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Helen stands perilously close to the edge of Viola’s roof.
The wind teases the hem of her gown like it is daring her to jump. The forest sprawls out in silence, veiled in morning mist and dew. A scrap of beige fabric catches her eyes in the dense and thick greenery surrounding the edifice. It flutters lazily in the gentle morning breeze. Helen can almost hear it whisper its story.
I sheltered a man’s body from rain and cold bitter wind. I was torn, blown astray, and caught in this lush tree as my wearer fell to his death. I will end my course here, alone and incomplete.
Helen watches it sway.
Ernest’s cry still echoes in her memory as she leans over the moss-cloaked parapet. There’s a scratch in the almost velvety grey stone where her ex-fiancé stood before his fall. Helen touches the faint mark with care. Soon enough, nothing will be left of Ernest.
Helen swallows hard. She stopped breathing altogether, she doesn’t need to anymore.
Dawn timidly lifts its head over the horizon. Its pale light catches the sequins of her sleeves. Purple and iridescence seem garish now, absurd in the morning. Last night’s self-confidence, it seems, has vanished.
She’s Helen Sharp again. A pathetic undead redhead in an itchy—if she could still itch—and too-heavy-for-her-frame purple gown.
She climbs onto the parapet and stands there for a moment, arms outstretched, as if she might take flight. The world below doesn’t look too cruel.
Ernest screams in her head. Her heart would be pounding wildly if it could still beat. She remembers the faint ache of nervousness in her absent stomach, the phantom of sweat gathering in her palms and the head-swimming feeling of being in a moment without living it.
Helen is dead.
She closes her eyes. A faint smile tugs at her lips. She can still feel the sun's warmth on her pale skin. Somewhere in her chest, the faint thrum of a hope-adjacent sentiment burgeons. That’s something, at least.
“Hel, com—HELEN GET DOWN!”
Helen glances back.
Madeline is running toward her in panic, her pretty face all crumpled in what Helen recognises as fear. A peculiar feeling blooms where her heart once lived—Ah, she can still feel some things.
Madeline grabs her at the knees, Helen thinks she’ll tumble over this time and she isn’t scared, just curious. It’s a quiet sort of curiosity. The kind you will not act on but it's there, lingering at the back of your mind and sometimes it will bloom bigger and brighter than the whole wide sky.
Madeline yanks her back. Helen collapses, seated, hard on the parapet. It would hurt a living person, it only wounds Helen's pride.
“You promised,” Madeline hiccups, her voice pathetically small against her shoulder. “You promised you’d stay with me forever!”
She snakes her arms around Helen and holds her tight, close and something desperate.
Helen looks down at Madeline’s tense hands on her own middle. She feels their warmth there. Everywhere Mad presses herself and clings to her, Hel feels warmth. She also feels the strange cold and hardened mass of clay packed into her hollow body. To be actively aware of one’s internal anatomy is a weird sensation to experience.
But stranger still is the fluttering that stirs within her as Madeline holds her close and closer still, weeping stupidly against her neck. Helen timidly covers Madeline’s hands with her own.
“I just wanted to know if we’d still feel the pull of gravity.” She explains at last.
Madeline’s tears have dried, leaving faint stains across Ernest’s careful paint work. Helen can see them dipping along her sternum.
“I could have answered that, Hel,” Madeline’s voice is low. It comes from very close, somewhere between her collarbone and ear. “You pushed me down the stairs.”
Helen remembers not to chew her lip. She will need a new habit for guilt. Helen’s fingers curl gently around Madeline’s dainty wrists.
“You shot me through the stomach.” She replies.
Madeline takes a practiced breath against her skin, it almost sounds like a chuckle.
“Because you pushed me down the stairs.”
“You can’t really blame me, Mad. I am not a well woman, I escaped a mental institution.”
Madeline laughs properly now, sending vibrating waves of satisfaction through Helen's supposedly non-functioning nervous system. A flock of birds rises from the edge of the wood.
“We should go," Madeline whispers. "Before Viola and her cult wake up from their orgy.”
Helen nods.
But before them, the sun bleeds upward in pastels that don't quite go together, the equivalent of an orchestra's disorganised tuning before the concert starts. The world is trying to remember how to be beautiful and they watch it wake, yawning and glowing.
Madeline holds Helen tighter, Helen lets herself lean in, wondering if this is comfort, forgiveness, the only warmth left to reach for or something else, something more.
They watch the sun rise.