i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
How strange it is to be a dead thing.
Or, a dead thing returned to life.
But he is not like the rest of them, Kensley. He had thrust himself into the afterlife, fit himself neatly through the rift the ghost had drawn in the veil. And he had been dead and the things he’d carried with him no longer seemed so heavy. There had been a kind of peace in his heart, to know that he was dead and that it was his own doing and that there was some semblance of hope that he might find his sister and cast himself at her feet. And he had. And she had forgiven him and then it had been time to go.
They had walked in silence back to the threshold between life and death. How desperately he had not wanted to go. How fiercely he had wanted her to take his place. Because she deserved to live and he? He deserved to pay.
But she had thrust him back to the other side. And he had fallen, fallen, fallen and the pain had been unbearable. He had staggered onto the beach and the ghost had told them to run. The dead were coming. He had not realized then, as he’d torn across the hard-packed sand, kicking up bones and rot, that the heart had not pounded in its ribbed cage. His lungs had not seized with their want for air.
Because the heart did not beat and the lungs did not breathe.
He has wandered for days now and he has yearned for hunger. He has dipped his mouth into rives and streams and the water has tasted like acid on his tongue. He has felt no relief. He has cut himself on sharp branches and he has not bled.
He is a ghost, he thinks. Or at least something like it.
He finds her and he knows. Knows that she, too, was a dead thing. But he does not ask her when she came or where she came from. Instead, he watches the earth rise up to greet her. How it seems to long to kiss her.
“Hello,” he says without looking her in the eye, his focus shackled still to the dirt that gathers around her. “I’m Kensley.” He thinks that, now more than ever, the name does not belong to him.
