HOD-004
Barista: Katherine Wade
Date: Feb-4-2020
Receipt: HOD-004
Subject: The Dead
I saw them again.
Not far. Just at the edge of the hill. Where the Sacred Tree’s roots end… and the Green Isle begins.
The Dead.
One of them stood apart from the others, its wing-arms wrapped around its body like a shroud. They looked like something the night tried to forget, Pale and slick, bones too long, face too soft, like wax held near heat. Unformed where bone should be. Eyes like a rotting star, yellow and glimmering but dead and dark.
But this one… this one bowed.
To me.
Slow. Deliberate. Deep enough that its spine folded like leathery parchment. And it smiled.
They don’t smile.
Not like that.
And I don’t think it was a mockery. I don’t think it was malicious either. It was genuine. Sincere. Pained, somewhat, from a face that must rarely smile.
I don’t know what held it there. Some kind of threshold, I think. Something sacred in the Tree’s roots, maybe. It wouldn’t step past it. None of them would. They just hovered. Not like spirits. Like shadows waiting for the light to shift. Waiting for us to leave the sanctity of the Tree. The protection and light of the Goddess of Ireland.
I keep telling myself it’s fine. That they haven’t done anything. That just watching isn’t the same as acting. That wanting… well, everyone wants something, don’t they? Or maybe that’s something Greed would say.
But there’s no mistaking what I felt it today.
A tug.
Like they were asking. Pleading. Begging. Demanding. Craving.
And I think I’m done pretending I don’t hear it. That I don’t feel it.
I’ll have to figure out what they want. Because I think they’ve already decided what I am.