(no subject)
Summer has never been her season. It makes the air sweat heavily, and even if she can inform her glands that her clothing looks much better without sweat stains, it is still unpleasant.
She misses the winter, and watching breath coalesce into mist beyond her lips, and the bite of chill in her skin. There is a sharpness to it that draws on the senses and leaves them more alert, as opposed to the soporofic sludge of oppressive summer.
The park is dark tonight, the sky overcast even if any stars might have shown themselves.
Blades of grass bend springily beneath her booted footfalls. She has strayed from the path, and shadows of deeper black in the dark shield her passing among the trees.
There is a strangled, gurgling cry; the heavy thunk of a meaty weight hitting the ground. The dying man twitches and writhes, despite the feather's brush that is the pressure of her hand to his skin. Natural causes. Internal hemorrhage.
She watches him, pale-eyed and almost curious. He is no one. An old man. Dead soon anyway, by the look of his lungs. Just a human.
"Do you feel cold?" she asks the corpse, and even though it doesn't answer, it is as though she hears something. She looks up through the wind-whispered leaves towards the black night sky, eerily light-shadowed by the stark gleam of the city surrounding. "I almost envy you."
She pulls his wallet from inside his light jacket and removes his cash, which she tucks away inside her shirt. It is not much, a few twenties, but more than she had before he died.
Then Ellen rises with clean hands and a clear conscience, as the spirit of the dead man goes to his own gods. She does not need to speak with hers. As far as she is concerned, she already has.
She misses the winter, and watching breath coalesce into mist beyond her lips, and the bite of chill in her skin. There is a sharpness to it that draws on the senses and leaves them more alert, as opposed to the soporofic sludge of oppressive summer.
The park is dark tonight, the sky overcast even if any stars might have shown themselves.
Blades of grass bend springily beneath her booted footfalls. She has strayed from the path, and shadows of deeper black in the dark shield her passing among the trees.
There is a strangled, gurgling cry; the heavy thunk of a meaty weight hitting the ground. The dying man twitches and writhes, despite the feather's brush that is the pressure of her hand to his skin. Natural causes. Internal hemorrhage.
She watches him, pale-eyed and almost curious. He is no one. An old man. Dead soon anyway, by the look of his lungs. Just a human.
"Do you feel cold?" she asks the corpse, and even though it doesn't answer, it is as though she hears something. She looks up through the wind-whispered leaves towards the black night sky, eerily light-shadowed by the stark gleam of the city surrounding. "I almost envy you."
She pulls his wallet from inside his light jacket and removes his cash, which she tucks away inside her shirt. It is not much, a few twenties, but more than she had before he died.
Then Ellen rises with clean hands and a clear conscience, as the spirit of the dead man goes to his own gods. She does not need to speak with hers. As far as she is concerned, she already has.