And we laugh like soft, mad children - Rapt

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

(‘Or did you find her pretty when her skin swelled and maggots swam in the jelly of her eyes.’)

Her bones are still here.
Some of her bones are still here.

Some of all (most; not all) of their bones are still here.

But his things are remarkably terminable. Bound absolutely to the friction of time and nature – diagensis and decomposition. His things are being taken away from him. Slowly, and rapidly; his things are easing into the earth and moss and birch roots. His Forest has always been insatiable.
 (His things are getting up and shaking off the binds of his labour. This will not do.)

Once she writhed and she stank. They all (almost all) had. He remembers them fondly this way. They crawled and their lips pulled back against their teeths. Their skin fell like such soft cloth inwards over their bones. He could see inside!

(‘Not one for a decent clean up.’) Then she had become something other, Hestia had. Something stuck and clung like incessant hell. Then she had gone. Maybe it was the violence over her own bones – the crack and snap of spinal connections; the renting of skin – like sacrifices over an alter that had pulled her back to death.
One by one, his things are slipping from him.

He swings his head, unnaturally fast, and he enjoys the violent rattle of the impact. Crack, scrape. He bellows his furor and listens to it echo through his wooded hall until it is silent. Birch bark falls to the ground near Hestia’s old bones and the mushrooms and detritus that are trying to take her back. From him. (Bitch. The intenseness of her skin, blue-purple; hips. The sharp bark of her horns. He takes a moment to feel the place where she had drew his blood and banks it somewhere deep and hungry.) 
The gift giver lurks on, and one by one, as day breaks hot and then lowers, he surveys the damage. Astri. (Softened, but whole.) Somewhere beyond in the clear of the Meadow, he know Thyndra’s decrepit remains are nearly dust and teeth already. It is not as gentle as the Forest is. It reclaims much quicker if it can.

He sighs. Gazing over her bones like an artist, disappointed. She had been so beautifully green – Astri.
So beautifully unsuspecting – Hestia. So beautifully vulnerable – grandmother. Mother.
So distinctly festive – Elve, he had called her.

So beautifully his, for a moment… 

Ungrateful. Are none of his things loyal?

POLLOCK
the gift giver