Death is attending a funeral.

As soon as the casket holding Storm Jones came out of the doors of the church, I crush the tiny vile holding a potion inside with my fist on impulse. Dark blue liquid dripped down my fingers, tingling like a million icebergs dancing down my palm. My skin burns with a fierce blaze racing up my palm, lingering in each crease. It's less painful and more like cold water slipping through my hand.

"To the shadows that cast darkness on the path we walk to the sun that kills them-."

I fall short with the incarnation when looking up through my eyelashes that were darkened with the mucky ink of cheap eyeliner that held on tight despite the river of tears that had broken free from my eyes as I attempted to hide them from my seat on the hardwood bench in the middle of the church.

The shuffling is slow, full of regret and wishes that this was nothing more than a nightmare they would wake up from. Six pallbearers trudged by through the tears that had fallen against the grey cement with each step across the hard grey path. Each face held it's own somber sadness, looking at the ground below their feet. But it's one face out of all of them that I couldn't look at for five seconds straight. My bandmate's father.

Not a tear is pushed out of sight from his cherry red-tinged cheeks. Mr. Jones has to deal with something that I couldn't dream of doing even though I had to watch my mother's last day under the sun. The feeling of helplessness and misery. Beyond his fancy outfit and the money, it's a hole in his heart that will never be replenished.

Death.

It's something about the death of Storm Jones that makes me feel guilty.

The depressing music and grievers take me back to my mother's death, her funeral that I watched from afar all those years ago. I didn't know how to control my feelings or what to feel even, all I knew was that I was never going to see her again. That she was in a better place and time would prove that I would never be in a good stance as long as I was without her.

Nearly sixteen years since that day and here I am again, watching the final moments of someone I know with the sun kissing the oakwood casket in slices under the thick leaves gently blowing in the autumn wind. They sing their own song, weeping in a silent rustling, or at least, that's what I want to think. My bandmate is gone and it's nothing that I can do to change that. Another death that I could have prevented happened and I'm watching the aftermath unfold.

Mr. Jones wishes that he never saw my face a day in his life. I repeat the words over and over in my head bluntly but everytime they come back I feel the same amount of regret as the start. Those words should never be spoken or thought of because time can't be changed.

I'm sorry. It's the last thing I can say to him but even then it only comes out silently. Flames lick at my throat, fading into choked-out tears. When I came here, my eyes were dry with acceptance but as soon as my feet touched the grass of the church grounds I crumbled like an old coffee cake.

I wish I never knew the name Storm Jones. Then maybe she would have still been alive today and that oakwood casket would have been the final resting place for anyone but Storm. It isn't though.

My stomach knots as the cold flare faded away from my hand with a slow tingle. No. I must have waited too long.

"And the moon that welcomes souls both dead and alive." Ash's voice broke the panic, a quick whisper that erased the dripping glowing potion from my hand for good.

I lifted my hand, only traces of dark blue in small marks still glimmering with the help of the sunlight. The ritual would ensure that the young rising star wouldn't have to face the same fate as we had to when we died in our past lives. Our last gift to Storm and the final goodbye. She wouldn't be trapped as a cursed fireleaf but gain rest for her spirit.

Ash lifts his cigarette, carefully placing it between two of his fingers. His drag is long, satisfying, and every bit disrespectful, but it's the only way he'd make it through the funeral without losing to anxiety. I have to be the strong one for both of us. A role I want to decline but have no choice over. He pulls it away, the end burnt down to a dark black tip before his head tipped back to the endless sky above.

Puffs of cigarette smoke float upward into the atmosphere, relinquished into forever. He sputtered off in a coughing fit so loud it caught few eyes, but most declined to even look our way.

Still, the thick rancid smoke scent sticks to the stringy blonde hair plastered to his pale cheeks and scraggly unshaven face. Eyes the color of the blue sky which seems to disregard the death of the seventeen-year-old rocker that probably wasn't in heaven like the preacher claimed she was while sending around a basket full of money, not for the family but for his gain in which he claimed was for the "Good of the church".

