Chapter Text
Charles hid behind the heavy crimson curtains in the alcove by the eastern window. It was his favourite little nook; the sun rising in the east always made it the warmest part of the grand Westchester estate in the morning, and Charles always liked the way it overlooked the gardens that were always bright against the stony backdrop of the grey stone mansion. What he liked most about the nook, though, was that it was safe. His stepbrother, Cain Marko, had not found this little corner of peace yet, allowing Charles to tuck his knees up onto the plush cushion seat of the alcove and prop a heavy book across his lap.
"Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Pollens," Charles murmured quietly to himself, wanting to say the foreign words out loud, but struggling to wrap his young tongue around the tough words he was trying to learn. He had almost seen ten winters now, and in the confines of the Westchester mansion - a prison, he had sometimes thought – Charles wanted to drink in any form of knowledge he could. He had always been a genius, as his favourite nurse, Kitty, always told him. Charles soaked up knowledge like the Westchester grass did after a heavy rain, or how Cain’s stomach soaked up all of the sweet cakes he ate gluttonously.
This was one of Charles’s favourite books; even though he couldn’t understand all of the large words, he grasped enough from the words he did know and the pictures to decipher meaning. The sciences had always interested him, more so than Cain’s novels about pirates and sea monsters, and found a small kernel of happiness whenever he read about how plants grow and spread.
He often looked at the twisting ivy climbing up the walls of Westchester, unruly and vibrant, alive amongst the dead stones. His mother, Sharon, called them weeds and asked their servants to cut it down when they could, but she often forgot about it all by the time the bottle had emptied.
Charles smiled to himself as he ran his fingers over the long German words, casting his eyes over the pictures of plants and pollen, of seeds and leaves. He didn’t know how much time passed, until he heard the bang of an ornate door, his eyes going wide as his entire body froze.
“Where is he?! Where in the dickens is that gibface little meater?!” Charles heard his stepbrother’s voice call out, the clack of his shoes deafening on the hard floor. Charles tried to breathe evenly and shallowly as to not make any noise, blue eyes trained on the miniscule slit between the curtains.
He saw Cain prowl past, eyes narrowed into slits in his puffy face. His thick lips were pulled back with a snarl, and his nose sniffed like he could smell Charles’s fear. Charles bit down a gasp when Cain’s eyes suddenly snapped to his alcove, his feet clunk, clunk, clunking on the wood.
Charles leapt out of the alcove before Cain could find him himself, as if offering himself up as some sort of sacrifice would make Cain go easier on him today.
“Ah, there’s our Charlie-boy,” Cain sneered, the taller, older boy sauntering over with a smirk. His eyes looked Charles up and down, before focusing on the book cradled against Charles’s chest. “What is that book?” Cain demanded, jerking a fat finger against Charles’s chest and the book, the smaller boy stumbling back with the force.
“Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Pollens,” Charles responded meekly, cowering as Cain snorted.
“You have no business taking our books,” Cain said, as if this mansion belonged to him already. It did not. It had originally belonged to Charles’s father, Brian Xavier, but when he died it was left in the hands of his mother. If his mother had been any other woman, the estate would have been passed on to Charles. But Charles’s mother was a drunk, her mind lost in the drink more often than not; her new husband, Kurt Marko, easily coerced her into giving him everything she owned. Sometimes, Charles thought that included him.
Charles did not often incite violence nor conflict, but it had always irked him whenever Cain would claim everything that Charles’s father had carefully cultivated as his. Cain was just like his father, and even though still a child, Charles knew that they were wasting away the vast Xavier fortune on nothing but folly.
“These are not your books,” Charles replied, steeling himself as he clutched de Pollens closer to his chest. “They were my father’s books. They are Xavier books, not Marko books!”
“You little-” Cain spluttered, growing bright red with fury. “Your father is dead and buried in the ground, and everything in this house belongs to my father! And as his real son, it thus belongs to me! Everything here is mine; these curtains are mine, those windows are mine, and that book in your hands is also mine!”
As Cain yelled, he lunged forward to wrench the book from Charles’s hands. Charles knew that the moment he grabbed it, the larger boy would smash it over Charles’s head, like he always did.
‘No!’ Charles screamed in his mind, terrified at being hurt again. Charles’s body shook as it remembered in vivid detail how it felt to be pushed to the ground by his stepbrother, how the older boy’s hands tore at his brown hair and bruised his stomach and ribs.
