Splitting at the Seams (RadioApple)

Part 16

Rosie had finally been having a calm day.

It'd taken some time to cool down the ruckus following the aborted extermination, and for a good near month she'd not had a moment to herself. It wasn't like anyone else had the wherewithal or even the impetus to stop or slow the drug-esque crisis sweeping through the cannibal community. It came as no surprise that the blood of the angels was just as delicious as everyone had hoped (if not more) and perhaps it was asinine to expect sinners condemned to their holding pen of an afterlife for greed to limit their consumption, but the situation really had grown troublesome. The problem with ichor was that unlike demon blood it granted a potent high along with the flavour, and that inevitably lead to addiction.

Anyone who got even a taste of the stuff would become a wreck without it, incapable of working or even socializing until they'd had a repeat. Having witnessed more than enough drug addicts in her before-time on top of knowing there would be a cataclysmic fallout if they ran out of their supply at the speed it was being drained, Rosie stuck her head in and threw her weight around, insisting they save what was left for special occasions and wean off whoever was frothing at the mouth without their 4th portion of the day. With any luck, she insisted, they'd have a repeat of events soon enough when Heaven came to get their bite back and try to get even, so why not go about as usual and hope for that?

Some still objected. Rosie felt existentially indignant and having to argue in favour of restraint. Nobody was happy initially, but as said, it tempered out. Slowly.

Rosie took her first day of relative peace and used it to hole up in the back of her shop, turning her sign to 'Closed' and setting her radio on the windowsill to drone mindlessly in the background as she searched for her crochet kit.

It was terrible, she thought as she fussed with her skirts and set back into her chair with the hook in one hand and material in the other. Truly terrible and sad, what had happened to Alastor. On her own and able to think it finally came to the forefront of her mind, something she'd not been able to wallow on prior. She'd known he'd been hurt of course, it was the very first thing anyone had told her, but she'd not grasped the extent of the severity until a week passed and he didn't show up.

Her lot had nicked all the bits and body parts from the scene, not a speck left for him. Alastor would never pass up a chance to swing by and try the stuff. And yet.

Rosie pulled a loop through the hook.

A shame. They'd gotten along swimmingly. Alastor had been a bright young man cut from a different cloth of any other she'd met, intelligent and proficient and companionable, and detached from the baser concepts such as lust and love that Rosie had witnessed time and time again bring others down, bring them to regret and despair. He'd seemed free of interpersonal constraints, keeping even his friend circle small and exclusive. They'd kept each other entertained through uncountable evenings with gossip and the like, and once he'd even redirected the radio to some tunes of her era and taken her dancing around the room, laughing when she'd burst into a fit of giggles. When he'd bowed his head and put on a dapper flat cap to leave that night, shrouded by darkness and pelted by rain, she thought she might have caught him sending her a look she couldn't explain, warm and affectionate. It wasn't at all sensual, just... nostalgic. Gentle.

Rosie would never see him look her way like that again. The hook bent in the pressure of her hand and she startled before shaking her head and smoothing it out. It was simply a sadness she would have to overcome. Sentimentality to the point of weakness was the thing Alastor had loathed the most in his life, she would not insult his memory by bearing exactly that toward him.

The repetitive but engaging nature of crocheting endeared to her. It may not be the best thing to keep her off unfortunate topics in that it did not require much of the mind, but the rhythmic movement relaxed her old bones and had her sinking into the armchair, slowly nodding off to the soothing tunes on the radio.