with, though, and John reminded himself that she was a short term unwanted guess and that none of this was supposed to matter. Against his impulse to help, he pulled his eyes from her and returned to his work, leaving the beach in a stifled quiet.

After a long minute, Aradia flopped back down onto her towel. John could no longer see her, but he could feel her watching him. He made a swipe of the cleaning cloth over the motor and began to pack up, and her gaze continued to prickle the back of his neck. He couldn't understand why the hell she was watching him like that if she wasn't interested in his work.

"Hey, John?" Aradia propped herself up in his direction to talk.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have any extra clothes I could wear? I'm stuck her 'til Damara calls me back, and these," she pinched up a bit of her skirt, "are all torn up and smell like saltwater."

Shit.

John frowned and side-eyed Aradia. "This whole beach smells like saltwater."

"Yeah, but in a nice way. My clothes smell like saltwater in a gross kelpy mildewy way."

"Okay." He really didn't want to give her any of his or his family's clothes, but he knew how much of a dick move it would be to leave her in one torn up, smelly outfit for multiple days in a row. "I probably have something." He stood and grabbed his toolbox. "Let me put my stuff away, then we can go look."

Twenty minutes later, John was dropping backward onto the bed in his old room, filled to the brim with absolute frustration. Finding clothes for Aradia was beginning to look impossible; she'd tried on every pair of John's old clothes, but nothing would fit her except for a couple old, oversized t-shirts and a single pair of his shittiest, stretchiest sweatpants. She was just a lot, well, wider than him. It wasn't his fault he was skinny! Still, he couldn't expect her to spend her whole stay (god he hoped it was a short one) alternating between the torn up skirt that she drowned in and his trashy sweatpants. At the rate things were going, he was pretty sure he'd be learning to sew and making her a dress out of his curtains in the name of politeness. That seemed like the kind of thing his dad would do if backed into a corner like this.

"Hey, John?"

He looked up, trying to pretend she hadn't startled him..

"Yeah?"

"You're sure the stuff here is our only option?"

John frowned. He did still have most of his parents' old clothes stored away somewhere, but he didn't think his dad's stuff would fit Aradia. Pants were the main issue, and his dad had been pretty tall, so he doubted any of his pants would fit her legs.

"I think so. There's no way any of my dad's clothes would fit you, and the only other thing would be-"

He cut himself off. He hadn't thought through what he'd started to say, and he didn't think he wanted to finish. His dad's clothes weren't the only things he had in storage, but he wasn't sure he was ready to go there.

Aradia looked at him, eyebrow raised after his sudden cutoff, and against his better judgement, he scanned her up and down, comparing her shape to the photos he'd seen of his mom. She was, he had to admit, the right size.

"Hey, are you alright? You cut off there out of nowhere."

"Yeah, uh…" John stopped himself again. He really did not want to offer up his mom's old clothes, but from what his dad had told him, he knew she'd always been generous. What if he was betraying her memory by not using her stuff to help? Did that even fucking matter?

He turned and looked at Aradia, her face some null zone between curiosity and concern that he didn't know what to make of. Her eyebrows looked thick and heavy over the warm brown color of her eyes, but it was kind of a nice framing effect. With a start, John realized that, when she wasn't giving him chills, she was actually something like pretty. He couldn't just leave her out in the cold.

John sighed. "I think I have an idea for something else that could work, but you have to be really careful with the stuff I give you, alright? And you can't ask too many questions."

"Okay, sure. I'll take anything that fits at this point."

"Right, uh, follow me to the attic then?"

"Alright."

Not wanting to say anything else, John led her out of the room in silence. The air in the hallway was heavy, but Aradia, to her credit, didn't try to make him talk. He stopped them in the hallway under the trapdoor and, much to his chagrin, had to jump up and grab at the handle in the ceiling in a damn undignified way. He could hear Aradia suppressing her laughter as he flailed through the air, but he tried not to look at her. He didn't want to know whether her laughter was mocking or warm. Given what he was making himself do, he didn't want to look at her at all.

