Grace

Pathologic 2=

Grace (Ласка - Laska) is the current caretaker of the cemetery, after the death of her father. She is a pale and bleary-eyed little girl.

Spoken Dialogue

 * → See Grace/Spoken Dialogue

Description
Since early childhood, she's talked to the dead more than the living. This greatly impacted her psyche, with many citizens believing that she cares more for the deceased than those who are alive. However, Capella claims that Grace is just lonely. She has been addicted to twyrine since she was young and shows a great reliance on the substance.

She speaks to the graves constantly, sitting around them and singing songs. Grace is musical, but does not play any instrument—she sings beautifully but haltingly. When night falls, she brings the dead gifts that they enjoy: flowers, typewriters, or even cakes. Since she has lived in the cemetery her entire life, she has a sense of apathy towards the concept of death. She even views the outbreak of the Plague with disinterest, only planning on how to best plan new graves.

Background
Since childhood, Grace has been accustomed to two things: the dead and twyrine. Her father, a cemetery caretaker, watered the graves with milk and sugar, while her mother swept the gravestones with her hair. Grace's father abused twyrine, forcing both his wife and young daughter to also drink. It is said that this led to his death, and to the current state of his daughter.

As Grace has been accustomed to caring for the graves since she was young, she chose to continue her father's work after he passed on.

Future
"My path was called 'The Burden of the Living'. I... I just wanted to take care of those who are leaving us behind."

- Day 12 Following the "Termite Ending", Capella states that Grace will become one of the rulers of the town, continuing to manage the burial of the dead. She will help Capella "close the lines in the circle".

She will become known as the Beige Mistress.

Portrait Quotes
"She speaks to the dead. Sometimes you can find her sitting by a grave and humming a lullaby. She offers them gifts too, quite unusual sometimes: typewriter carriages, say, of birthday cakes with candles lit. She obviously has a great affinity for music, but plays no instruments. Her singing is enchanting but raspy, as if she was short of breath."

- Katerina Saburova's take on her "Grace is nuts, plain and simple. You can easily recognize her by the breath; she inhales deeply, loudly, and... hoarsely, as though it's hard for her to take air in or as though she was about to break into tears. Her breath is fresh though, clean, even sweet-scented somewhat. That is actually rather uncanny considering her line of trade. And she talks to me as though I were dead too."

- Aspity's take on her

Spoken Dialogue

 * → See Grace/Spoken Dialogue

The Keeper of the Cemetary
The position of the Keeper of the Cemetery has been passed on for over three generations now, however there is no information as for its being caste or ritual. Since the foundation of the stone city, the cemetery was kept by quite a number of people and among them there were not only ones from the steppe. Our contemporary keeper is actually of the late settlers, so it would be foolish to attempt explaining the strange behavior of the keepers by attributing it to their being members of the local death cult. In fact, people of the steppe don't actually have a fully developed death cult; it is in some way integrated into the complicated cult of the earth. The inhabitants of the steppe are afraid of their dead and take them for filth. The custom of burying the dead by means of putting them inside the earth they think for barbarism and only the chosen ones, the most revered of their people are allowed to be buried in this way. Moreover, occasions of such "filthy" burial are accompanied by numerous rituals of cleansing.

Some primitive peoples look upon their dead just as if they were living. Their mythology didn't create a world where the dead could live or await the meeting with the living. Not having the ability to preserve the voices and feelings of the dead and not believing in the forthcoming meeting with the beloved ancestors, these peoples try to save the bones of their dead and give them the attributes of the person. In this way they create an illusion of the person’s presence in everyday life. Our steppe people are not of this kind.

I presume that the strange care and warmth with which our keeper treats the dead has nothing to do with ritual or tradition. The desire to care for the dead, to comfort them in the way he does it, comes from the depth of the human soul. The keeper treats the dead in this way because he sees no alternative. It is barely possible that he loves the dead, but I’m sure he feels them too well to treat them with indifference.

I think that the reason for such whole-hearted attention to the dead comes from exceeding usage of twyrin and smoking the resinous roots of saviur. There is no other explanation because the keeper is no madman, in fact, he is quite a sensible person. Twyrin sharpened his senses. By exceeding the allowed dosage of twyrin, living in a scarcely populated area of the town, among the wide variety of herbs, the keeper learnt of the torment of the dead too many things that mortal men aren't allowed to know. He can feel the awful, hopeless pain of the dead with his skin, his nerves, and therefore, he tries to ease it by feeding them sugar and pouring warm milk on the graves. I think that their pain spread on him shocked the man. He tries to ease his own pain by drinking more twyrin, but his senses sharpen even more and the torment becomes overwhelming.

He brought up his daughter, Grace, in this way. First, he made his wife drink as much twyrin, then did the same to her. The baneful influence of the herbs had an effect on his family members. Their ears are extremely sensitive and the hairs on their skin seem to move in response to any stirring on the cemetery land. His wife used to be a pretty woman in her youth, but later turned into something that looked like a creature from the other side. By the time her hair went gray, she had grown it to be so dense and heavy, as to conceal her whole body. If one were to look at her from behind, her hair reached the ground and fell lower than her waist from the front. Her nails became stone-hard and the skin on her hands became dry and wrinkly because of the constant digging that she was up to.

Obviously, the family cannot treat the dead for anything other than their relatives, perhaps immobile, but present at all times. The three live and sleep almost hugging the dead. The earth, full of buried people lulls them on its dented hand; at night, when the silent aura of the town isn’t broken by any foreign sounds, they press their ears against their rough beds, their blood full of the hallucinating twyrin, and listen to the sounds of the earth; stars shed their cold light from above upon them, staring indifferently at the three. The dead are everywhere around them, their tormented screams and groans louder and louder. Sometimes, having just buried a man in the morning, by the time dusk sets in, they hear the stirring and discomfort of the new neighbor.

Being able to hear the speech of the dead and feel their pain, the keeper can no longer forget about his ward. He cares about them because feels with every molecule of his body that their existence is not over. Perhaps he no longer thinks that this care is utmost necessity, but takes it for an unpleasant, but essential duty.