[Rosamund is in her old tattered gown. As it was, when she fished it out of the wooden box from the swamp. As it was when she vanished from the Neverafter, a place where she might have died bloodily more than once, but at least went down fighting at full strength.
In this village, there had been no bow nor arrows. No magic at her fingertips, no summon. All she came with was the dress and the Book — capitalization necessary, except even that doesn't feel necessary here. To anyone who'd looked at it, and a few had, they only saw a copy of Sleeping Beauty with blank pages after the princess falls asleep. Nothing otherworldly or untoward about it.
And so the thing that Marcille became cornered not a formidable foe, but a lost girl in rags and prickled with pain. The only weapon left to Rosamund was the thorns, and they never once moved in her defence. They barely made Marcille bleed.
She'd watched the show. This in-between place lets her see things rather than read them, and it's styled oddly, and the mist is wholly uninviting but not half so spooky as her home could be. It's the anachronisms that bother her. It's the insight into the nonsense-world she'd just left behind that bothers her. It's Marcille who bothers her. The whole week, she'd spoken to her maybe a handful of times. It was an awfully big crew and she'd been curious about each one, and there was never enough time in the day to spend with them all. So maybe she missed something. Maybe that fretfully sweet countenance had been obscuring a sadistic streak, a monstrous possession. A plain old monster, made to gobble up young girls and never think twice about why. The ranting and raving didn't clarify anything, and any plea Rosamund made had gotten trampled in the verbal chaos.
At the trial, this nebulous evil had manifested so suddenly and violently that even Rosamund, drinking whisky and booing the screen and throwing food at it in impotent fury, had gone shock-still. The execution today was even worse. She was reminded of Miss Muppet while Marcille was on death's door. Except they didn't have to kill the little girl after she came to her senses. No such mercy for Marci.
Rosamund frowns, standing a stone's throw from the coffin. There's a long strip of metal in her hand, curved and subtly clawed at the ends. If she had the words for it she'd recognize it was a crow bar. All she needs to know is how the heft would dent a skull if it were swung just right.
The late afternoon light is at her back. Which means her stretching shadow is the royal proclamation, announcing her arrival with a dreadful silence. Her time in the woods taught her the trick of noiseless footsteps. So it's a long black spectre creeping over the wood of the coffin that greets the newcomer in this, their un-graveyard. Welcome to the After Life. We hope you enjoy your stay.]
i could have ghost-written this header
In this village, there had been no bow nor arrows. No magic at her fingertips, no summon. All she came with was the dress and the Book — capitalization necessary, except even that doesn't feel necessary here. To anyone who'd looked at it, and a few had, they only saw a copy of Sleeping Beauty with blank pages after the princess falls asleep. Nothing otherworldly or untoward about it.
And so the thing that Marcille became cornered not a formidable foe, but a lost girl in rags and prickled with pain. The only weapon left to Rosamund was the thorns, and they never once moved in her defence. They barely made Marcille bleed.
She'd watched the show. This in-between place lets her see things rather than read them, and it's styled oddly, and the mist is wholly uninviting but not half so spooky as her home could be. It's the anachronisms that bother her. It's the insight into the nonsense-world she'd just left behind that bothers her. It's Marcille who bothers her. The whole week, she'd spoken to her maybe a handful of times. It was an awfully big crew and she'd been curious about each one, and there was never enough time in the day to spend with them all. So maybe she missed something. Maybe that fretfully sweet countenance had been obscuring a sadistic streak, a monstrous possession. A plain old monster, made to gobble up young girls and never think twice about why. The ranting and raving didn't clarify anything, and any plea Rosamund made had gotten trampled in the verbal chaos.
At the trial, this nebulous evil had manifested so suddenly and violently that even Rosamund, drinking whisky and booing the screen and throwing food at it in impotent fury, had gone shock-still. The execution today was even worse. She was reminded of Miss Muppet while Marcille was on death's door. Except they didn't have to kill the little girl after she came to her senses. No such mercy for Marci.
Rosamund frowns, standing a stone's throw from the coffin. There's a long strip of metal in her hand, curved and subtly clawed at the ends. If she had the words for it she'd recognize it was a crow bar. All she needs to know is how the heft would dent a skull if it were swung just right.
The late afternoon light is at her back. Which means her stretching shadow is the royal proclamation, announcing her arrival with a dreadful silence. Her time in the woods taught her the trick of noiseless footsteps. So it's a long black spectre creeping over the wood of the coffin that greets the newcomer in this, their un-graveyard. Welcome to the After Life. We hope you enjoy your stay.]
Marcille.