A cat sits alone in the cemetery
Inspired by @circuscountdowns's bishop death comic.
cw: grief, slow mental deterioration by way of immortality
Mortal minds were not meant to live forever. Not alone.
It’s the middle of the night and they kneel before the grave. In one of their hands they grip a shovel that had been gifted to them a long time ago. At the base of the handle is an engraving that matches the stone crown on the gravestone.
There is a pendant on their chest, and it gleams gold in the moonlight.
They close their eyes, and breathe. Out slow, in slow.
Camellias smell like sugar and dirt, like three thousand years of longing. The flowers on this grave are always fresh. always redder than blood, even in the winter, when every other plant on cult grounds wilts and turns bare and hibernates. The camellias on his grave are always there, always beautiful. One might call them blessed.
They are not afraid of dying—they are devoted to Death. They simply cannot die yet. Their Gods and leaders need them. The rest of the flock needs their wisdom. Someone who can speak to them as an equal, but who knows more and has seen more than the rest.
Mortal minds were not meant to live forever, but they’re still doing pretty well. They lose days or weeks sometimes, but it’s not a problem yet. They suspect it’ll take another five thousand or so before their mind becomes a problem, assuming something else doesn’t kill them first.
So, they cannot leave. Not of their own accord. They have no need to.
They want to stay, to be content with the impossible life they live, but something is missing. They’ve been missing the sandpaper edges of his voice for the last few centuries. They’ve been yearning for the feel of his fur on their own—green and yellow, a sunbeam shining over a bed of moss.
He left them. They agreed to it. He was tired. They understood, or thought they did. They were with him for the rest of his life, and they loved him, and he died, in the end, like a mortal, but his heart was full, and when he was gone for good, they realized that their heart had gone with him. Stolen in a final prank.
At first they figured the pain would lie in the loss itself, but true moments of pain were every time they would forget that he was gone. It was every time they would look beside them, to whisper to him something that he would yell aloud to embarrass them both, only to find no one was there. It was every odd hole in the ground that they would feel the urge to crouch down beside, to talk to him, coax him out, before someone would ask what they were doing and they would remember that he wasn't there. It was every time they remembered that holes in the ground were for plants, and not Gods.
He would be severely annoyed to see them do anything but smile, but it was getting hard to smile without him.
And, and he would want this, wouldn’t he? Even if getting woken back up annoyed him at first.
His After was probably boring without them.
He'd think it was funny.
He’d grin impossibly wide and say, “ABOUT TIME YOU DID SOMETHING SELFISH.”
They stare at the old stone. The crown of the God of Chaos stares back. It's only another life. He won't even have to put on a necklace this time around.
Mortal minds were not meant to live forever. Not alone.
So, they stand and lurch forward. They take the shovel into both their hands, and they drive it like a spear into the dirt, into Leshy's grave.
They don’t know how the ritual works, but they know they’ll need his bones for it. They'll figure the rest out later.
