Ianthina
Ianthina picked a bunch of violets while considering her response. Leon Lefort watched her fear turn to desperation as her brain feverishly produced a hundred unlikely explanations. The payment of a sufficiently large sum was finally offered and Lefort had just lowered the gun when the professor awkwardly attempted to intervene. He skidded on the wet gravel flailing his arms and yelping in surprise. Eventually he recovered his footing and planted a good wallop on the puzzled slumlord’s shoulder unintentionally causing the revolver to fire. Ianthina doubled over and clutched at her heart reluctantly she used her last breath to whisper—
the casarine tree—
Wilfrid clasped her body tightly and caressed her face with his bloody hands pleading with her not to leave him alone. Lefort dropped the pistol and fled. Sometime later while collecting the overdue rent at an orphanage he was trampled to death during a hunger riot and his prodigious wealth was seized by the state. It was gradually used to quarantine the elderly and to oppress the depressed. Life beats against the window pane inconsolable. Infuriated by the pathos of the wilting violets Wilfrid summoned fifty insubstantial beings from the extreme reaches of the spirit world and loosed them upon mankind. Calmer then he went to work burying her corpse unconcernedly undertaking the task as if planting a rose bush.
The vote was unanimous condemned the shadowtravellers were cast outside to twist and buckle in the open unsheltered from the unnatural mystery. Ten minutes went by without stopping to consider what would happen to the unhappy travellers by being bombarded and so thoroughly steeped in the evil residue. The shadow that had once belonged to Wilfrid began to laugh.
You’re covered with mosquitoes!
Well you have flies all over you said Ianthina swatting disgustedly at the sucking mosquitoes with her silhouette hands.
Clothed in the swarming insects they were too absorbed in thought to notice when they took off for the sun. As they flew past hundreds of enlightened planets they ignored the roar of all of the considerate lives evidently convinced that they were heading for heaven and their journey’s end. There are all kinds of justice in the afterdeath.
The insects began to fall away as the travellers neared the sun declining to face what awaited them there. Through the monotonous void they fluttered reduced now to little more than empty outlines.
Bother! whispered Wilfrid getting dispirited. I’m beginning to catch fire around the edges.
