Can she remember her life before?
Bits and pieces, that come like flashes in the dark —
Queen.
Victim.
Mother.
Victim, again and for the final time.
Mostly, her mind blocks out the rape and the murder. Even now, she ignores how it chokes her throat to think of him - he who should not be named. She knows now that he had ears all over and a hoof or two in all things. The land and him, they had a communion; one that was often dark and bloodstained, and she understood her part in it - her sacrifice. Then she cast it into starry tides of the afterlife and now, she draws a shawl of ivy across her shoulders in comfort as she turns such dark thoughts aside.
Moselle is frozen in her reach by the realization that he takes no breath as her neck moves by his nose in torturous inches until at last, her lips press to his gray skin. Soft, like neglected velvet but there is no heat to him and so, he is a dead thing and she is sorry for that. Before, she might have tried to animate him again. Before her magic shrank into itself and became earth-centered. Strange, that she thinks to help him as he is but a stranger to her.
“Do you miss it?” She asks, not privy to his thoughts about her childlike status. Moselle has always chosen to represent herself as this, disarming her opposition by appearing as an inept child. If she had ever been petulant or thrown a tantrum, she cannot remember it but thinks not as those actions are not becoming of a queen. No, she is far more curious about his lack of life but continued animation. If his heart doesn’t beat and his skin is cold, why is he not on the other side?
His despair tugs at her heart.
She could have taken that once, too.
Eaten it right up and left him glowing with life and happiness. Now, she can only make daisies sprout along his back and around his feet as if he was the sun, the center of their universe. She plants one more kiss on his skin before pulling back to look at him, “Cold but not unpleasant. Just sad, as if sadness could leak out of your skin like rain from a cloud. Do you miss it?”
Moselle should not have to explain what it is. She thinks he’ll know, from once-dead to newly-dead; she thinks he’ll know.
@[kensley] yes I repeated the same question over and didn’t even realize it!