[PRP] Come back to my place? (Holly & Aisha)

[The Semblance of Unity]

Hollandaise looked at the undead dorms and then she looked at Aisha. And then at the dorms. The undead were not alive, not really. And sometimes, most times, their bodies were inefficient, gross, slime-crusted facsimiles of what they had been before.

"Aisha," she said, the ghost of a laugh lightening her words. "Why do you live in the undead dorms? Isn't it gross?"

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha's head drew back, a smile lighting her lips as if the thought of it being gross was hilarious. "No it's not gross.. no grosser than the cafeteria serving worms.." She laughed.

"I'm a zombie Holly! My papa is a witch doctor... he created me and filled me with unlife and made the arrangement with my loa for healing and warmth. I'm undead. All that gross rotting stuff is such a stereotype!" It hadn't dawned on her at all that this would be a problem.

the semblance of unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"You're dead," she said flatly, mouth thinning into a line. "Not living. Not natural." Her thoughts whirled. Aisha hadn't looked dead, her skin had been warm, she had not smelled of rot or death or any number of other unpleasant things. Aisha was her friend. Was. 'Living was living, dead was dead, Eirkrynhollan'icthcynori. Accept the death that could come any day, Those that fight it are weaker.' Weaker, and their bodies usually showed it in gradual deteriation. Even a pressed flower was dead, although preserved. It did not try to live again. Constructs were different, but... but... Decades of lectures resounded in her mind, reinforcements of living creatures, of calm fatalities. She couldn't do this right now.

"I hate it, you-" Hollandaise took a deep breath, mouth opening. "D-disgusting," she whispered and then she turned around. She would go back to her dorm or Deszeld's or to a garden or somewhere, anywhere, where she could reach out and touch things that lived, and died, and did not try to cheat.

iloveyouDIEx

 

[iloveyouDIE]

The laugh on her face faltered and fell. The grinning skull makeup which so easily looked cheery now lamented with her open, downturned gape.

"What?" Aisha felt something welling, tight and hard in her chest. It hurt alot. The zombie seemed to shrink in on herself, folds of hoody seeming to be baggier and deeper until her face was nothing but shadows and a white skull and orange smouldering points.

"We're not... none of us.." There were lectures in her mind, answers her father had given her about existence from when she first was created and questioned all of it. He wasn't some backwards hick drum beater. He'd been to school, he was a doctor and had an answer for any question she had. She'd taken it for granted, assuming everyone would be so knowledgable and understanding. But Aisha lost the words of her argument to confusion and pain and her explanations became meaningless stutters.

Aisha didn't know it but she was more educated on most things than a lot of the other new students. "We're not alive, any of us really? We're just.. some.. I mean.. uh the human world." No this wasn't right, "You dissipate and.. come back and I would too.. that's not.. No different." Whatever she was trying to say was lost in her current state of hurt.

"You hate me?"

the semblance of unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

Aisha's words stopped and she turned to look at the ghoul, her arms wrapping tightly around her midsection.

"There are... undead there, youngling." Their voices sighed around her, a rising wind, a warning. "They are-" Another sigh, another shift of branches that echoed hollowly in the deep knots of tree trunks, in the spaces between thoughts. "-different. Remember, do not concern yourself, unnatural, not the green and growing green and growing green angrowingandgreenandgreenandalive."

"You hate me?"

Hollandaise flinched. Hurt had crawled across Aisha's face before she had retreated, sunk back into her hoodie, looking more skeletal than ever. It was disconcerting, the face of undeath. It had been obvious, Hollandaise supposed, she was just too naive to see it. And this, this sort of thing was why they had sent her here - to banish her young ways, to temper her. The ghoul couldn't think, didn't want to. Something was stalking her, something waited for her in dark shadows and her friend, one of so, so few, was someone she was not supposed to like. Made from death instead of life. The science behind things didn't matter - it was the principle.

"I-I can't d-do this. Not now. I c-c-can't..." I don't hate you caught in the back of her throat. I hate what you are was stopped by her teeth. Hollandaise swallowed, turned, and ran.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha couldn't do anything when Holly turned and fled.

She was left with nothing but a rotten sour lump in her stomach and a flurry of thoughts about what was right and fair, muddled with all the things she should have said. There were a thousand other ways the conversation could have gone, some of them where she'd convinced her friend that undead weren't bad.

A sob rose up in her throat, making her feel vaguely sick even as her loa soothed. Unfortunately it wasn't a physical ailment but an emotional one.

And she didn't even have the ability to cry.

the semblance of unity

le end?