Quiet ensues; she cannot guess at how her question has pierced the heart of him. Had she known that could be possible, she’d not have asked it to spare him even that moment of painful thoughtfulness. Moselle is not cruel and does not think that her question - innocent enough - could be unintentionally so. She is the kind to take the aches and pains away, not cause them but she does not know him and so, cannot guess at what this quiet means.
It gives her time to look him over more. To coast along the gray peaks of his hip bones and the smooth expanse of his back as it dips. Dead or not, he didn’t look it. Not like how some of them could, nightmarish and odd. But he also comes to life more now that she had decorated him daisies, the dead’s best friend as far as flowers go. Better to grow them this way than push them up between his bones and from the decomposed matter he md otherwise be.
Such a lovely picture but bones don’t scare her. Not after having been dead for so long. But here he looks so lovely, graveyard gray and daisyed up. A faint smile touches her lips as she admires her handiwork. Roses might have worked just as well but roses are so cliche, thorns and all. Daffodils seemed too bright and cheerful, not that she begrudged him his gloom at all. Rather, it attracted her to him because she had always been the kind to want to make others smile no matter the cost to her.
Moselle has always been bold too; she takes a step forward, almost into him, like coming in for a hug but it’s just a kiss. A firm but kind press of her lips to his cold dead cheek and her mouth lingers there, expelling breath after warm breath on his skin. She’d find a spark in him if she could - and once, she might have, bringing him back to life but now, she can only decorate him in daisies or bury him in earth. It is a grim thought that pulls her back from him, still close enough to touch but so that she can look him in the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says, moved by his inarticulate but powerful admission that he does indeed miss it. “Once, I could have given it back to you…” she trails off, not bothering to finish or offer him an explanation. She thinks this must be what failure feels like and it makes her uncomfortable. Enough so, that she squirms in place before him but brings her nose back to his to share a breath. He might be dead and he might not be breathing, but the action comforts her nonetheless.
No, she realizes, he comforts her because he is a dead thing. “Do dead things make plans once they come back?” She offers him the brief bright curl of a smile on her lips, trying to lighten the mood from one so defeatist and gloomy.
Moselle feels like she doesn’t have to tell him that she was a once-dead thing; she believes he knows it.
@[kensley]