For a few minutes, nothing happens. The sweets remain where Melita has left them, bright and strange and charmingly mismatched around the shrine, the little toy plow sitting among them as if awaiting instructions from hands that do not come. Kaiholo carries on around her in its usual salt-bright clamour, with voices rising from the market, hels crying overhead, and the sea breathing steadily against the port, indifferent and constant.
Then the air warms; it is not the dramatic unfurling of death, nor the solemn hush that might be expected from the one who holds all endings in his hands. Instead, golden light gathers softly around the altar, spilling between the shells and offerings like late afternoon sun through leaves, though there are no towering trees here to catch it and no impossible canopy vanishing into the sky. Still, for just a moment, the shrine feels as though it remembers one.
Mort arrives looking faintly breathless, as if he has hurried. "Oh," he says first, softly and with immediate warmth, his smile appearing almost before the rest of him has fully settled into the light. "Hello, Melita. I’m sorry we haven’t met before." Mort's attention moves over the offerings with open delight, lingering on the kitten-shaped candies, the chocolate, the hazelnut cream, and the little plow with a fondness so sincere it nearly brightens the air by itself.
"We can certainly look at your confetti cannon," Mort says, smiling back at her as if this is no less important than any matter of souls or gods or all the wide and hidden roads between life and death. Then his expression gentles rather than darkens, concern arriving like a hand carefully laid over something fragile. "But first...when was the last time you spoke to Ludo?"
Then the air warms; it is not the dramatic unfurling of death, nor the solemn hush that might be expected from the one who holds all endings in his hands. Instead, golden light gathers softly around the altar, spilling between the shells and offerings like late afternoon sun through leaves, though there are no towering trees here to catch it and no impossible canopy vanishing into the sky. Still, for just a moment, the shrine feels as though it remembers one.
Mort arrives looking faintly breathless, as if he has hurried. "Oh," he says first, softly and with immediate warmth, his smile appearing almost before the rest of him has fully settled into the light. "Hello, Melita. I’m sorry we haven’t met before." Mort's attention moves over the offerings with open delight, lingering on the kitten-shaped candies, the chocolate, the hazelnut cream, and the little plow with a fondness so sincere it nearly brightens the air by itself.
"We can certainly look at your confetti cannon," Mort says, smiling back at her as if this is no less important than any matter of souls or gods or all the wide and hidden roads between life and death. Then his expression gentles rather than darkens, concern arriving like a hand carefully laid over something fragile. "But first...when was the last time you spoke to Ludo?"
mort
