Duma // There's no Question in the Silence (duma) wrote in forgotten_past, @ 2010-06-24 20:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | duma |
Who: Duma (duma)
What: Judgment Day, party of two.
Where: A California graveyard
When: June 28, 1910
Warnings: Very vague gory things are alluded to, dead children wandering about. I definitely don't see a need to lock it, but if anyone feels differently just give me a heads up.
The children's souls were not her responsibility. The quivering, ravaged things were taken up by other hands, heard the beating of other wings as Duma stood back and watched, waited with the patience of a predator whose prey has trapped itself in a corner. The little girls were horrible to see in their own feeble way, clinging and overawed and delicate as spider silk in the setting sun, but it was the only boy, the eldest brother who broke the Silence's heart a little as he passed from corpse to soul. He had no eyes for the angels who were bringing him to the afterlife, tore away from their gentle hands and pulled his sisters from mercy's arms to enfold them in his own. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was hardly his fault. There was no way he could have known the delicate balance between man and monster in his father had canted irrevocably toward beast.
But words of comfort are not Duma's territory, and instead she took his stubborn little chin (that would never see a beard, now) in one hand and tilted his head up so that his eyes met her own. Her head canted delicately toward the tombstone next to his own, after the empty plot that would (soon) hold his broken-hearted mother. The cave where it slept, the thing that had given birth to him, dozed dazed with its head caved in. There was nothing gentle about Duma's gaze: everything that waits in the silence for sinners roosted there to be seen, the promise of kind cruelty, of judgment and tempering blows and vinegar left to age until it turns back again into the sweet, strong thing it was created to be. Mine now. Did she speak? No matter, he heard and was comforted, allowed the others to lead him into the afterlife where he would not be judged except for in his own mind.
The beast, oh the monster was a different story, slouching up from his coffin when called as if regretful. But Silence is wise, and Silence is patient, and the dead lack the facile tongues of the living: it took but the work of some skillful questions and long pauses for his answers to show that he did not mourn, did not regret. He reeked of dissonance and wrongness, and didn't fear what was after death. He only wished his wife had been unable to sneak up on him. He wished she was lying beside him again in mockery of their marriage bed.
Silence spread through the cemetery as the slight angel contemplated the flames of her staff, her court gathered around her and buzzing with opinion and debate. Did he lie? Was it a bold front? Was he raving mad or just honestly malicious?
Duma thought of the boy's trembling hands. She contemplated how a life of decay could provide plenty of time for reflection.
She abstained from judgment that day, declared a one hundred year recess and paid no mind to the hush that spread as word of her decision spread through the ranks of her sometimes-jury, sometimes-audience. The soul didn't seem to realize what that meant, as his soul descended back into his corpse, seemed to think this was a step above being damned.
Irrelevant. It was going to be a warm summer. The heat and the flies would soon teach him what it meant to be truly rotten.