It was no time to sleep yet so i took many careful steps into the mausoleum as not to disturb the sleeping, and went to read amongst my garden, who hopefully would be happy with my choice to let the mist join us for tea.

My wage for Bessa would be a pound of copper, enough to buy a few bags of manure if i hadnt been fed so well already.

I returned home during a misty overcast, the rain had ended but its tail kept on pushing anyway, and the doors would be left open tonight since only the soul and i would be around till late morning.

Like trumpets from the ground, or fleshy flowers, the saprobes took hold and began to spread and melt everything that once was Bessa as thin and wide as they could, feeding the tall oaks and ashes for the next season’s sprout, like a gift to a community, a great festival of rot.

The pit deepened now into a rough grave, Bessa’s body now taking up much less space than it couldve before, her form was really quite beautiful now, flattened into a bumpy and molden line, and of course from here we were just teasing my favourite part.

Another hour or so and the bog offered much less protection than it shortly before had, now an acidic mess of maggots and beetles were compromising its structure, and quite effectively i must admit, ive never been one to be humble or a walk-around.

It took barely an hour to find her head just inches beneath an obscuring bush long gone from its own trunk, but even with all that cover, you could still tell from the sunken ground that something had fallen there before any chance to fill back in the mud.

The second rainy season had come and gone since Bessa had gone missing and it was likely all i would find in the bogs would be an excellently wet aged carcass, untouched by anything but my own hands.

Bessa had been given a beautiful hill with wildflowers and a surrounding forest which undesirably and incidentally happened to include a series of adorable pit bogs, peppering the perpetually leaf-packed floor.

“We’ll just take a sack of manure then, and the rest in copper.” No matter how hard she protested, he would always buy something for her in the end, the garden was well fed from many weekends like this.

“Flame, you know there is nothing i need from mortal hands, could we just return home so i can get back to my garden.” He tilted his face in a tangential fashion, he often did this when she dismissed him like this, but he knew quite well it would happen this way, it always did.

“Young one, please let me treat you just this once” his calloused hands were peeking out of his singed cotton pockets, his left hand moving methodically as though ritually searching for his wage bill to pay the general store merchant.

Flame was a big part of the cycles on the aiteile, worshiped by atleast a thousand hot burning bellies, so he was well fed and well paid.

Flame was always on so many cases, rarely just a one off too, he was always on the mass cases, bulk orders and four for one deals.

Today she had woken up to a scarlet sky, it must’ve been a couple steps from the moon’s peak, her brother was out of bed already, his sheets tangled roughly almost to the point of creating a thick rope.