How strange it is to be a dead thing.
Or, a dead thing returned to life.

But he is not like the rest of them, Kensley. He had thrust himself into the afterlife, fit himself neatly through the rift the ghost had drawn in the veil. And he had been dead and the things he’d carried with him no longer seemed so heavy. There had been a kind of peace in his heart, to know that he was dead and that it was his own doing and that there was some semblance of hope that he might find his sister and cast himself at her feet. And he had. And she had forgiven him and then it had been time to go.

They had walked in silence back to the threshold between life and death. How desperately he had not wanted to go. How fiercely he had wanted her to take his place. Because she deserved to live and he? He deserved to pay.

But she had thrust him back to the other side. And he had fallen, fallen, fallen and the pain had been unbearable. He had staggered onto the beach and the ghost had told them to run. The dead were coming. He had not realized then, as he’d torn across the hard-packed sand, kicking up bones and rot, that the heart had not pounded in its ribbed cage. His lungs had not seized with their want for air.

Because the heart did not beat and the lungs did not breathe.

He has wandered for days now and he has yearned for hunger. He has dipped his mouth into rives and streams and the water has tasted like acid on his tongue. He has felt no relief. He has cut himself on sharp branches and he has not bled.

He is a ghost, he thinks. Or at least something like it.

He finds her and he knows. Knows that she, too, was a dead thing. But he does not ask her when she came or where she came from. Instead, he watches the earth rise up to greet her. How it seems to long to kiss her.

“Hello,” he says without looking her in the eye, his focus shackled still to the dirt that gathers around her. “I’m Kensley.” He thinks that, now more than ever, the name does not belong to him.

He had been bold once. Unfettered.
He had been warm and kind and honest.
He had not been particularly brave.
But, then, he’d never had reason to be.

And now?
Kensley had been drained of all of his warmth even before he’d flung himself into the jaws of death and came back something that was neither alive nor dead. He had smiled still, because the kindness had been bred into the very marrow of his bones and had not been so easy to lose, but no smile he offered ever reached his eyes. Because he had come home to Beqanna a crippled thing. Crippled by grief and a despair so potent that sometimes he could not breathe around it.

But he does not need to now.
Because he does not breathe at all.

Not even out of habit. Not even when he had found such comfort in dragging in breaths that shuddered and spasmed as they moved swiftly across his tongue. He does not bother with them now. The ribcage does not stir, neither with a pulse nor with a breath.

He smiles now, when she shares her name. Moselle. She is small and young but he can see the history in her eyes. He wonders if he’d recognize it if he were not also a dead thing. He wonders if all of the other dead came back as younger versions of themselves, as if born again. Or if they came back just as they had gone. He could ask, he supposes, but maybe she does not know she is a dead thing.

“Moselle,” he echoes and then nods, commits it to memory. The name is not familiar and he makes no effort to remember if they’d known each other, before.

He has opened his mouth to say something – it’s good to meet you, perhaps, or something similar – but the words catch in the column of his throat when she reaches out to touch him. It is not difficult for him to go absolutely still, his gaze now fastened securely to her face. If he had breath, he might have held it.

Somehow, he knows why she’s done it. Because she can tell that he is a dead thing, too.
“How does it feel?” he asks. There is no teasing in his tone, only a certain despair. Because he does not know. And he’s not absolutely convinced he wants to.

Does he miss it?
It is a simple enough question, certainly.

There is nothing cruel in it, nothing malicious. And yet. And yet, it drives a stake through his useless heart because perhaps he had not fully accepted that there was anything to miss. He had undoubtedly been foolish enough to convince himself that the lack of a pulse, the lack of a want for air, didn’t mean anything at all.

Maybe he has convinced himself that it’s only a dream.
He will wake up soon, lightyears away from here.
He will wake up grateful and warm and whole.
He will wake up in a world that makes sense.

But he is not dreaming. Every inch of him knows it. He swallows thickly, though there’s no reason for it. This is perhaps the one habit from his life that he is unwilling to give up. It is the one thing that allows him to believe that he is like the rest of them. He belongs here. Or he did once and that has to be enough to keep him.

