She's spent a few days in busy preparation for this lingering heatwave. Not without recollection of such things in the distant past, she'd taken a needle and thread to her long robes, massacring the sleeves and butchering the skirts to a more practical length. Today she could enjoy the fruits of that labour: she pranced and skipped her way in relative comfort, light cotton fluttering loose about her knees, slim arms hanging bare and cool by her sides. Oh, the pleasure of blue skies and sunny warmth! There is only one thing that could please her more, and that awaited at her journey's destination.
The Lake.
Three hundred acres of silvery perfection -- although the drought has shrunken it a little. Three hundred acres of water that sparkles beneath the furious sun, that shines like glass shot through with mercury. In all of this world, there was no place that pleases her better. With a net in one hand for fishing (not that she'd keep what she caught; the plight of landbound trout dismays her), and a picnic basket in the other, she'd kicked off her slippers and strolled for a time across the shore, resisting the temptation to dip her toes into the inviting water. There is a ritual here: before she can enjoy a swim, she must find a place to sit, find the perfect slab of flat, warm rock on which to set her burdens --
And there it is. A well-sized stony outcropping, to which she hastens with a flutter of skirts. Her pretty features are lit with a smile that's bright with anticipation, with simple pleasure, and when she spies the woman slumped against the rock, her first response is to quicken her skipping stride.
"Good morning, my Lady! Best morning, actually, don't you think? Why, I -- "
And that is all the speech that she manages for some time. Dorian Mode is ordinarily considered the tavern simpleton, and this might not be an inaccurate judgement. But she knows the stench of rotting flesh when she smells it, knows the look of decay when she sees it, and her blue eyes are twin wells of horror as she drops to kneel by the corpse's side. The scene is absorbed with reluctant fascination, with lips that dismay have left slack and parted.
The girl's bare feet dangle in the water. Fish have begun to nibble at the toes. Her eyesockets are black, empty holes, but there are two dry deposits on the rock which might once have filled them. And although decay has made a mess of it, has softened and ruined the flesh, Dorian Mode, tavern lackwit, can still make out the words which have been carved into the corpse's back.
We Believe
With a half-gasped cry, with a choking sob, she gathers the rotted thing into her arms, to weep as if this were some fairytale, and tears could restore dead flesh to life.