“Give the book here, you rat!” Cain growled, and Charles yelped when Cain snatched the book from Charles’s weak hands and smashed it over his head. Charles felt dizzy as he staggered, something wet and sticky dribbling down over his forehead, making his hair stick to his skin.
Charles blinked, hand shakily moving to his hair. When he pulled it back, his fingertips were red with blood, matching the crimson curtains behind him. Charles felt anger, white and hot, course through him unlike anything he has felt before. Charles had always been a measured and calm child, but the blow to the head sparked something in him, driving him momentarily mad. There was a screaming inside his head, one of injustice mixed in with fear, which caused Charles to move.
Charles yelled out, closing his eyes and swinging the heavy book haphazardly in an arc through the air. There was a thump and a cry of pain, but for once, it did not come from Charles.
“What is going on here?” a voice thundered, the male timbre carrying throughout the high ceilings and ornate walls of the room. Charles felt his heart fly into his mouth as he peeled open his shut eyes, Kurt Marko stalking over to the two boys with murder set on his face.
“Father!” Cain snivelled, jumping up as he held his throbbing head, pointing towards Charles rudely. “This little cretin assaulted me!”
“Assaulted you?” Charles repeated, feeling the blood on his crown ooze a little. Kurt Marko looked heeded his son’s words, eyes whirling to Charles as his devil spawn grinned in victory, like a cat that just caught the canary.
“After all I have done for you, but marrying your mother to save your family, this is how you repay me?” Kurt Marko drawled, grabbing onto the back of Charles’s coat, hauling his tiny frame into the air.
“I did not… I didn’t…” Charles stuttered, fear seizing him, the book in his hands cluttering to the ground.
“To the Red Room with you,” Kurt Marko said, and Charles’s eyes widened and blurred, tears streaming down his face.
No, no, no, not the Red Room. Not that room. Please, please, please, anything but the red room!
If the Westchester mansion was a prison, the Red Room was its torture chamber. Charles had been locked in there many times since he was a boy even younger than ten, even after he did his best to not anger the Markos. It seemed like, no matter how hard he tried, they still painted him as the problem. Kurt Marko turned a blind eye to Cain’s cruelty, to the way he would capture birds in the gardens and snap their necks on the edge of the fountain. He ignored the way Cain bullied tutors and the maids, and how he was, in every way, an unnatural, demon-like child.
Maybe it was because Kurt Marko, too, was a demon.
“Step-father, Mr. Marko, sir, please, please not the Red Room,” Charles pleaded, skinny legs shaking in his light-coloured trousers. His tunic felt soaked through with cold sweat, and Charles felt like he couldn’t breathe as Kurt pushed him roughly through the heavy doors. Charles’s legs gave in to the force, and the boy was flung forwards onto the carpet. His knees thudded heavily, and his palms hurt as they braced him on the floor.
“Unnatural children need to be punished, you know this, Charles,” Kurt said, voice eerily calm, though his mouth was curled up into an amused smile. “Children like you, that were born bad, need to be taught how to behave. This was the task God gave me, and you will be grateful that someone pitied you enough to try and save your soul.”
“No! Please! I won’t- I’ll do anything- Please! Don’t leave me in here!” Charles begged on his knees, tears sliding down his reddened cheeks and coating his tongue. Kurt just responded with a cold smile, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him.
Charles screamed and battered his little fists against the door, but it did not yield.
The Red Room was one such room in the far, almost forgotten wing of the estate that had not been refurbished by the Markos. It had all of the old furnishings, the old, gloomy wallpaper, and smelled of grief and despair. It had been the room Charles’s dear father had spent his last breath, and the draft in the fireplace and flow of air through the slits in the mouldy windows made it seem like his spirit was still here.
Though the spirit of Brian Xavier had been gentle and just in life, Charles believed that his soul was now restless as he saw what has become of his precious Westchester, and now he haunted this room. In his fury, Brian Xavier did not recognise those still walking on the mortal plane, and as night descended, he would come into the room screaming with the voices of all of the past Xaviers, a chorus of anger and hate.
Charles was a child, and though he was level-headed and rational, he was still just a child. He was terrified, and each squeal of the wind at the window, each rattle and rasp of air pushing down the ashen and dusty chimney was like a scream of a haunted spirit in Charles’s mind.