Leaning into the blonde, he nods with an acknowledgment that he feels at least some of my pain. Even if the flask full to the brim with liquor buried deep in the wool pocket of the only near presentable thing that didn't have song lyrics and doodling written somewhere on it in sharpie was going to be the next thing that would be going to his lips.

Music plays softly from the hidden speakers, judging from the sound, I guessed is tucked tight under the snow-white rafters to get more of that heaven on earth appeal. Ash sways with uneasiness, lifting his hand to the nape of his neck. He'd rather be practicing for the next concert than saying his final goodbyes to a girl who'd practically took over his band.

Ash wasn't going to be the backup of anything, he hates being looked at as more than a mere person but still "Phantom Sun" was his band, and he'd be damned if some royalleaf was going to walk straight in his life and steal it from him.

Storm Jones wasn't one of us. She's a royalleaf, the supposedly pure version of us. Her father nor mother knew just what she had given up to stand on that stage with the bright fluorescent white shining against her perfect face as she performed the cover of a Johnny Cash song without either of our permission, forcing us to go along with her if we didn't want to seem more lost and disorganized than we already were.

As bad as stereotypes are, Storm had every quality that most of them were rumored to have. Arrogance, wealth, and a certain air that told you that she had a dominant bloodline that was built on purity rather than a human's lost soul. They are the "Real thing" you can say if you want.

I clench my jaw with disbelief that I would have the empty heart to think such cruel things about her no matter the truth that was involved in it. That, yes she was all those things before death. My hands turn into fists as the chant takes it's toll on me for the first time. Pain erupted in my wrist, up and down my blood.

Ash fought a few royalleaves but most of the time, the run-ins had been minor coincidences that were brushed off after an hour. He isn't a fighter, not a dreamer either but somewhere in between a passionate musician and aloof reincarnation of Kurt Cobain.

I was Georgeanna Tillman.

I reach out for his hand, feeling my chest flutter softly under the soft squeeze in response to me. He barely remembers his past when he was Cobain and I the same when I was Georgeanna, a life that pushed far from our minds coming in through tiny snippets of the past coming through like clips of a film on a buffering phone screen while staying away from the news spread by the media just to kill the rising fear of becoming like our vengeful parents of this life who found out more about their past than they could handle, leaving them dead by the hands of royalleaves and their human adversaries in the past life. Leaving empty and foggy space from where they once had been.

Stop overthinking before you hurt yourself. She's dead-" Ash stops as I raised my finger to his lips to stop him from over-talking, catching the puffy eyes of Storm's glaring mother, a blue handkerchief clutched tightly in her left hand above her daughter's obituary. I'd never seen a more hateful look in my entire life, my heart shattered just holding the gaze with those glass-like green eyes.

I wasn't the one who left her daughter behind the stage with claw marks from a beast of some type right down her throat with the aroma of fireleaf rising from every inch of the wine-scented room. It was our job to protect Storm as we'd vowed to the two human parents who took her in after her real parents left her in a mini-mart and never returned, sending her into a never-ending system of potential parents and foster homes.

"But we should have never let her join the band if you knew you were going to turn and hurt her. She's dead because of us, because of-"

He snatched his hand away in a sudden, turning away as a swift reaction, "How many times do I have to tell you, Anne, that I didn't do it. When you found me, I was sleep near the vendors covered in the blood of that afterghost in the audience. I was protecting all three of us from someone's corrupt reincarnation."

The cold autumn air that came to replace the spot where he was once keeping the palm of my hand warm brought me more crushing panic than before. Both of us stayed silent as the group of mourners disburses into smaller groups, their heads bowed and gentle hugs being exchanged between family and friends in the same black attire.

Men shake hands with each other and spoke their condolences to the closer family while most of the women cluster around Ms. Jones, Storm's adoptive mother like birds with their pity and respects falling like water from a broken dam, nearly drowning her under the love and support. I want to embrace her but I know much better after being the one to tell her about the death of her child and the conversation face to face in the hospital that led to her attempting to fight me but missing due to her human clumsiness.

