Ervir openly wept next to the cart in which his son lay. Lucretious stood next to him in her black feathered dress, a folder tucked under one arm, her skeleton’s lined up either side of the cart with their skulls bowed. “There, there,” she patted, “it’s all… all such a pain, isn’t it?”
“I promised I’d protect him,” the grieving father gulped, “how did this happen?!”
“I know, I know. Hard to believe. Why, just yesterday he was running around, laughing, playing, and now look; just an empty husk. A shell,” Lucretious sighed solemnly. “Speaking of,” she pulled a sheet from her folder, “I realize it’s not the best time, but I do need to draw your attention to a clause in the contract you signed.”
Ervir peered and squinted, lost in a haze of grief and confusion. “What?”
“It’s nothing, really; just this little thing here. It’s just, you know, I assume you’re not going to be needing the corpse, and he’s obviously not using it, so-”
“Are you completely freaking insane?!”
“Well,” Lucretious sniffed haughtily, “I realize you’re grieving, but that was uncalled for. But fine; we’ll leave it til tomorrow.” She let the matter drop and stood in respectful silence. She managed to keep that up for almost a minute. “See, I was thinking some kind of haunted house and a story about a boy who slaughtered his family, and then he could jump out of a chest at the end. It would be a way of honoring his memory. And again, I do hate bringing it up now, but you did sign this contract,” she showed him. The paper burst into yellow flames. “Ah! Hot! Hot!” Lucretious puffed, shaking it from her as it dissolved to ash. “You!” She snarled, “you can’t do that! Also, how did you do that? These are supposed to be fire and magic proof.”
“If I explained every trick,” Aerie shrugged, “it wouldn’t really be magic.”
“Well,” Lucretious composed herself, patting down her dress, “you can’t just go running off whenever you feel like it either. I thought we had a deal, remember?”
Aerie came right up to her, Lucretious finding herself shrinking under her glare. “You do not own me,” she informed her.
“Ohhh,” Lucretious backed off, coyly fanning herself with the folder, “there’s something different about you. Don’t know what it is, but I like it.”
“I thought you’d have moved on by now.”
“Yes, well, with a killer on the loose your Harper friends have decided it’s best everyone stays put for now.”
Aerie wasn’t sure that was really the best thing; Jaheira and possibly now her were the only targets Vortigan cared about, and she wouldn’t be able to fight with all she had if innocents were around to be caught up in it. She didn’t want a repeat of what happened to Thyn. But nor was she someone who regularly told others what to do - she would just have to figure it out.
“You!” Ervir roared, veins and muscles bulging as he ran at Aerie, pushing and pinning her against the outer wall of the church, spitting into her face, “this was all your fault! It was you showing up that started putting stupid ideas in his head!”
She lowered her head, doing nothing to fight back. She could have told him she was sorry, that it had been an accident, she hadn’t meant for it to happen, that it was Vortigan who had thrown the knife. These things were all true, but weren’t going to change his heart. Lucretious got a couple other circus performers to pull him off and accompany him inside the church.
“Sorry about that,” Lucretious sighed, “he’s taken it pretty hard, poor thing. You know I tried getting through to him but he’s just not in the mood to listen to anybody right now.”
Aerie ignored her, instead approaching the cart with the little blue boy stretched out inside. They had removed the dagger from his chest and now he just lay there, his eyes strangely still and unblinking. It was not the first time Aerie had seen a corpse like this, but it never became easy. Especially not when they were so small. It just didn’t seem fair. People had told her all of hers that life just wasn’t fair, and this was true. Bad things happened. Sometimes they were no-one’s fault; just tragedies there was no-one to blame or punish for. But too often people used the mantra ‘life isn’t fair’ as an excuse for not caring, for turning a blind eye to the things they could have prevented, or worse yet felt it enabled them to be cruel and to make life so much more unfair than it needed to be. So yes, life wasn’t fair. But here, now, she could do something about it.
She lifted Thyneus into her arms, gently cradling him as she strolled out into a nearby field to face the rising sun. She raised her head, taking its warmth into her pale skin as the birds began their chorus. Thyn’s head hung limply, so she adjusted herself to support it as she gently rocked.
“Do you see the bees?” She quietly asked him. “Every morning they’re stirred by the sun to stretch their wings and clean the dust from their fur. They’ll spend the whole day collecting pollen, making honey, until the sun starts getting low again, the air cooler, then they return to their hives to rest until the next day when the cycle begins again. You see, Haer’Dalis, this what you never understood; things decay, but life always strives for order.”
Aerie bowed her head, and exhaled. All around the village and the circus camp people began turning their heads, abandoning their carts and their meals, some just getting out of bed as a brilliant light pierced their windows. Those closest to the field, which included Lucretious, had to shield their eyes as it seemed like a second sun had appeared. Around it grass began to shoot from the ground, flowers bloomed and along with nearby branches began to stretch and reach for this dazzling new source of life.
The light quickly faded, Aerie dropping to her knees, panting for breath. But in her arms Thyneus started to cough. She put him down and he looked around, bewildered to how he got here, and when he turned to ask her his eyes widened and glistened as he strode back, trying to take her all in. “Woah,” was all he said.
Aerie was bewildered by his reaction, at first. She followed his eyes to find herself looking at her own forearm, but behind it curled long, shimmering bright blue feathers within which stars and galaxies seemed to swirl. She slowly stood, her new wings stretching twice the length of her body, grinning broadly as she tested them with a few flaps.
Lucretious frowned as Aerie stood in the field, trees and flowers framing her like she were some goddess of rebirth, realizing bitterly that she did not have the budget for anything like that.
