A little shorter this time. Hope fully I'll get the last chapter done sometime. I hope you all enjoy this one.
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Chapter 2:
"The first step you take is your longest stride"
Standing in the pale moonlit streets of Bowerstone she saw it. Falling into her vision like a mammoth looming shadow in front of her, she walked down a fermilliar street in old town. He had said it would be there, waiting for her. Behind it the moon shone coldly as the winter began to fall on Bowerstone. Castle Fairfax floated, ghostly and dark in the distance. That castle, the symbol of all the evil and horror in her past now shed, a snakes skin, discarded and forgotten. The city seemed to escape from the ice outside, huddling into itself like a abandoned child on the street. Every chimney spewed forth smoke into the crisp air that nipped, an annoyed puppy, at Maggie's exposed face. As she looked to the houses at her sides every window danced with the orange figures of flame with ghostly black shadows doing their buisness within. Every inhabitant of the town had either escaped to the confines of their warm houses or to some sort of shelter, leaving the wide, cobbled streets completely empty. Her hesitated steps reverberated off the stone walls, they echoed back to her how truly alone she was, mocking her. She finally got to the statue and, for a moment, blinked in surprise. The sillouette betrayed the statues detail on closer inspection. Wondering how long it had taken to acually create this statue, she placed a gloved hand to it's surface, which was icy to the touch. Her visage wasn't one of heroic nobility, tom-foolery, or rough attitude, the sculptor had carved her sitting crosslegged with her face in one of her hands, her elbow resting on her leg. Baskerville laid at her side and rested his head happily on her left thigh. It was her face that captured her interest the most. It wasn't blank or unfeeling, it was a look of thoughfullness. It was the look that often wondered across her face thinking about something dirty or wondering how to terrorize the town crier once more, a look that had spread over her face when she had tripped Reaver in the passage behind his home, that had sprang forth when she was playing drinking games with hammer, The defiant look she had given the cammendant. This face was her and not the mask she had been wearing all her life. All the time when she had been in front of the people of Albion she tried her best to put on a mask, mostly failing and resorting to some sort of pout or scowl. Her reputoir of them was extensive, the happy scowl, the angery scowl, the unamused snort, a myriad of faces. But now she'd be shown how she was, she was free. Free from the expectations, the rules, the model of a hero. She breathed in a icy breath that cleared her lungs as if she had eaten a strong peppermint. Now was the final matter of her friend's funeral...
He was cold, frightfully so. His body caught flies and she knelt beside his corpse, unaware of them. She reached out a shakey hand to place it to his fur, so corse and different from the animal she knew and loved, was it even the same creature? She saw his tounge escaping from his sharp jaws, bloodied drool pooling around them as she stroked his fur.
"I wish I could have saved you, you died so needlessly..." she whispered, laying her head on his chest, which was unmoving. Lifting her head up after a while she noted that the sun was begining to rise. Morning was, regretably, Baskervilles favorite time. However, Maggie had never really been a morning person, though she always dragged herself out of bed at 9 am. It seemed fitting that she lay him to rest in a happier time. Her spade in hand she carried his body down to the base of the rocks, laying him gently on the ground. She began to dig, slowly, each sharp sound of her shovel hitting dirt then the dull thud of it against the grass was her remembering every face, every adventure, every corpse. When she was done and the sun was in it's morning crawl she had finished the grave. Wearily resting, she looked over to the trail for a moment. People came and went on their journey's, their own adventures. One stopped and looked at her, waving for a breif moment before being called by another traveller. She supposed people weren't all that bad, sometimes. Reinvigorated from her short repose she picked up her friend as if he was a newborn child, placing him into his earthy crib.
"Good night Baskerville, reap your rewards in heaven."
Every mound of dirt that she filled the hole with was a memory, a corpse, a face. She'd bury all her regrets and sadness with her best friend, never to be unearthed.