It was as if he could hear the voices of all the dead Xaviers in his head, their phantom minds overwhelming him, until he could finally take no more and collapsed onto the floor, darkness claiming him.
***
Charles woke to the feeling of a cool cloth brushing against his forehead and the tune of a maid’s song. Charles whimpered, feeling feverish, and the cloth was replaced by a gentle hand. Charles’s eyes opened blearily, and he turned his head stiffly to match the soft touch to a face. He felt relieved when he saw Kitty’s face smiling down at him, brown hair tied back in a tight knot.
“Master Charles, you have awakened,” Kitty’s voice spoke gently in his ear, relieved and comforting. “Here, sit up, child. You have been sleeping for a day and an hour since we found you on the ground in the Red Room. You are weak and hungry, I’d bet. Have some water, and I have some soup and bread for you.”
“Thank you, Kitty,” Charles said, ever polite, even when in the grips of sickness. The kind words of her little master made Kitty smile, patting his head affectionately as before gently holding a glass of water against his chapped lips, which were a shade paler than their usual bright berry red.
Kitty, along with the other servants of the household, adored the young Xavier, though after his mother’s remarriage, was forced to take on the surname Marko. The servants never called him that, though, and in their hearts they addressed the cherubic-faced boy as ‘Master Xavier’. They knew their master did not like sharing the Marko name, and they shared that sentiment. They believed the Markos to be nasty and evil, and never wanted to lump their gentle Charles with the likes of them. They never openly showed this, though – they were fearful of their masters as much as they hated them.
Still, they did what they could for the young master that treated them with kindness, the only one in the family to do so. Even though he was still but a boy, he reminded the older servants of their now dearly departed Mr Brian Xavier.
Kitty nodded in encouragement as Charles nearly drained the entire glass, wiping the corner of his mouth with a towel before putting the glass onto a tray on his bedside table.
“Do you think you can eat, Master Charles?” Kitty asked, gesturing to a small bowl of vegetable soup and stiff bread. Charles did not really want to eat anything, his stomach feeling like it was knotting itself shut. Charles never had a hearty appetite on a normal day, and Kitty often chastised him in good nature, saying that his small appetite is why he is small for a boy of his age.
Charles did not want to waste Kitty’s efforts to bring him food to his rooms, though. It was always hard enough for the servants to scrounge up some extra things for Charles to eat, since the Markos forbade him to dine with them.
Charles just nodded in answer to Kitty’s question, the woman smiling happily and helping feed Charles, his body still weak with fever caused by immense fear. He ate as much as he could, finishing most of the soup but only eating a few morsels of the bread, too tough for him to stomach. Kitty was satisfied with his efforts, and after he ate she helped tuck him back into the bed, pulling the blankets over his shoulders.
“Rest now, Master Charles,” Kitty spoke softly, stroking the younger boy’s hair like she used to when he was younger. The touch helped send the boy off to sleep, though these days sleep was fitful and restless.
“Thank you, Kitty,” Charles murmured again, sleepy. “Good night.”
“Good night, Master Charles.”
***
Kurt Marko nodded to the man – Mr Shaw – as he grabbed his cloak and walking stick. The man had a menacing smile as he had peered down at Charles, inspecting him from head to toe.
He had introduced himself as Mr Shaw, the master of Graymalkin School for Children. It was a school primarily aimed to help educate orphans or wayward children; neither of which Charles believed he was, but the prospect of going to school made his heart beat with excitement.
Charles tried to hide how elated he was when Kurt declared that he was going to be sent to school. Charles always wanted to learn, and now to be given the opportunity to be taught properly outside the confines of Westchester? Charles could only think that his nightly prayers had finally been answered; to be able to escape from the clutches of the Markos, his alcoholic mother, and the house that he hardly loved.
His step-father told him that he would leave by couch in two days, and Charles had to swallow back the plea to leave tomorrow. To just leave now. He would not miss many things in Westchester, and the things he would miss could be counted with the fingers of one hand; Kitty, his alcove, his father’s libraries, the gardens in the springtime and his bedroom. But those five things were not enough to tether him to Westchester, and he could not wait to go to school.