Once the ladder was down, John took the lead again and brought them both into the attic. The air was musty, and the walls and ceiling were little more than wood and insulation, but it was by no means the worst an attic could be. At least, John didn't think it was. He didn't have much to compare to.

The far side of the room was stacked high with boxes, each one labeled with a name and/or its contents. He crossed over and examined them, trying to keep from thinking too much about what the words on the boxes really meant. After a seemingly endless minute, he found a box near the top marked with his mom's name and "clothes," and pulled it down.

"I think there might be something that fits you in here."

"Okay."

John pulled open the interlaced flaps of cardboard, trying to ignore the heaviness of the air in his lungs. He hadn't touched these boxes since he'd helped his dad pack them as a little kid. He reached in and pulled out the top item from the box he'd opened, an old black dress, and a wave of old-smelling air crashed into him all at once.

"Hey, your attic smells like an antique store."

"What?"

"It smells like an antique store up here. You know how they have that certain smell? Like, it's not quite bad, but the air feels old somehow?"

"I've never been to an antique store." He'd never been anywhere.

"Oh. Well, if your house is anything to go by, I'd say you'd like it."

"I don't keep this stuff around just because I like old things."

"Then why do you have it?"

John shot her his best depressive glare. "Remember what I said about questions?"

Aradia frowned at him, and shit. fuck. That was awful to look at. There was no way in hell he could leave things as they were.

He sighed. "I'm sorry Aradia. I'm just kind of on edge right now."

"Should I ask how come?"

There was a long beat of nothing. John breathed out heavily and ran a hand through his hair.

"Everything up here is my parents'."

Aradia closed her mouth and looked at him, eyes unreadable. He turned his head away, funneling his focus back into the box. He pulled out a blue dress that matched the black one he'd found, an old white blouse, and a pair of work pants. His mom had dressed the same way his dad did: plain-colored button shirts and pressed slacks. Even the dresses were simple buttoned things that she could work in, but though everything in the wardrobe was practical, the fabric of the clothes was soft. John reached for the next item in the box.

"They're dead, right?"

"What?"

John's throat tightened, and he clenched his fingers in an attempt to hide how much his hands were starting to shake. Dealing with this stuff head on set him off quivering like a damned chihuahua, and he was reaching the limit of what he was willing to put up with from a guest.

"Your parents. They're dead, aren't they?"

"Yeah." John bit down hard on his lip as he choked out the word, unsure of any other way to push down his building outburst. Aradia looked at him. She looked at him, and it was too much. He crumpled, curling around himself and burying his face between his knees.

"Thank you." He heard the floorboards creak as she approached him. "Even more than before, thanks. I know how people can be about mementos."

John unclenched his teeth enough to choke out "welcome."

The fabric in front of him made a soft rumpling sound in time with another creak of the boards, and he supposed aradia was picking up something that he'd unpacked.

"Here, keep facing this way and I'll try this on."

He listened to her circle around behind him, and he heard more soft sounds of fabric as she changed. He measured his breathing in an attempt to anchor himself to reality. It didn't help—his lungs were heaving and unsteady. He didn't know his mom, he barely knew anything about her, but thinking about her choked him up in a way that he didn't know what to do with. Looking at those clothes was dragging him down into his confusion like rocks on his ankles binding him fast to the bottom of a swamp.

Desperate, he tried to turn his focus to Aradia. He listened for the sound of her movements, trying to figure out how much time he had until she turned to face him. She hadn't acknowledged his breakdown yet, and under no circumstances did he want her to. He couldn't.

Somehow, that panicked attempt at repression did the trick. His heartbeat began to slow, and after a few long moments, he felt safe enough to try peeking up from his legs. There was a tiny window in the fall he was facing, and through it he could see the gleaming blue of the summer sky. It was a good blue, light and crystalline and vibrant and overall different from any other blue he saw in his daily life. It was lighter than dark water of his northern ocean, than the denim of his jeans, than the murkiness of his eyes.

"You know, I don't think death is as bad as people think it is."

John took a breath and tried to unclench the muscles of his face. To his surprise, he managed.

"Don't try to comfort me."

