One morning in the Abingdon cemetery~

Rae dances and sways atop the gravestone, her movements eerie in the dark and misty graveyard. From afar, she appears no more than some dark skinned leper, or disfigured woman, perhaps from the Dark Continent of Africa. Her dancing is mesmerizing and strange in it's smoothness, you swear you could almost hear the wirring of pipes and the beating of drums.~

John: The gravedigger's days tend to start early, before the sun comes up and the mist sits thick upon the ground. It shrouds the graveyard, causing the scene to look as if it came directly out of a novel, and yet it was something John had seen every day for almost the entirety of his life. It would start ordinarily enough at least, as he took his tools and stopped by briefly at the shed at the entrance of the cemetery before entering into the property. Graves stretched as far as the eyes can see, some old and weathered with age while others were polished, new... there were quite a few of those. Deaths had been plentiful in the borough as of late. As he made his way through the familiar landscape, movements in the distance caught his eye. They were churning, moving the fog about in the dark, and he'd pause midstep as if trying to decipher what he was seeing. A stranger shape began to materialize, what looked like a woman dancing atop one of the graves, and the air filled with the deep drone of pipes. His lips pressed into a tight line, his brow furrowing; a strange sight indeed, and he began to approach within sight of the mysterious entity.

Rae did not appear to take notice as the gravedigger approached. Her body locked in her dance in service to her dark Eldritch God. Her padded shoes softly tap against the old smoothed gravestone beneath her as her body undulates in her dance. Outside of her major limbs, the only feature not hidden is her radiant blue eyes, eerily clear and bright in the early morning fog.~

John: It was an eerie sight in a way; the woman moved somewhat unnaturally, purposeful and seeming to appear and disappear out of the fog. Perhaps it was a bit too ethereal looking to be natural, though she looked at home where she swayed and danced. In a graveyard, no less. John's expression didn't change much - it so rarely did - but this wasn't something he sees often. Or ever. His parents had told him of such odd incidences, something they had seen themselves albeit rarely. The woman's face was obscured save for her eyes, glowing a stark blue in the dim light. "Ma'am?" He finally decided to call towards the woman. "Ma'am, I wouldn't recommend dancing upon the graves. That would be some bad luck."

Rae stops with a suddenness that is startling, as if your words had somehow frozen her in time like a photograph. She slowly returns to a standing position and looking at you, she steps down from the gravestone. "Hullo, Mr. Deering." she says softly, her voice almost accentless but containing an oddly musical trill, like dripping of a leaky faucet.

John continued to watch the soft movements of the woman, only to have her stop in her tracks when he called out to her. It was a jarring stillness to say the least, something that he'd raise a brow at, but didn't quite cause him to back off. But at least he'd caught her attention, and she would slowly turn on the gravestone before stepping down to the ground proper. As she stepped closer, however, a familiar feeling began to ripple through his mind. The aura of the being before him was a strange one; he'd felt this before, an innate power of a witch, though unable to pinpoint exactly what it was before him. Either way, her strange glowing eyes drew his own and his fingers drummed against the wooden handle of the shovel. But then she said his name, and his brow raised just a little further. "Good morning, ma'am." A small tip of his head followed. "I don't believe we've met."

Rae bowed her head as well, the motion seeming less natural from her. Her eyes take you in, her eyes not moving around like another human's normally would. She speaks softly again in reply, "We have not, Mr. Deering, but your family is known to the Gate, and his presence is within your graveyard."

John: The feeling intensified, his innate perception tipping him off to the sheer abnormality of the woman before him... No mere mortal, that was for sure. Now that she stood closer and the fog no longer obscured her so much, her silhouette became more evident. Her skin looked rather impossibly dark, her proportions somewhat disfigured and distorted, as if his eyes were playing tricks on him combined with the fog. Her voice was soft at least, though there was an ethereal quality to it, something not quite human either. Even her words were strange, and another sigh ran from his lips. "The Gate?" John would take a quick glance around, but found nothing but the rolling fog and just them. "Whose presence?" What a morning this turned out to be, evidently.

Rae takes a step closer, still speaking softly but now a more insistent assertive tone. "Your family has long passed through Him and made use of His domain." Her eyes seem to glow a bit brighter now.~

John tensed just a bit when she took a step towards him, and he in turn took a step back as to keep some distance between them if only a few feet. Her tone shifted to something pushier, more forward in her speech. "Ma'am, I'm not sure what you're talking about." Only he had an idea, and it was something he'd prefer to not encounter at this hour... or ever, in fact. Though not stubbornly well versed, he'd been taught of such strangeness, what looms beyond their own comprehension, and it meant little good for their small borough. He'd squint against the brightness of her eyes, glowing more intensely and piercing the fog.

Rae steps forward again, backing the gravedigger up into the mausoleum. "The Gate knows your mind Mr. Deering." She continues to accuse.

John: To say that John was displeased by the sudden situation he found himself in was an understatement. He found himself further pushed back, and what was left was the hard stone of a mausoleum behind him and but the smallest of openings to get through between himself and a nearby gravestone. This woman seemed intent, staring with those glowing eyes that almost hurt. He took a sharp breath, fingers winding tighter around the shovel he held and wondering if it would be worth whatever may come his way to use it, forcing her to give him more breathing room. "Knows my... Ma'am, come to your senses, I haven't the foggiest what you're babbling about." A feeling of deep unease coursed through him now, odd considering he was indifferent to most who made their way into his graveyard alive or dead.

Rae lifts one of her hands up to her face, what you initially took for the long painted fingernails of a woman, you can now see are semi translucent claws. She grips her veil and pulls it away revealing her face, a mass of tentacles writhe before and you can now fully see her inhuman eyes. Her voice resonates in the air and even more disturbingly, in your mind. "YOG-SOTHOTH IS THE GATE MR. DEERING. Your mind is not your own here."

John feels his whole body coil, tensing up as she continues to draw nearer. The air suddenly hung thick in his lungs, cloying, and he could almost smell the sickly sweetness of death upon it, hanging in a layer about the graves. Perhaps he was just imagining things now, but things he had no reason to fear. And yet it dug into his mind as he finally brought his shovel to his side, watching as the woman's hands, tipped by spindly and translucent claws, came to her veil and tore it off. It was... something. Something he couldn't quite get off his tongue, a great mass of wriggling worms or tendrils that gripped at the fog. It was the "strangeness" his family had warned him out, those things they could never hope to understand beyond their grasp. Her words buried themselves into his mind and he could hear them behind his ears and eyes, speaking incomprehensible names. John recoiled as if he'd been stung, inhaling sharply before, out of reflex, swinging blindly at the inhuman woman with his shovel.

Rae: When he opened his eyes Mr. Deering saw that the creature was gone. For indeed it was no mere woman but a horror that had visited his graveyard this morning. Looking around yielded no sign of what had transpired except for the glint of something small lying atop the gravestone the creature had been dancing upon when he first approached her.~

Mr. Deering bends over to pick up a small coin, glinting in the early morning mists despite it's rather extreme state of tarnish. Upon the coin is stamped a strange eldritch symbol that causes Mr. Deerings spine to tingle slightly.