Two days had gone by relatively quickly; Kitty helped him pack his belongings, of which there was not much. Kurt never spent money on Charles, so he only had what he had been left before the Markos came, and only the bare minimum after that. It had not taken long for Kitty to neatly fold and press a single change of clothes into a worn and aging case, rolling up some spare socks and tucking in a small box of biscuits for the long carriage ride. She also gave him his father’s old pocket watch, securing it to Charles’s small hip.
The dawn of his leave had come, and no one but the servants came to bid him farewell. They all hugged him, some of them teary, but others happy for him, knowing that their intelligent little master was happy to be given an opportunity to learn. Kitty cried the most, though she tried to hide it; she was the last to hug Charles, holding him tightly outside the door of the carriage.
“I will be praying for you always, Master Charles,” Kitty said through a sniffle, and Charles felt his eyes grow a little wet at the sound. “Please keep your health in mind, and if the chance is given, please write. I am sure we would all like to hear about how you have been enjoying school.”
“I will, Kitty. Farewell,” Charles promised, pressing a kiss to Kitty’s cheek, making the woman laugh, wiping at her eyes with a cloth. She helped Charles clamber into the coach, closing the door behind him. Charles waved his small hand out of the carriage all the way down the long gravel path, head poking out of the small window to watch Kitty and the staff get smaller and smaller, until the coach turned a corner and Westchester mansion disappeared from sight.
It was a long ride to Graymalkin School, one that Mr Shaw had been a little surprised at when he found out that Charles was going to make it alone. If Charles could read Kurt’s mind, he was sure he had been hoping for Charles to die on the road, whether by overturned coach or bandit attack.
Unfortunately for Kurt, but fortunately for Charles, he made it to the school in one piece, though weary from the journey. His bones were creaky with disuse, and his spine felt out of place, but he brightened when he saw the plaque outside of the school.
Graymalkin School for Children.
‘A fresh start’, Charles thought to himself giddily as he stepped out of the carriage, a man wearing a dark suit standing in wait. He had tanned skin and long, dark hair, and had a stoic expression on his face as he regarded Charles.
“Who are you?” he asked simply, and Charles opened his mouth with practised manners.
“Charles Marko,” the boy said, hoping that one day he could rid himself of the blighted Marko name. Even though he was out of the sight and touch of Kurt Marko, it was still too early for him to feel like he was free from his reach. Charles sincerely hoped that one day he could shed the name and fear of the Markos, but ‘I’m still only ten,’ Charles reminded himself. He could still grow.
“Ah, Mr Shaw informed us that you would be arriving around this time. Come, let us get you settled. I am Mr Quested, the arithmetic teacher here,” the man said, voice even but not harsh, though his face did not betray any flicker of emotion.
Charles followed the man obediently into the building; like Westchester, the school building was made of stone, but it was nowhere near as grand. The entire single-level building would have been the size of the Westchester stables, and looked decrepit. Charles had heard that Kurt had payed a small sum for his admittance into the school, and wondered where that money was going since the school looked like it had not been maintained at all.
The inside of the school was ice cold, the chill from the cold stones not mitigated by fires nor rugs. Charles shivered, the small boy prone to chilly temperatures, and pulled his coat around himself tighter.
Charles was led to an inner room where, finally, there was one fire going. Another man with a harsh face, who Mr Quested called Mr Azazel, prodded the fire roughly and ordered Charles to strip the moment he entered the room. Mr Quested told Charles, whose eyes were wide like a startled deer, that Mr Azazel was the languages teacher and that he was going to give Charles the school’s uniform.
Charles quickly changed into the scratchy, slightly too-small grey uniform, the high collar chafing under his chin. Mr Quested took Charles’s old clothes, which were simple and old, but far nicer in quality than that of the uniform, and discarded them to the side.
“Now, we will show you the class rooms. You have arrived in time for first classes,” Mr Quested said, and Charles felt the cold seep out from his body at the prospect of learning, brightening visibly. Mr Quested did not comment on the sudden spring to the boy’s step, just leading him into a large hall where many pairs of tired yet curious eyes peered back at him, all wearing a similar grey uniform. There were rows of girls sitting to Charles’s left, and boys in a similar configuration to his right.
Mr Quested introduced Charles to the other children – his classmates – and he was instructed to take a seat on the boy’s side. Charles did as he asked, plopping himself down for his first assembly.
This was where things would change, Charles believed.
He was right, but what he didn’t realise was that they didn’t necessarily change for the better.