"Hear me out?"

He said nothing in return; he didn't want to risk it, and Aradia seemed to take his silence as an agreement. He heard the sound of a deep breath, readying her to talk, over the sound of footsteps approaching him.

"I don't think that dead people are really gone when they die, not in any meaningful sense."

John heard Aradia sit down behind him, much closer than he wanted her to be.

"I mean, they stop existing physically, so we don't get to see and talk to them anymore, and I know that's sad, but it's not like seeing and talking are all that matters about people. The dead leave a big imprint behind them."

"Ghosts aren't real."

"Incorrect, but I'm not talking about ghosts. Death is… let me backtrack."

John felt the sudden press of Aradia's back against his. She must've leaned back against him, using him like a recliner. He could not remember the last time he'd been this close to another living human being. He said nothing.

"None of us are anything significant really. We're nothing but big piles of atoms that got stuck together in the right shape to create sentience and teeth and music and everything else. We live life and get to feel things for no reason, just because it happens to have worked out that way, and that's fine! Life is still beautiful and fun and it feels meaningful when you're living it, but it's not some sacred eternal flame or whatever your sunday school teacher wants to tell you it is. When you die, it's not tragic or unjust; it's inevitable, just a return of all those atoms you were borrowing back to the greater universe."

Aradia sat up, pulling her weight from John's back, and he heard her shift around to his side. He didn't look, returning his head to his knees.

"If you believe in ghosts, then your sentience sticks around without the meat suit and all those rented atoms, but even if you don't, dead people are all around us. Bodies become worm food and nourish the grass that we look at, actions and words become memories, and clothes and belongings get sent to thrift stores. Or stashed in attics to be gifted to former fellow dead people."

"And?" John supposed she was saying something meaningful, but he did not have the mental energy to try and parse out what she was trying to communicate.

"And?" For some unknown reason, he could hear something like a laugh at the back of Aradia's reply. "And so your mother's rental period ended sooner than most people's, and that's sad, but it's not the end of the world. You have memories, don't you?"

John shook his head. "She died giving birth."

"Oh. I'm sorry, but even that's not everything gone. I'm betting someone sentimental like you has her stuff all over this house, and all those things that she bought are choices she made, which means that little bits of her old mind are still here all around you. Even this dress, which fits perfectly by the way, is a part of her that's still here with you, and now that piece of her is getting brought back out into the world to help you make new memories. Is that tragic?"

Aradia rustled next to him, but after a long moment, John realized that she wasn't going to keep talking. Her words were rattling around inside him in a way he didn't like, picking and tearing at the walls in his head that he'd only just managed to put back up minutes before. He wanted to live in her world, a world where death wasn't tragic, wasn't absolute.

"You didn't answer me."

"What?" He spoke into his knees, still avoiding looking up for fear that he might break apart.

"I asked you a question, and you didn't answer. Does death really sound that tragic?"

John frowned. For once, he really did want to answer her, but he didn't know how. He snuck a glance up at her, and her face looked far too kind to ignore. He took a deep breath, trying to gather what little dignity he had left, and he peeled his hunched knees back away from his torso.

"I'll tell you when I know." His bravado was flaking; his hands wouldn't stop their quakes.

Aradia tilted her head. She looked-John wasn't sure how she looked. Curious maybe, but a kinder, better version of it.

"You can be sad, you know. I don't mind if you are."

Dammit. John tried to look at Aradia properly, but his eyes stuck at the crisp collar of her dress. She had no right to smile and comfort him like that, not in his goddamn dead mom's clothes.

"You're not my fucking therapist."

"But aren't I your friend?"

He shook his head. "I hate you."

"No you don't." Aradia reached out and, after what might have been a moment of hesitation, placed her arm around John's shoulders and pulled him close. Her skin was cool to the touch, an ever present reminder of how recently she too had been nothing but a corpse. He hated her, hated how nice she was and how wrong she was, hated what his life was becoming.

Aradia said nothing. She held him and looked at him, the concern in her eyes so much worse than the manic creepiness he'd thought he'd hated.

Despite himself, John began to cry.