Re: Acta est fabula, plaudite!
It was a shame about the dressmaker.
The wavy boy had strange ideas about churches, religion and mourning. He had strange ideas about rules too. "Breaking rules for the sake of breaking them is childish," she informed him, this bastion of maturity who longed for yellow ribbons as the flesh rotted off her bones. "Break rules because you long for whatever is denied you," she said with a certainty that dug rivets in skin and left room for wires in joints. Break the arms, and that way they'll lie flat on the chest. Crossed wrists were perfect places for yellow ribbons.
Around her, she noticed nothing. Corpulent women, sallow men, and the little road twisted toward the steeple all the same. At the front, a porcine woman and a hollow man led, both silent in their mourning, and the girl skipped cheerily in the wake of all of it. "This is a party," she corrected, turning her cheek to look at him. She smelled of lilies, of course she did.
"How would you know how it feels?" Death. Down her nose and chin up, and she sounded like a priest at confession, disbelieving of sins laid at her feet like lilies, and she wished she had a pretty parasol. "Death is terrible. It's not like you're an ice cream. It hurts, and it's frightening. You know it's coming, and you can't fight it. Your body won't respond anymore, and your mind knows, you see? It's nothing like ice cream."
Dead, is that right? Was my description right? But Dead said nothing. Dead was really quite rude at times. No matter, and she looked the apple thief, a hand pressed to the satin that covered her corset at the belly. "Nearly there now." They nearly were. Right there was the church, white and pretty and too magnificent for a town with one road. But the church was very proper, and the quietly mourning family's names would be writ in silver upon a plaque at the door. "Will you come inside and be very bad?" she grinned, honeysuckle and lilies and her hair a tangle of black promises made in bright sunlight.