Hacate and Clarence stood outside the gates of Hacate University.
"Can I have a cookie?" Hacate read off the small golden plate on Mara's statue.
"You know," the vampire started. "She died well after her son."
Hacate nodded her head. "Yes, she was about 100 or so years old, pretty old." She chuckled, knowing it was nothing compared to the longevity of a witch or even a vampire.
"Yes, well, we all can't be cursed with immortality," Clarence said.
The statue of Mara loomed behind them, her bronze features smoothed by decades of rain and student fingers rubbing her knee for luck.
Hacate's shadow stretched long across the cobblestones as she turned away first, boots scuffing against centuries-old mortar.
Clarence followed, his footsteps silent, not from vampiric grace, but because he'd stepped in a patch of mud and was trying to hide it.
They were quiet, looking about campus and how much it grown.
"I'm surprised Tania is the new Head Mistress of the academy. I always like it when the student becomes the master," Clarence admitted.
Hacate sighed, walking with her arms behind her back. "I'm glad she got it. She's a powerful one." Clarence nodded in agreement.
Their walk took them up a winding path flanked by hawthorn trees, their branches twisted into unnatural shapes by generations of students practicing minor hexes.
The air smelled of damp earth and the faint metallic tang of lingering spells, the kind of scent that clung to old grimoires and lecture halls where too many incantations had been whispered over the years.
Students milled about in clusters, some laughing, others hunched over books, their fingers tracing glowing sigils in the air. A first-year nearly collided with Clarence, her arms piled high with charmed candles that flickered an unnatural violet.
She gasped, wobbled, but he steadied her with a quick grip on her elbow before she could topple. The girl blinked up at him, recognition dawning too slowly, her mouth forming a silent "oh" as she realized who, or what, had caught her.
Clarence offered a thin smile and stepped aside, leaving her wide-eyed and stammering half a thanks to the empty space where he'd been.
"Fanu was an excellent headmaster at the academy," he said.
Hacate agreed. "Yes, he had his ways but his death saddened a lot of the pupils. He was rather up their in age too, um."
Clarence nodded his head. Soon they parted ways to their respectable departments.