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Viola has been dead for many years.
Her body — no — cursed as she might be, it is not even her own body, but rather.. her body (that witch, that Ellen ) — though she supposes that it makes sense (it is cruel, and unpleasant, yes, but sensical nonetheless) that Viola would have been unable to access even her own body after death, what with the extent of that witch’s powers —
— but her body (Ellen’s body) is still youthful (and intact, now, and very pretty, as Ellen herself had once seemed), and it makes for a much more bearable afterlife than if she still aged, as if she were alive.
(Viola has been dead for many years.)
She used to spend timeless eternities watching her house carefully from her silent spot in the sky, eyes trained on Ellen (in Viola’s body, still so very unnerving, to this day), and she would make a soft noise in the back of her throat (it wasn’t her voice in that noise, she noticed the first time, uncomfortably) when Ellen and Viola’s father would spend time together, their eyes bright with joyous laughter and sparkling delight.
And then Ellen grew up — Viola grew up (not Viola, who was dead, but rather Viola’s body , down on the earth, you see), and Viola, in the sky, never bothered to see where she took Viola’s life after leaving the forest. Her father had kissed her forehead (that should have been a goodbye kiss for Viola once she turned into an adult, not for one despicable Ellen in a stolen body —) and watched her head out of the forest, far away, but had not followed; rather, he stayed in his own cottage, his own home, safe, away from her .
Viola wondered then, in a panic, if Ellen had grown bored of her father, and had decided he wasn’t worth keeping alive — but years passed, and, even with Viola’s careful eyes tracking her father’s wellbeing, she couldn’t find any signs of deteriorating health or any curse laid on him, and allowed herself to relax, to sit back and stop playing guardian angel.
She hears something — some one — make a noise beside her, and her eyes flicker to the side instinctively, even if she knows she is dead and nothing can harm her.
“Are you all well?”
His voice is smooth, enticing, and her instincts coax her to roll her shoulders back, letting the tension leave her as he envelops her with a sense of safety (it’s fake, false, just like a lie told by a liar — a lie told by him ). He is a demon, and should be down below — but Viola supposes that her lack of attention to her time in the dead realm should explain why he can so boundlessly slip into existence by her even if he so clearly sticks out like a sore thumb (so dark, so gloomy, even in that too-familiar cat form he likes to parade around in, chosen certainly just to allow unkind memories to come back to her whenever they meet — he is a demon, after all —) amongst the perfect, bodiless backdrop of shifting cloud and sky and sun.
Viola acknowledges him with a soft nod, and words spoken by a voice that belongs to her body, but have never been Viola’s (it’s Ellen’s; it’s all Ellen’s, and Ellen has Viola’s all, now — all but her father, who Viola both worries about and feels great relief for):
“Quite so, sir,” ( sir because, even if he looks a cat in the moments they meet, she understands, now, that he is so much more than simply that; occasionally, she has wondered if seeing his other forms when in that witch’s house would have caused Ellen — in her body — to drop dead on the spot — and she almost wishes the answer to be yes ).
“You are a restless soul,” he muses, and she watches his dark form curl up next to her (a body that isn’t hers). “Most would have long passed by now. You stay.”
(Viola has been dead for many years.)
Yes, this is true. Viola knows it to be; she is not blind, and from the sky she has seen her father age far beyond the ages she remembers seeing him at when she was herself, Viola, blond-haired Viola with bright green eyes and a pleasant smile, and alive.
It is so silent up in the sky because she doesn’t belong here, still watching the Earth as if she could play as a god and affect the events that transpire. No, she knows she cannot. She cannot do anything here. She should have moved on, to that place they call a purgatory, and then either to the place equivalent to the darkest of shadows, or the brightest of stars.
“I can’t pass,” she states, simply.
“Ellen did not let me take your soul,” he returns, equally casually. “You have many a chance to pass to somewhere better, somewhere you deserve to be.”
A demon pushing her to enter the true heavens. Irony.
She wants to reply with something clever, something to follow up his even remark, but her eyes lower to the Earth and, trained with years of practice, she quickly catches sight of a familiar man walking out of his small, tree-shrouded house in the forest, hair graying in a hurry and deep, sincere smile lines crinkling over his handsome face.
(Viola has been dead for far too many years.)
“I can’t pass,” she repeats. “Not yet. It has not been long enough, yet.”
The cat at her side purrs noncommittally in response.