Sad, she says. As if all of his grief is leaching out of his pores. He closes his eyes, the mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line. Though the warmth had been drained from his face and his heart before, it had still remained in his skin. And now? Now he is nothing more than a dead thing, shackled to earth on this side of the veil.

But the flowers spring up around him and he can feel them flicker to life along the ladder of his spine. And he smiles. Because it is a kindness he does not deserve, certainly. What he deserves, he knows, is to suffer. Someday, he thinks, he will collapse beneath the weight of his misery, and he’ll be dragged back to his feet and spurred back into action. Because a dead thing cannot die again.

He lowers his head, brushes his nose through the flowers, barely registers the way they tickle the soft skin of his mouth. Dead things cannot feel. There is a sharp twinge in the cavern of his chest as the realization settles over him, heavy.

“I thought I hadn’t been without it long enough to miss it,” he says, quiet. It has only been a matter of days. He has watched the sun rise and set four times since he fell through the rift and landed in the sea an undead thing, tracked its progression across the sky because undead things do not need sleep. “But I think I do,” he finally adds. The words hitch and catch in his throat and he swallows again. “I do.”

He had always been quiet, Kensley.
But the quiet is different now.
He had once simply been content to let the world happen around him.
And now? Now the quiet comes from not knowing what to say.
Not knowing how to translate the ache at the center of him.

She ventures closer still and he feels no overwhelming need to cast himself out of her reach. Instead, his eyes drift heavy closed as she presses a firm kiss to the meat of his cheek. He wonders, briefly, distractedly, if he will begin to decay. If the place where she kisses him will someday begin to rot. If this close she can smell the death on him. Or if she can only smell the sadness. He wonders if the heart would stir in its ribbed cage if it still beat. Would the pulse flutter if the heart was not a dead and useless thing?

But he feels nothing at all, at least nothing physical. It puts a vicious ache in his throat and he sucks in a breath he does not need in an effort to quell it. It offers little relief and he closes his eyes a little harder, until they wrinkle at the corners. He grits his teeth and the muscle in his jaw pulses and he swallows down her apology.

When he opens his eyes again, she has removed herself just enough to look him in the eye. She speaks of magic, he’s sure of it, and he offers up a sad, slanted smirk. Rueful. He shakes his head then, looks beyond her to the horizon. Where the sunlight puckers and pulses. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, “I don’t know that I deserved to have it in the first place.”

In the end what had he done with it except for destroy? Even if she still had the ability to give it back to him, he would not have allowed her to.

She pushes her nose into his space and he forces his lungs to receive air, air that tastes heavy and acrid, and then he exhales and tries to find the warmth in her breath.

“I don’t know, Moselle,” he says and the sweet curl of her smile coaxes one out of him, as well, “you tell me.” 

All of that blood was never once beautiful, he’d heard once, it was just red.
Is his pain beautiful?
Had it ever been beautiful?

He appreciates her sentiment, the kindness in it. A kindness he still does not deserve. He shakes his head and a rueful smile ties up the furthest corner of his mouth as he goes on studying the horizon. It strikes him that he does not remember what the world looked like the last time he’d seen it alive. He hadn’t even registered the weather before he’d ventured down to the beach and stepped through the rift. Would he have paid more attention to the exact way the sun lit up the sky if he’d known that it was the last sunset he’d ever gaze upon with a beating heart?

And this sunset is unremarkable. But he has no way of knowing if it is truly unremarkable or if there is something his lack of a pulse that makes it lackluster. If being a dead thing has somehow drained the world of its color, its splendor.

He wants to tell her that she’s wrong. Sometimes lives are wasted, like his. Because he did nothing worthwhile with his except love someone who would never be his and watch his family die. But he doesn’t. He affords her this kindness, his forfeit.

He is absolutely still, studying the way the sun slips steady toward the horizon, when he feels the daisies stir. He feels them creep up the length of his neck, tips back his head as if he might see them settle around his poll. The sensation coaxes a deeper smile out of him. And then she laughs and, were he alive, it certainly would have knocked the air out of him. What a sound it is.

He turns his gaze back to her face then, studies the way it lights up with the sound of that laughter. He swallows – a habit, still – and tilts his head. Careful not to disturb his crown. They’ll make it up as they go along. Of course they will, he thinks.

“Where do you think you’ll go from here?” he asks then.