It took me no longer than a second and cold air slapping me in the face from no larger person blocking it to tell me that here I was no more than a troublemaking youth who was part of the reason that this tragic event was taking place. More than anything, I just wanted to disappear, which would not be the hardest thing in the world considering just how noticed we are.

A squirrel darted up and down the side of the face of the tree sending crumbs of barks falling to the ground below, peppering the nearly perfect artificial grass. His graceful movements and bobbing tail caught my eye in the light of the sun, glowing against his fur like a shade of fire.

"I guess it's best if we get going." Ash reached for the key in his pocket, the tiny jingle caught the attention of a few, but still, they returned their attention to their conversations while many took the sound of the closing hearse doors to heart and broke free from conversation to get in their cars parked near the side of the road.

Tires buried deep in soggy mud along the gray asphalt leading to a drain where water flowed towards it but stopped as soon as hit the hardwood wood some kid placed to keep their baseball from rolling in the hole. From the scent from the area, I know it was the preacher's son, taller and younger than Ash with the face of a pug and the personality of a rock. He continues to sway back in forth in the shadow of his father, watching the red-furred squirrel scamper back down the tree from the leaning branches, cheeks filled with acorns.

I close my eyes, imagining the boy yet again from his well-groomed black hair to the leather oxford shoes. Glints of green fogged the image, drawing designs around the white of my eyes and giving light to the edges of the image of the boy I created from the sheer visual image. His mind opened up to a clear image of a slingshot in his hand, white knuckles as he pulled back on a string made from what was probably the most powerful elastic band in the world and a rock wedged between the stick and elastic.

My focus was shifted away from the boy and focused on the very same tree only a few feet away. A bluebird fluttered its wings as an earthworm wiggled between its beak, the tiny chirps of offspring filling my head and ears with a soft ringing behind my skull. His memories. The other brutal events from the preacher's son past fell into place one after the other. The stone flinging through the air, crashing through the deep green leaves before the animal could lift itself from the branches-

My eyelids yanked open by the cold touch of Ash's finger poking me in the shoulder, gasping for air. I feel quite grateful for the freedom from a blood scene that highlighted the death of an innocent bird who wanted nothing more than to give its offspring the chance of life by the hands of a cabbage patch kid. I felt a snarl build up inside me, the powers I was required to keep hidden at all-cost slide from its boundaries behind my chest.

The boy walked towards the car which his parents were taking to the gravesite a road over from this one, spiraling off the main road. Kicking stones around, clearly disappointed he didn't have the chance to send another helpless creature falling to the ground, lifeless just for his smug enjoyment.

I ball my fist until the palm of my hand turned nearly bloody red, ignoring the horrid pain restricting my blood flow. Ash said nothing, but I was sure he had a good image in his head about why I was doing what I was doing. He knows that agonizing pain that comes along with mind reaching and the practice that led me to the point of being skilled at it on a level that most fireleaves who trained in the skill found weak.

"If you hurt that boy and put us deeper in the gutters-" Ash's voice came in a mostly joking tone.

"Shut up!"

He crosses his arms against his chest in response to me, "I was going to say that I was going to be proud of you, Postgirl, but if you insist."

I winch at the reference to my past, fueling my anger forward. The boy paused by my command, terror towards the sudden locking of his bones controlled by the hidden switch in the back of his brain that controls his nervous system. He clenched his jaw, the sudden response to my controlling. His father and mother spoke with the family close to them as their son was practically having a breakdown right beside their family minivan.

The boy moved back, pressing the heels of his shoes in the mud by force before, like a horse breaking free from a wide-open stable, eyes like two coals pinpointed on the rudy red car door, leaning his head down like a bull I placed in my head from a rodeo I watched on TV when Ash and I were still children in foster care and ignorant of our powers and past. Most of all, why we lost our second life and parents on the same night in almost a coincidence situation was unknown.

Warm fire from the fireplace screamed Christmas as about twenty stockings from the children in our wing of the building colored and huddled together playing go fish while enjoying hot chocolate. Ash was somewhere thinking up the perfect prank to scare one of us with. I was Anne, the kid who shyly stayed to herself. Still to this day, I am Anne.

