#with a dash of frostkettle bc how does one reconcile their love for the person who killed them

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

When the ceremony reaches its end, when Kipperlilly’s parents are sufficiently distracted in conversing with the officiant about burial plots and mourning periods and all of death’s bureaucracy, Lucy drifts up the aisle and halts beside Kipperlilly’s closed casket.

Closed.

Mary Ann told her how Kipperlilly died in the final battle with the Bad Kids. Caught by Hold Person, submerged into lava, screaming with fury—always rage, never pain—as her flesh melted off her body and blended with her burning cardigan.

‘Pathetic’ was how Mary Ann explained Kipperlilly’s end, a description not acerbic or vindictive but flat and monotonous, giving voice more to Kipperlilly’s perspective than to Mary Ann’s own.

Lucy studies the lacquered wooden top of the casket. She knows not whether it’s closed to disguise charred bones or to disguise—

“It’s empty.”

Lucy’s head snaps around to see that Kipperlilly’s parents now stand behind her, the officiant newly vanished into the depths of the holy building.

“It’s empty,” Landynleaf Copperkettle repeats. “There weren’t no remains left for us. Not from a reborn divinity’s lava.”

“It’s empty,” Octavia Copperkettle echoes. “Just like yours.”

—an excerpt from my post-canon frostkettle wip where lucy brings kipperlilly back through divine intervention