House: Horned Serpent

Astronomy

Task #2 - Ursa Major: An Arab myth associates this asterism with a funeral. The quadrangle represents a coffin and the three handle stars are people following the coffin and mourning. The middle star represents the daughter and son of the man in the coffin, who has been murdered by the pole star. Other cultures, too, relate funeral processions to the Big Dipper. Write about someone going through Grief.

[Plot point] A death (main)

[Colour] White

[Emotion] Disbelief

WC: 1079

TW: Body horror, child abuse

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Credence no longer existed. He was anger and fury and divine retribution and he hurt. He ached — flashes of pain sparking through nonexistent nerves in the roiling storm of magic that was his body — and he could have screamed if he only had a mouth.

Just hours, days, minutes before, he had flown over the rooftops of New York City and the earth had trembled with his grief, with his rage. Now he slipped through the pools of shadows — lost and alone and barely existing — until he fell into the shadows beneath a sprawling tree, its boughs draped with white garlands. A gentle rain fell as Credence curled beneath the roots and tried to remember what it felt like to be human.

"I am made in His image," Credence whispered — or did he think it — to himself, trying to remember the heaviness of a body, the feeling of dirt beneath his skin.

Chastity would be buried beneath the earth, cold dirt covering her pale skin, cradling her broken bones and it was all Credence's fault—

He returned to humanity with a snap, bones reforming before his eyes — bleached white and pitted with old breaks that hadn't healed correctly — and he screamed with a mouth that was newly his. Chastity wasn't dead, couldn't be dead.

Her face seemed to swim behind Credence's closed eyes, carefully blank even as her eyes shone with determination. She had always looked at Credence as if she could read his mind — could see the guilt he carried and the black thoughts that tainted his soul — and yet, Chastity turned away when the belt struck his skin turning it blood red from scarred white, unwilling to bear witness to that act.

Chastity wasn't dead. Modesty wasn't dead.

Modesty was scared of him. Credence remembered her face, sheet white against the grime and the dirt, clutching desperately to her torn rag doll — it's head lolling sideways (just like Chastity's) — as Mr Graves stepped towards Credence.

Credence realised he was crying, low groans ripped from his chest, sounding barely human — was he still human after everything, still one of God's creatures and loved by Him despite his many sins? The rain was heavier now, falling from the sky in glittering silver sheets, and Credence tipped his head back and felt it run down his skin — ice cold and burning, a baptism he was ill prepared to receive.

Modesty had been the child. He had been so sure, and he grieved the loss of that certainty — the earth solid beneath his feet, the belt a line of fire against his back, and the hope that he was helping in some small way.

Mr Graves was a liar and a traitor, and in the end, he hadn't even been real: a stranger wearing his face like ill fitting clothing, wrong and twisted and Credence screamed but the noise caught it his throat, a ragged sob tearing loose instead. Mr Graves was gone — dead like Chastity — and that stranger had taken his place.

Credence stared up at the strips of white cloth, shifting and twisting in the rain storm, blinking as the water hit his cheeks, stinging his eyes. Chastity had found a long, lace train once — her one true act of rebellion (the greedy shall not inherit the Kingdom of God) — and walked straight past their mother with it bundled in her arms like an infant, head raised and a faint flush in her cheeks. She had scrubbed it and scrubbed it, jaw set and eyes determined, until her hands were red and raw, burning from the lye soap.

Their mother had left for the night, Modesty stumbling along beside her — eyes and limbs already beginning to drop with exhaustion — when Chastity emerged from her room. Credence saw her first as a flash of pale colour out of the corner of his eye, dismissed at first as a pigeon slipping in to sleep amongst the high rafters.

He turned as the floorboards creaked, and she was beautiful in white, the long train skimming the floorboards behind her. She laughed — an uncharacteristic sound and one Credence always treasured (and one he would never hear again) — her face alive with joy. Chastity swayed along the balcony, veil twisting around her like a living thing as she twirled and danced, allowing herself to be free for a precious few moments.

The stairs creaked beneath her weight as she raced down the stairs, and Credence had found himself pulled onto his feet, swaying with her in a dance he didn't know — feeling too tall, too much, wishing to curl in on himself and disappear — and she was so happy. He could remember the brush of her veil against his arms — terrified that his touch would sully the brilliant whiteness — but Chastity hadn't cared. In the last few moments, she had thrown the veil over both of their heads. Credence hadn't been able to breathe — fear and delight coursing through him in equal measures — as the world around them was transformed through the carefully patched lace into something beautiful.

He had paid dearly for the veil when their mother discovered it in Chastity's room. She had to have heard his screams — torn from his throat as lines of fire erupted from his back and the soles of his feet, a fire that would burn him until he was nothing but ash — but she remained apart, kneeling in the ash of her white veil.

Chastity would never be able to wear another veil.

Credence howled to an uncaring sky, rain turning the earth beneath him to mud — mud that would soon hold Chastity even as every fibre of his being rebelled against the idea. Some part of him — almost lost in the mess of shifting muscle and bone — had killed her, and she would no longer walk this Earth with him. Credence was alone, cast out and betrayed.

He stared up into the sky, white garlands hanging limp amidst the deluge, and stared into the moon.

Chastity was dead.

Modesty would forget him.

Credence had to leave. He picked himself out the mud — feeling it cling to him — and began to walk on unsteady legs, not caring where he went as long as it was away from his sins.