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Coco was going to a funeral today. It had been on her calendar for months, now, but it still left her sick and disgustingly distraught everytime she saw the days tick down.
It was such a lovely day, she thought that'd been a blessing. He would've loved it, he would've forced them to all gather again and sit out in the grass, barefoot and in summer-wear with the heat of the sun battering down on their backs like a firm hand.
She didn't really believe in afterlife, she believed things came and go as they pleased, which would always be cruel. To have something but not have it forever, and Coco knew everything has a mortality, but it would be nice for goodbyes to not be so...tactless.
Though parts of her knew that death is a good thing, death is life. Death is the meaning of life, and becoming is whatever you do inbetween. The thought of us dying is really just us longing to live, but to wish to live forever? This is nothing more than selfish.
We must take turns, our bodies must get thrown back into the old stew like ingredients to make another. And when that ladle gets lifted again, and poured back into frozen, wooden moulds, all of them will crawl back out screaming and crying and bloodied once more.
Death is a kind woman; she makes good soup.
Coco's hand slips from her vanity, a splinter tugging itself into her palm from the cracked surface, she winced and brought it up to her mouth, sucking on the wound like a injured scale-wolf. The splinter edges out, and she takes it from her tongue to shove it back into the vanity, what goes unwillingly must stay.
Then, she grabs from her bowl of earrings randomly, ending up with the pair she stole from Qifrey when she was fifteen.
Okay, well, stole is a strong word. He had made a passive comment about it, sent a long hard glance at her, and where they sat on her ears. He smiled, and the world moved on. And his earrings were hers, but they were his, but they were hers, yet they were his.
Coco threaded the hook into the hole in her lobe, taking a minute to find the exit because of how many times she had just shoved a stud in and re-pierced it an absurd amount in her youth. She looked up into the mirror infront of her, studying her face for a moment before saying,
"I look like my mom."
Coco wondered when Qifrey stopped being 'Master Qifrey,' and she supposed he hadn't. You're never not an apprentice, you're always learning, always picking up new books and scribbling more sigils and destroying the kitchen in pursuit of an interesting recipe you found on a scrounged note in the back of a drawer.
No, he hadn't stopped being her master the moment she graduated. Society just deemed that she didn't have to call him that anymore, and because she was no longer under his atelier, she listened. Isn't that ironic? It's like calling your mother by her first name.
Coco's hands slipped into her closet, scurrying past every robe until she reached the dress tucked purposefully out of sight in the back, snatching it out she examined the stitching. Her mother was an excellent seamstress, one of the best, actually.
In all her years of tailoring and seeing the new up-and-coming fashion, she'd never seen stitches like hers. Every piece of cloth that remained from their little shop kept her together. She put on her mother's dress, her mother's funeral dress, and turned to look in the wall-mounted mirror. Coco studied herself for a moment before murmuring,
"I look like my mom."
Her gaze drifted towards the window besides her. Up on the top of the tallest hill, overlooking all of the Naakiwan Downs, was a beautiful tree of silver-bark. Its limbs were gracefully moving with the breeze as it stood. Five tassels were strung around the trunk and they danced with the leaves like fireflies.
Coco was going to two funerals today.
Death is a kind woman, she only takes as much as she has to. She leaves traces of them in their absence, she lets things gather dust. Death lets beds stay warm for awhile after they get up. She lets apples rot and then rebirth into more apples. Death is not a selfish woman, she gives us good bones.
A hefty knock landed on her door, a knock she knew well, and it slid open to reveal a hunched figure, who'd been bathed in black for weeks.
"Master Olly," she breathed, tears started to well up in her eyes and threatened to spill. Olruggio fretted over her, saying something like, "No, hun, you'll ruin all that make up, now wontcha?" He cupped her face and gently blotted them away. Coco buckled into his cloak and sobbed like a child, anyway. She's pretty sure he did too.
_______
Later, when both receptions had finished, and everyone was thoroughly at each others throats, throwing verbal violence to anyone who'd listen, Coco went out to the fields with Beldaruit. They walked slowly, somberly, the kind of way you do when the universe expects nothing from you.
She held his hand as they walked up the hill, he didn't need it, they just wanted to. He gave her a firm, comforting squeeze before letting go, the way mothers do.
It was beautiful up there, she'd used that word a lot today. It was lovely, it was breathless, it was poisonous the way it got into her veins and bled its way out. She couldn't imagine Olruggio out here all alone, but she needed to leave soon. You stay in one place your entire life and it'll kill you eventually, it'll snuff you out like a flame in humid air. Beside her, Beldaruit sighed, the kind of way he did when contemplating to say something or not.
She turned, and he looked at Coco with old, worn down fragility she'd never seen in him before.
"Many years ago," he begun. "Qifrey told me he wished,"
The grass swished below them, "That if he needn't do anything else,"
Coco focused on the yowls of the owl-cats in the distance. "He had to make sure that you four knew,"
"It's okay to be young."
He was quiet after this, she'd long since sat down and grabbed a stick to doodle water-glyphs in the dry dirt.
Coco heard the click of his mouth, turning to say one last thing before they parted ways for a long time.
"And, I'll tell you what he didn't."
"It's okay to die afraid."
This place is a grave.