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"there are no such things as curses; only people and their decisions" -anonymous
song to listen to: murders by miracle musical (slowed)
warnings: mentions of the DeViL if that scares you at all, swearing, mentions of death, descriptions of dead animals
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josephine peters's point of view
"Josephine! Would you like some apples? Mother's just bought some Sir Solomon, they look lovely." Abigail Berman's voice was quite a lovely thing to hear at such an early hour of the morning-arguably more lovely than Solomon's apples.
I instantly thought of every possible implication accepting Solomon Goode's apples from Abigail Berman. If I told Father the truth about how I didn't get the apples from Solomon myself, he'd get mad at me. And if I lied and said I'd gotten the apples from Solomon himself and not Abigail, he would find out the truth and I'd be in worse condition than just telling him the truth. That wouldn't be a fun way to start my day, not at all. But turning down the apples from Abigail would also make me feel guilty. Regardless of what I did, I would wind up feeling guilty about a majority of my life decisions. So, screw it! Just screw it.
"I'll take two, Abbi, I wouldn't take anymore than that." I was only taking two so I wouldn't feel too guilty.
If I knew I wouldn't feel so guilty, I would probably just take her entire basket. But Mother and Father have expectations for me as the eldest sister, and those expectations can't be ruined. I won't let them be. They technically are ruined, but they don't know about it yet, so what I've done to break their expectations doesn't count. She handed me an apple, and both of us exchanged beautiful smiles to one another before beginning to walk our separate ways.
I took just one bite into the perfectly red apple before spitting it out and dropping it onto the ground. Its insides were shades of disgusting grey and black; the sight of it nearly made me throw up.
"What the-" I cut myself off from cursing; Lizzie ran over to me.
"What's wrong?" She asked, a look of genuine concern on her face.
"This gosh darn apple-" I masked my swearing with more innocent words. "It's rotten-"
"Rotten? That's not possible, I went to get those apples with Abigail and they were fine-"
"It's possible, Lizzie! Look at it." I gestured to the rotted apple on the ground; chills ran down my spine.
Lizzie's smile disappeared from her face completely; I looked around to realize that we weren't the only ones going through some sort of misfortune. Horses reared and bucked free from their carriages, tools were breaking, folk were shouting at one another. It was chaos, it was pure chaos. Despite my need to make everything seem perfect, a terror-inducing feeling set firmly in my stomach. Something wasn't right about Union at the moment, and something might never be right again.
