Hestia hadn’t slept. She’d sat up and stared at the corner of her bedpost, trying not to burn from the inside out. She felt like she had rocks in her stomach, weighing her down against the tides that were smacking her in the face, holding her down just enough that she was beginning to drown. Her brother - her Heracles - had deserved better. She hadn’t - she hadn’t been able to say goodbye, she hadn’t been able to tell him she loved him, that she was grateful for all the years she got with him. She hadn’t even been able to answer her mothers owls, her mothers owls about the damned FUNERAL, about the arrangements for the wake and going home and burying him. There was a ringing in her ears that seemed as if it’d never go away, and she didn’t even notice sliding onto the wrong table.
Hestia didn’t bother picking her gaze up, sliding over the plate of sausages, as if on auto-pilot. Her fork was lifted to her mouth, but her stomach was twisted, and she couldn’t bring herself to swallow a single bite. Her fists are clenched around the metal, slowly loosening as Dorcas talks. Her voice is weak by the time she responds, long past the point of self-consciousness. “It’s always good to have a snack on hand.”
In truth, looking at Hestia made Dorcas feel like a bad person. Here she was, so openly hurt, so openly angry, so openly emotive -- rightfully so -- where Dorcas was just cold. Truthfully, she didn’t care that her mother was dead, she didn’t care that her mother, who’d abandoned her, who’d been horrible to her for almost half of her life, was dead. There was a certain PEACE she felt, knowing that her and her mother’s story was finished, their paths would never intersect, there’d be not a shadow of a doubt what had happened between her and her mother. Her mother left, now she was dead, it’d been a long time coming if you asked Dorcas. Yet, she was lumped in with a group of people, people left behind in the wake of grief, people suffering, people like Hestia. Dorcas didn’t deserve any of the pity or kindness she was given, but for some reason she didn’t turn it down, she just let it be. Which took away from people like Hestia who actually needed the love, the kindness.
“It is, innit? I think I’d actually get one of those charmed bags, the ones that are like Mary Poppins bag, really. I’m sure she was a witch thinking about it now, but that’s not important. I just love food,” Dorcas said earnestly, taking a few from the plate, going to work on them immediately. “At my dad’s funeral, they had shit food. I remember that THE MOST.” Maybe, if Dorcas was to offer any kindness it would be normalizing talk of death, not making it so taboo and heavy, making it an every day thing -- because it was. Frankly, it was annoying, how the people around her tip toed around the grieving, acting as if it wasn’t strong of them to still be alive as well. “But I don’t think anyone really gave a shit. No one talks about funerals after they’re done, so it doesn’t really matter what you do, does it? I’m not doing anything for my mum, I’m going to Alice’s dad’s though.”