Mellow drifted slowly into a chair. As she stared ahead into space, the waitress took her umbrella to hang it to dry, and offered a hand towel to her. 

 

It was the soft glow of the lights hanging outside that drew her in from the rain, warm and inviting - she was sick of the cold and the wetness. Even with an umbrella, she felt soaked through. She chose the warmest table by the heater without thinking, and gave herself a moment to dry herself out. 

 

She couldn’t quite place her mood. A couple sat together, holding hands at the back, and a few individuals sat alone with their food, or writing or flicking on their phones out of boredom. A singer on the nearby stage, just a simple raised platform, hummed out a slow melody that was charming and sad. She looked a little blank also - no nervousness, no fright, but emotions as dim as the lights in the cafe.

 

After she felt more comfortable, she gestured to the waitress to order a mug of hot chocolate, with extra cream and extra marshmallows - She needed something rich right now.

 

The waitress also offered her a tie for her hair, which was dripping rainwater all over the table.  Leave your hair alone when it’s wet! Tying it, brushing it or touching it when it’s wet will wreck your hair! It was old advice from well-meaning relatives, whose voices were not soothing today, but harsher and condescending.

Mellow didn’t care for this advice right now. 

Her heart was broken. 

The hair could wait.

 

 

‘Who wants to love…” drawled the singer, “somebody like me?”

They had met in a bookstore. He had been looking for the very same book as she was reading, but was a little lost, and he had spotted her on his quest and chosen, carefully, to interrupt her in the middle of the fifth chapter.

 

She had not been very happy about it, and had pointed in the general direction of the correct shelf. As he moved away, she realized that she had forgotten to mention that the book she was holding was probably the last copy in the shop, and sighed. Sure enough, he came back later to bargain with her.  Eventually, she had to give him the book so that he could buy it, but he insisted that he had her number so that she could borrow it any time. 

 

His smile was charming. His manner was especially nice, but if it weren’t for the book she was holding, she probably would never have noticed him.

 

“You wanna love… somebody like me?”

He did not speak about his personal life very much, and she only visited him at his house a few times. It was just another reading place for her, where she could browse his very narrow selection of books she wouldn’t normally glance at, and read one in the corner of the room while he worked on whatever he was working on. She was not one to pry. 

 

She would catch him watching her read a few times, or he would catch her eye as he worked, and the two of them would blush at each other like the blossoming roses in what Mellow finally understood as the spring of love. It was the phrase she hated the most, but maybe that day she reached some sort of peace with it.

 

“If you could love…somebody like me…” a voice cooed distantly.

He was the one who suggested that they break up. It was not because of her, of course, he said, but it was too late for her to be able to let him go easily, so she couldn’t help but cry on the spot. He guided her - he tried to hold her, but she shrugged him off - to the sofa and gave her a cup of tea, and she sat there and cried herself to sleep.

 

She woke up to him shouting at her and shaking her furiously and she could not, for the life of her, understand why. Tears were streaming down his face. It was, perhaps, the first time that she had seen his face so closely since they had first met.

Why was he crying? What kind of tears were they? Maybe he thought she had done something wrong. Maybe it was something dangerous. Maybe it was just a bit of madness. 

She was out of the door before she could find out.

“You must be messed up too.”

 

​

Sunlight streamed through the windows as she woke up. Although she was still feeling hazy, upon realizing where she was, she picked up her bag and left instantly, picking up her umbrella on the way. 

 

It didn’t occur to her until she’d left that she’d seen a dull vision of gray- none of the warmth, none of the light from the night before. She stopped outside the building and looked down inside through the windows. What she saw then was not a cafe, but just a basement, old and gray and falling apart. 

 

Mellow racked her head for a more logical memory, and drew blanks. Frustrated, she turned to leave again, but caught her reflection in the window. She had never taken such notice of it before.

 

“Mellow?”

She was not quite ready to see him, not just yet, but she didn’t run away. 

He didn’t seem ready to see her, either. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, haltingly. “I scared you, didn’t I?”

To his surprise, she gave him a hug. He was warm, and Mellow had never been so aware of warmth before, even in the night when she had sat by the heater. Before then, everything had been been dim and muted, just like the lights in the cafe. Now everything was bolder.

“You alright there?” asked the waitress of the very gray-looking basement cafe, just as she was leaving the building. She looked less worried, and more entertained, as she handed over a package that he had been there to pick up.

Mellow tried to hide her reddening face. “What happened to the cafe?” 

The waitress held a finger to her lips, and went merrily on her way, as if to save that mystery for another time. 

 

“So,” said Mellow, after the waitress had gone. She shuffled her feet and shrugged her shoulders, and fidgeted with her new, physical umbrella. “I didn’t know you were a necromancer by hobby.”

“I, too,” said the necromancer, “had no clue you were a ghost.”