That was the day that life would last be simple. The day before the orphanage owner thought it would be a good time to push us away from the innocence of children and coat us in the bitterness of the world.

The sound of the clank of metal and worried gasps followed without a warning besides the snaking feeling of ice running up the veins of my wrist. Preacher's son grabbed his head in sudden response, barely standing straight on his feet, stunned by the force that he rammed his head into the shinny body of the red minivan before falling over like a sick horse, whimpering and whining.

My urge to laugh at the pathetic boy was dead, left for Ash to do in the car ride back to the orphanage. No more shows until Christmas was agreed between us for the respect of Storm whose face was plastered on every local news website with the ruling of an unknown death cause.

No doubt in my mind, it would be some random fans using the internet and the power of conspiracy to find just what caused the death of one of their favorite background singers who was on her way to an easy path to stardom with the help of Twitter tweets and about a thousand post of intentionally focused camera views on her.

Not Ash, the lead member, and founder, or me, the bass player and background singer which both of us had formed in 2019, three years before her joining, and has been one of many extra vocalists who signed on for a trial on a tour team which hadn't even left the east coast yet. Our showing-ups were close to the thousands, but simply because the people had come for other bands instead of ours.

The preacher rushed over to the side of the van, in which I was expecting him to send his members to get some ice and assistance or something for his son with his head in his mother arms while she slowly and tenderly rubbed the progressively forming knot right below his hairline, her blond hair falling perfectly over her shoulders as she wiped the tears and sweat from his face with the end of her cashmere sweater.

The wife of the other family fanned him with one of the oldest folding fans in the universe, gritty dirt wedged tight between each crevice of the once yellow and powder pink glossy paper, cracks edging up the side of the sandalwood.

The mother glanced back at her husband running his hand over and over the deep dent, blowing his breath against the gust of wind in aggravation and suppressed anger.

"Tom! Do you care more about that stupid car than your own son!" She screeched getting the attention of some others, few even halted their cars at the sight of the poor boy still knocked senseless in his mother's arms.

"Come on, Anne, we don't want them to start throwing around their superstitions when it's a great chance that they still think that we have a hand in the death of Storm." I met his gaze, worry hidden behind the blue as he tugged at the white sweater I borrowed from one of the older kids at the orphanage. The ruffles on the chest filled me with a sense of childhood style. Something I would have loved as a kid.

"Ok, lead the way, Ash."

I glanced up at the tree where the mother blue jay had once been, a worm wedged between her sharp beak with only the thought of feeding her chicks and finding their next meal, disregarding her safety completely for the sake of them. Then the hurling stone without a mind of its own, landing its mark right on the broad white-feathered chest with flecks of black on her feather tips matching the beautiful ones around her beady eyes.

I envision her falling to the ground, the sound of her offspring crying out for their mother and the pain of their protesting hunger coming out in the sound of chirping horrors. Heavy paws on the ground, the color of mud accompanied by flashing pearly fangs leaped through the air clamping down on the bird's limp lifeless body, barks of joy leaving its jaws.

Dog. Feathers. Blood.

I couldn't see the boy in the bloody vision or his notorious handmade slingshot clutched tight in his fist. The dog, a bundle of knotted fur, scars drawn across a long black and brown patched muzzle, blotches of red from the bird's blood and feathers across its face.

At the clawed paws was a crown of the things made into a perfect circlet in the grass. Blue and black feathers with white on the tips, splotches of blood slowly drying to the grass, claw scared bark, clumps of dog fur matted up in deep tangles, and a dead baby bird without feathers. In the middle of the circlet lay the mother bird, marks on her body, the biggest one right under the throat to the once white chest that was now covered in red, only stray feathers giving me the notion that they were once white.

Just like the scars on Storm. Each slice on the bird perfectly minimizing the marks that fatally led the young woman to her awful, slow demise.

I stepped back forgetting that this was nothing more than a view of my wild imagination. Green eyes glowed in the back of my mind before Ash's yank pulled me away from the unsettling view.

"Nothing but my imagination." I said to myself, shaking my head and clearing my mind of the thoughts.