Else

Florence lies on her back, staring up towards the distant sky. A strand of drool drips from her slackening mouth.

Something is wrong.

She feels too much; distantly, indistinctly, like oil slowly dripping through gauze to infiltrate the wounds beneath, but FAR TOO MUCH.

Arlene only notices the absence when she glances at her weekplanner a day later, but as soon as she does she feels it like an aching, toothless socket yawning open in her mind. It's been a busy week but that's no excuse to forget, and really, why didn't Florence come in?

Four days since the surgery, since she implanted that horrible dangerous thing in a woman who wanted nothing more than what it could offer her ...

Florence kept on looking at her arm on the drive home, glancing down or running her fingers along the carefully sutured line where Arlene had opened her up. And that place at the base of her palm, where her tendons curled into her hand—

"You doing okay, Flor?"

Thorn, sprawled out in the driver's seat, their arm dangling out through an open window into the cool night air; body language as open as ever. A sharp contrast to the concern in their voice.

Arlene's last customer of the day is anxious and uneasy as she sits in her chair, her arm locked into place on the worktable. Far too late to turn back, and yet—

"A-are you sure this is safe?"

She can't help but notice the customer's sweat, so laden with fear and guilty desire.

"Just try your best, okay dear? It's fine if it takes a few tries."

Abigail's eyes jump between the cleaver Cloth Mother has just wrapped her fingers around and the too-small body spread out on the table. Outside the pool of light, Wire Mother grins and blows smoke into the air.

"Don't waste time, dear." Wire Mother draws the word out, makes it into an insult as it hisses between its glass-shard teeth. "It needs to die."

Every so often a fuss is made about folk dolls, those odd little half-living homunculi; beings of distilled purpose and steady decay, straw and sticks and hollow gourds.

People rediscover them, and wonder why they're not in wider use.

Listen for a moment and I'll tell you 🧵

Once, long before, you wondered why the witch–your witch, now–was always covered in bruises, why her skin was forever a tapestry of slowly fading marks, all those purples and yellows hiding the warmth of her skin.

Once, you wondered why.

But then you died.

It always sounds the same, that echoing chant, those pounding feet and snarling faces; look, look! See what you have done, see the crimes you have committed against Decency, against the People, against everyone who sought you out to ask for what you offered.

How horrid, how criminal! How dare you.

The poultice stings as it presses against her splitting flesh, as the cool liquids inside seep out into the painful heat radiating from her back. She does her best not to scream, not to wince, and her failure is rewarded with a Look, disappointment more potent than any fist.

She buries her face in the bed, hides her tears as the second poultice presses against her shame, against the burning red streaks stretching and tearing her skin as they swell and throb inside the small of her back, as lances of Wrongness skewer her to her bed.

It goes on easier than the first, spreading numbness stealing its bite; no new tears mar her eyes, though they are already red and bitter, her carefully formed mask ruined by the knowledge of what she is.

It is understood that ⸤distillation⸣ is a process by which ⸤slimes⸣ maybe be both concentrated and made more amenable to their ⸤purposes⸣. However, this process does not reduce their ⸤curative properties⸣ when applied to a ⸤garden's components⸣.

Through the application of a ⸤purpose-made object⸣ to a fully ⸤distilled slime⸣ a form of thread may be produced with minimal cost to the surrounding ⸤garden⸣.