Re: Acta est fabula, plaudite!
He knew that. Life was all about the things you couldn't do, until you'd ticked off enough birthdays to get close enough to guess at what they would be like. And then you had enough birthdays, like chips stacked in front of you, but you got to the finish-line and you couldn't remember what it was you wanted the chips for in the first place, but there were too few to buy the next thing. But she was a pretty girl, even if she stated the obvious and was dressed like a crow in amongst a funerary procession of a flock of them.
He thought all rules should be torn up. Her recitation was silly, and he pulled a face at the elaborate hairstyle of the woman who sat in front, upholstered in black like a fantastic sofa. "What happens if you really have fun? Is that banned too?" He'd had it right the first time, the perversity of small towns who cloaked together to mourn as a collective. But he was startled at her viciousness, and he turned his blurred face towards her.
Fear wasn't nice. It didn't abide by rules, it rushed in when it thought it was needed. The downy hairs on the back of his neck rose as one to a stand, like an audience applauding an unforeseen turn of events. "You're not dead," he said stoutly, resisting the depths of the black eyes, the teeth too pointed to be pretty, "You can't be." But he was edging sideways off the seat in the church.