𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄 ―the lord of the rings.

i. sun bleached flies

FUNERAL HOME
chapter one — sun bleached flies
( 'if it's meant to be, it will be' )

THE INCESSANT BUZZ had ceased days ago, leaving the most suffocating of silences in its wake. Isolde could not tell how long she had been sat by the window, eyes unmoving upon the small black specks upon the sill. Once dancing morbid circles around her grandmother's body upon the coffee table, the flies had now come to rest upon the frame of weathered wood, no longer fuelled by the thick stench of death.

Hilde had been gone for five months — almost half a year since the apparition gifted her granddaughter the curse of death. Autumn had given way to winter, and winter to early spring. Marigold leaves beneath tangerine skies had melted into an unending expanse of greys and browns, dousing the landscape in an acrid sepia wash. Darkness grew with the waning sun, luring the shadows out of their caverns, for Winter plays host to a playground for the dead.

Isolde had come to despise this wretched season, a yearning for spring dancing upon her lips. Each and every night since Hilde first appeared beside the well, the maiden's nights were plagued by those that once were, tasking her with making amends for what the had not said or done during life.

After Hilde came Breca. An elderly man who had passed long ago during Isolde's infancy, Breca seemed to embody all that the Mark once had been. Even in death, his weathered face seemed to project his past into the daylight; each line and crevice that wove across his skin mapping out each moment of the life he once led, a life of open landscapes and galloping steeds.

The spirit's request for the girl had been a simple one. Even in death the ways of the Horselords ran deep, meandering through the bloodstream like some impenetrable crimson ichor, and Breca, before at last moving on to the Great Plains above, yearned to meet his steed one last time. In the dead of night when any and all light seemed impossible, Isolde led the apparition into the village stables. And there, under the warm glow of the flickering lanterns, Isolde of Rohan bore witness to a final farewell between man and steed — a palimpsest of tears both shed and unshed by both man and animal alike.

At last Breca could transcend into the next life, his dying wish fulfilled by Isolde's curse.

And so, from that moment, each night shrouded by indigo skies, the fair maiden of death was visited by another spirit, each apparition yearning for something far greater than the last. Even the flies lying dead upon the windowsill, bleached from the sun and tingling with annihilation could not be swept away by Isolde's incessant cleaning.

She was trapped in the jaws of slaughter, yet no one seemed to want to pry her free.

With a heavy sigh, Isolde at last wrenched herself free from her stagnated state beside the window. Dragging her feet to the other room of their small cottage, Isolde found herself straining her neck from one side to the other, attempting to shake off the stiffness that had situated itself into her troubled bones. The family home was a rather meagre affair; a nondescript building devoid of any colour, save for the bouquet of crisp, white Simbelmynë her youngest sister, Astrid, had brought home the day before — a gift from an admirer no doubt.