***
School was not what Charles had pictured it to be. It was not that Charles did not learn things; he did gain knowledge in English, arithmetic, botany, languages (French and German, and Russian from Mr Azazel), geography and history, amongst other things. Charles just did not expect it to be so cold and harsh and strict. Mornings began in the dark, where Charles would wash his face with ice-cold water shared by others. Breakfast was unpalatable slop, cold and pasty in his mouth and borderline inedible. Lunch was a no better affair, the stew a sludge of fat and undercooked roots, but Charles tried his best to stomach it, because otherwise he would writhe around in his cold straw bed starving until morning broke, and he would live it all over again. Living at Graymalkin School was as hard as living in Westchester, but in a different way.
Charles had never felt so cold before, his pale skin always icy to the touch, his feet always numb. He wished that he was allowed to wear the woollen cloak Kitty packed him, but he had to wear the school’s grey uniform that was thin and short, not covering Charles’s cold wrists and ankles well at all.
The teachers were also horrible. Mr Quested was the most tolerable of them all, and taught his classes methodically but dryly. Mr Essex was very knowledgeable about the sciences, which Charles was interested in, but often took time out of his lessons to berate his students; he usually picked on students that were slow to grasp things, and though Charles was never slandered, he felt great pain for his fellow pupils that had to quietly hold in their tears as Mr Essex cursed at them. Mr Azazel was intimidating, and would snap the necks of students with hard reed when they mispronounced a word as they read foreign texts, or force them to stand with their arms up until they conjugated complex verbs incorrectly.
However, the worst of them all was Mr Shaw. Mr Shaw stepped in for classes on various occasions, and out of all of the teachers, he was the most fond of physical punishments and public ridicule. Charles had been a victim of his attentions once in the few weeks he had been at Graymalkin School. Charles had spoken up in one of his classes, offering an eloquent rebuttal to one of the points Mr Shaw had raised about a text they were studying; Mr Shaw had grown livid that someone like Charles had argued with him, but Charles had been adamant that he had not said anything that should cause offense. Mr Shaw called him a liar and unleashed the wrath of God upon him.
Charles had endured ten lashings on his wrists, his light skin easily marked with red. Mr Shaw had not finished there, and made him stand on a stool in the middle of the large hall with a chalk board with ‘Liar’ scribbled across it. Mr Shaw had denied Charles dinner that night, and Charles whimpered as he stood there with a near-empty stomach.
Students marched past him after they had their own meal, and a few cast pitying looks at him as they trudged past to the segregated bed chambers. The girls parted to the left, and the boys to the right, Charles merely watching them leave while swallowing his saliva down sadly, hands held behind his back.
Suddenly, something coarse and rough was pressed into Charles’s hands discretely, and he stroked his fingers over it. It was bread.
Charles’s eyes widened as he searched the sea of grey pupils that all brushed past him, and his heart thumped when one head turned back. It was a girl, head full of blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She had a mischievous curve to her mouth that was so unlike any one else at this school, teacher or student alike.
When Charles was finally allowed to retire to his scratchy bed that night after having sneakily eaten the contraband bread, Charles found that he slept a little better at the thought of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl that he didn’t know the name of.
***
The girl, he would later find out, was called Raven. She was an orphan, and had been at the school for a year already. Raven was bright, daring, and so alive that Charles always felt lighter in her presence. He had not realised how lonely he had been until he began to spend time with Raven, though their interactions were limited since Raven was in the girl’s classes, and they only interacted during the afternoon yard time.
When they were allowed to play in the yard, Raven and Charles would always gravitate towards each other; Raven had said that the way he had argued – debated, Charles emphasised – with Shaw had been the best thing she had seen the entire time she had been here. No one ever told Shaw that he was wrong, not even Mr Quested or Mr Azazel, but Charles had.
“I got whipped for that, you know,” Charles said, though his mouth held the quirk of a smile at that, the lingering pain on his wrists not as harsh when Raven laughed at him, face so bright.
Raven had asked Charles early on in their newfound friendship if he was an orphan or a wayward child. Charles said that he was neither, and Raven had smirked, and said ‘definitely wayward, then’. Raven then told Charles that she was both an orphan and a wayward child, though she was proud of the latter. Wayward and proud, she had declared, standing on top of a bench and waving a long stick from her hands.
