Aboard the Long Winter
9 Autumn 218
The body of Kelwin looks much like other bodies she’s seen, albeit missing a forearm - and even that isn’t that unusual, given the number blown up by cannon fire she’s seen. The blood in his face has drained away and given him the gray pallor of death, but the death grip hasn’t settled upon him yet, leaving him loose and pliable in a way no living body can feign as she ruthlessly thumps his limbs about, digging into his pockets and removing his equipment. His eyes have rolled up into his head, his jaw hanging open limp and skewed as the muscles no longer stricture it to the rest of his skull, a foolish corpse-yaw that looks as unnatural on his face as a genuine emotion would have.
There is nothing that makes up Kelwin there. Naught remains but his shell.
She stands up, the gold from his pouch removed, the glimmers of magical artifacts sparkling in a pile beside her. She kicks him, once, in the ribs, to no more effect than a meaty thump and a jerk of the body. She kicks him again, and again. On the third, there is a muffled -crack- and a yielding beneath the toe of her boot as a rib - or maybe multiple - gives way.
She stops, then, feeling stupid. This is bringing him no pain, no lesson nor revenge. There is sod all she can do to him here, in this realm. It makes up nothing for the lives of those he killed through his actions or his words.
The dramas make vengeance seem triumphant, satisfying, even necessary. Most of them, anyway. She hears Margret delivering Eirene’s monologue in The Calumny of Theophilus as she stares down at the fleshy sack of nothing much. Will it feed you? Will it shelter you? What heat does it bring to your empty hearth?
Still - she thought she’d have felt something. There isn’t even relief, or joy. Just a vague disappointment that she didn’t get to land the final strike herself, one that dissipates as soon as Danica’s expression at the moment of the kill flits across her mind. There was no possible path for all of the people Kelwin had hurt to participate in his final blow, and there was no better person to deliver it.
Oh well. So much for prayers to mysterious raven ladies.
She turns, then, glimpsing most of the Aelorean’s Crossing folk on the deck, Danica’s pink head flowering amidst the mass of brown. Satisfaction chases relief, and she rests a hand on the ciphered journal with its intriguing sketches, excitement bubbling into the well of emotions.
Kelwin is past. Perhaps her feelings were correct in not wasting themselves on him any more. More important matters than an ex-Swan face them now.
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