" i grew up overnight. " ( @sleepyhollowchild )
lazarus, a mere seven-years old, sat a small pile of dirt that marked someone’s grave. she rubbed her eyes as she gazed up at the dim stars in the sky, nearly entirely blocked out by the pollution in the isle’s air.
her mother and father had gotten into a big argument and the small girl hadn’t wanted to be there in the midst of the chaos. so, she had invited alaric to sneak up top with her to stargaze. she didn’t know if he was actually going to come, but either way, she planned to stay up top for a while --- until her parent’s stopped arguing, at least.
it had been a while since she and alaric had gone stargazing --- in fact, it had been a while since she’d seen him at all. she’d just figured that they’d both been busy with their respective lives. she knew that she’d been busy with her father, so she’d assumed that, perhaps, alaric was busy with his parents, as well.
as the small corpse gazed up at the stars, she heard footsteps behind her and she turned her attention away from the night sky. she squinted in the darkness, looking in the direction of the big, hollowed out tree that held the staircase to her home.
a figure, only slightly taller than herself, drew closer, barely illuminated by the dim moonlight.
standing up from her pile of dirt, lazarus stepped closer, calling out, “alaric!” with a bright smile upon her lips. it was only when she was but just a few feet from him when she noticed something different about her friend --- something wrong.
the corpse girl’s eyes were drawn to a line of stitches around her friend’s neck, and she wanted to scream. “alaric ...” she murmured, instead. running toward the boy, she practically threw herself at him in a hug, worried.
'are you okay?’ she almost asked, but decided that: no, he couldn’t be okay.
“who did this?” she opted for instead, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
as it turns out, alaric had been busy with his parents, just as lazarus had assumed. it just wasn’t in the way that she’d figured, or hoped, that it had been. it was in a way much, much worse.
after that, nothing was the same for the two corpse children.