“Then you can just be wayward,” Charles had said after that, smiling at the slightly younger girl. The girl looked at him in confusion, and Charles beamed wider. “I will be your family, so you do not have to be an orphan. You can just be wayward and proud.”
Raven had embraced him tightly and called him brother, and for the first time, Charles felt like he had a real family. Sharon, Kurt and Cain were distant memories; Raven would be his family from now on, and he would be Charles Xavier.
School had gotten a lot better after befriending Raven; Charles clearly excelled in his classes, which earned him the favour of the teachers there. Even Mr Shaw could not deny that Charles was the most advanced pupil, and found it hard to punish him as much when he did not do anything that warranted punishment.
Instead, Mr Shaw turned his sights onto Raven, whom he knew was close to Charles. Shaw punished Raven whenever Charles frustrated him, and despite Charles’s best efforts to protect his sister, he was still only a boy. Even after being at Graymalkin School for a few years had not changed the fact that he was powerless against people like Shaw. The only way he could protect Raven was to let himself be punished by Shaw – so Charles often dropped chalkboards, or wore one part of his uniform incorrectly, giving Shaw reason to vent his frustrations upon him.
Charles’s wrists became worn with marks and scars from lashings, and he was sure that the backs of his legs painted a similar picture. But, Raven was safe from Shaw, so Charles could brave it.
But while Charles could protect Raven from Shaw, he could not protect her from other things. It had been two years since Charles went to Graymalkin School when typhoid fever blitzed through the meagre campus. Teachers covered their faces with linen clothes while coughing and feverish children were sequestered in a cold room full of hard cots and left to die.
By chance, or by Kitty’s prayers, the fever had left Charles untouched. Raven had not been granted the same fortune, and in the deep winter of that year, she had fallen ill and passed soon after.
Charles had wailed for days – weeks – after that, and had refused to leave Raven’s lifeless and ashen body even as the teachers covered her with a sheet to be buried. Charles had begged and screamed at Raven’s still body to come back or to take him with her, and he only stopped crying when his despair had robbed him of all energy and he fell into a cold, dreamless slumber.
The yard that Charles and Raven used to play in, where they had become brother and sister, was soon dug up to bury the many dead children of Graymalkin school. The teachers organised a mass funeral for all of the lost students, and their grey uniforms were switched to black for one week. Charles cried as they sang a dark funeral song, rain pelting down. As the rain fell, he remembered Raven’s sunlight blonde hair and ocean blue eyes, how she smiled and laughed and was the very meaning of life.
Charles buried a little bit of himself with Raven that day; Charles did not laugh as much as before, even though Raven said that his smile was nice and made him seem like a different person. He did not act out against Shaw, nor did he complain about the slop they called porridge or the rancid fat in the stew. Charles simply did what he came to school to do; learn, learn and learn.
It was eight years after he came to Graymalkin School for Children that Charles left it behind. Mr Shaw had long since left the school; it had been discovered that he had been hoarding the money meant for the school for his own means and was subsequently cast out, a new committee at the school stepping in to oversee things. Life was not so bleak once Shaw was ousted, and that was what allowed Charles to stay and teach at Graymalkin for two years after graduating from pupil to tutor.
Charles was a popular teacher; he was kind, understanding, patient and gentle. He was also the best teacher in terms of actual instruction, knowledgeable in every aspect, but particularly in the sciences. He would make classes interesting by allowing students to go out into the yard rather than sit on rickety wooden chairs inside a stone classroom, and his lessons were the only times the pupils felt free to express their opinions. The students loved him, and when he told them that he was leaving, there were many wet eyes and sobs amongst the children.
They loved their Mr Xavier – because that was the name he had taken, once again – and Graymalkin wouldn’t be the same without him there.
Charles’s heart was warmed, and he believed that he had truly found his calling in teaching. But there was some niggling feeling inside of his soul that told him that there was more out there, outside of Westchester, and outside of Graymalkin. Graymalkin had shaped him to become the man of eighteen that he was today, but he knew there was something missing.
Charles said goodbye to Raven before he left Graymalkin, cleaning off the rock used as a headstone with a pail of water, and placing some freshly plucked flowers bundled in a string of lace beside it. Charles smiled as he nestled a little wooden board with etched letters in front of it, thumb brushing over its corners.
Raven Xavier
Beloved friend and sister
Forever wayward and proud