Finally, @ireallyshouldbeholdingyou's Babesweek 2025 reaches it's close. I'm a day late because I'd somehow convinced myself I could draw flowers. The prompt I chose for this freeday was Hanahaki and Memento Mori.
It's a beautiful moment when he goes to sleep, her darling Betelgeuse. Unlike a living thing, he sinks into the ground next to her quite literally as his dead flesh begins to melt away. His bones are lovely things, and inside his organs turn to a strangely coloured cluster of fauna and insects. His clothes are just as beautiful clinging to the ivory shape of what's left as the plants grow and spread along inside to preserve some form of his shape. Vines crawl along the ground from beneath him and his back like the many beetles and centipedes that escape him. Lydia finds her lips pressed against the skin that still clings to the side of his face closest to her, and locks her pale fingers against the equally pale length of his bony hand. There's the sweet smell of decay invading her nose, and the musk of the poltergeists grave soil as it's shifted beneath them by the roots overtaking it. His sleep is death, and the cool weight of it settles just as deeply in her bones as it does in his. Like this, they're as close as one can get, nearly fused by piles of leaves, blooming plants and creeping insects. It's the kind of connection that leaves her aching just as much as it fills her. Up, and up to the top of whatever her limits are and beyond that even. An endless cycle between the two of them so very few understand. Strange and Unusual.