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The Black Pool is silent as someone trespasses. Murphy keys in the entry code and makes a solitary, silent pilgrimage in. The d-slime that pretends to be water doesn’t ripple at all at her entry and not a sound echoes in the cavernous room. Even Tawil hangs as silent and immobile as ever guarding the doorway between worlds. A thin bridge sits over the pool, installed to allow for the movement in and out of scientific equipment that Doll and Ramona are using and make the walk safer. Murphy’s footsteps strangely fail to echo.
In a column of light, the thing everyone avoids calling a corpse floats, equally static. Sylvester’s body is suspended in immaculate stasis. Not a single mote of dust has landed upon his cloak. Not a bit of skin has aged, not a gram of weight lost. He remains as he was, just with the soul and life stolen from him.
It’s eerie. The light makes him look even more like porcelain art rather than a still-living or formerly-living person. No, still-living. Murphy must assume and believe that he is still living. they all do. She holds in lightly trembling hands a pristine paper box.
Once she stands before the light of the gate, she stops. Murphy’s gaze goes from her feet to the body, expression taking a resolute frown. “I made some cake. Since the cook here doesn’t know anything. My recipe list is expanding, you know, and I can make my own flavours now. I can even make more than cake. I’m learning flan. You said you’d try whatever I make.” He had said that, and she believed him. It’s not his fault. But still, it’s betrayal and something else that makes her tremble.
“You said. So why won’t you come back, instead of making yourself a liar?!” Not even Tawil moves. “I made it for you. It’s lemon blueberry. You’d like it.” Murphy holds up the box she brought. Inside is the gift she brought. A pristine miniature cake, iced with loving care, tiny flower decorations drawn on with frosting. Sylvester would like it. He’d be proud, and praise her. They made desserts together all the time and learned baking together.
Murphy’s eyes burn. She bites her lip as burning tears well up and spill over. “I skipped class today to make it and you know what?” Her voice catches in her throat as her pitch raises to a sharp hysteric. “No one came to check on me. Nobody cared. Nobody missed me. So why did you have to go leave me alone?!” The box of cake buckles under her grip.
Thin cardboard digs into her carefully applied frosting. She doesn’t notice, and when she does she only crushes the cake more. “You’re supposed to come back! You’re supposed to eat with me! Why don’t I get to keep anything?” Murphy sobs.
Before, if she missed a single class, either Sylvester or Goliath would come practically knock down her door to make sure she was okay and wasn’t sick. Even if she were just oversleeping and griped at overprotectiveness when she was rudely awoken, she was still being checked on. No one came to her room today during all of classes. She knows it’s a ridiculous thing to demand. No one else gets chased down if they miss a class, and Caecus had texted to ask if she was alright. She can’t expect him to drop everything.
But Sylvester did. She wanted a family that loved her. Why isn’t she allowed to keep a single thing? Her blood mother disappearing, Miryam never being capable of loving her, Elton rarely visits, and now her beloved father/mother walking into another dimension.
Even if it was to, in part, protect her. Why can’t she keep a family once she has one? Murphy’s legs buckle and she lets herself fall to sit in a heap and wail freely. No one else is here. Tawil doesn’t count. When a princess cries, everyone is supposed to drop everything to appease her. When a daughter cries, her parents are supposed to come comfort her.
Sylvester’s corpse remains suspended and silent, eyes closed. Murphy bawls because no one is coming. “I hate you!” She knows she’s lying. She knows she wouldn’t be crying if she didn’t love him. “I hate you, and I’ll hate you forever if you don’t come back.” She ducks her head back down to the ruined gift box of cake squished before her legs now. Most of the tears have worked their way out, and she sniffles. “I’ll only forgive you if you come back. Who’s going to praise me and make sure I go to class?”
She asks the last bit to the box, and gets the same reply as if she had asked Sylvester. A deep inhale. Murphy shoves the cake over the edge and lets the d-slime take it. She watches, aching, as dissolution takes her work in greedy hands and makes it disappear. If the slime eats it, simply makes it into another piece of non-existence, or simply has it sink as a piece of detritus down to the bottom of the rift, she neither knows nor cares. Maybe somehow it will fall into Sylvester’s lap, through the connection with Tohuwabohu and its erosive gaze, and he’ll understand what he did.
Murphy doesn’t hear when he door opens again, but she does hear when footsteps approach her. They’re made extra loud, heavy stomps she would find comical if she were in a better mood. As it is, she understands it’s simply to alert her that someone else is here who doesn’t want to surprise her. He waits, once he approaches Murphy and her Keeper, for a while.
Murphy assumes he’s paying respects. Or giving her time to compose herself. Or both. She doesn’t compose herself aside from rubbing her runny nose with the back of her hand and refuse to look up. “Lady Murphy,” Caecus’s voice comes hesitant from above her.
“Hmph.”
“No one’s seen you all day, so I wanted to make sure you’re alright. Do you… want to stay here longer, or do you want to come back with me?” He’s older than her, yes, but not terribly older than her, and yet he still appoints himself as her bodyguard like he’s some kind of professional authority. (No, that’s uncharitable of her.)
She still doesn’t want to talk to him, though. For means of response, Murphy sticks her hand up. The one she didn’t rub her nose on, thank you, she retains a little bit of a lady’s manners. It’s obvious enough answer. Caecus takes the hand and helps her up.
Thankfully he doesn’t say anything, disparaging or otherwise, as she clings to him like a lost child and lets him lead her back to campus proper. She doesn’t look behind her even when he stops. Murphy’s already well aware that the body remains the same as it has in the months since Sylvester left. Still, silent, and static. Ever on, as the life he left behind is forced to carry on.