#necrosess

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bereavement is a parasite.      she knows this,      because it has lived for too long in her body      —      burrowed beneath flesh and sinew and the marrow of her bones      —      and has left only a surfeiting grief.      but that isn’t quite correct:      corporeality had left her not long ago,      the relic of her existence now consigned to a sepulchre fashioned especially for arendelle’s elder queen.      now,      in peace her body is joined by another,      in a resting place adjacent to her own.      anna,      the springtide queen,      breathed her last on a warm summer’s day,      surrounded at her bedside by a brood of her issue.      it was a bittersweet parting,      elsa heard,      and arendelle flew its flags at half - mast in mourning their beloved monarch.         (   finally,      some whispered,     she could finally join her sister and her husband in the next life.   )          but all this,      witnessed only by grapevine,      when gale’s gentle susurrations carried forth voices from a far - off town      —      for the moment anna’s deterioration presaged the inevitable,      elsa,      selfishly,      made herself scarce,      retreating into the woodland’s deep embrace,      obscured by ivory - blanketed trees and crackling lakes. 

—      queen anna had left the world with a smile,      but with a longing murmur of her departed husband’s name and a sad sigh reserved for her sister.      at least,      according to the whispers.      thus brings elsa to an altogether different kind of woods,      decorated trees with branches like shadowed limbs that serve more to dishearten than beguile.      she clothes herself in the rimy fabric of her own regret,      unaffected by the forest’s ghastly climate,      its haunting mist.

❛❛      i have heard,      ❜❜        she calls out to the all - encompassing emptiness,      customary dulcet rimmed with steel,        ❛❛      that you are able to commune with the lamented.      i’ve come to ask for your assistance      —      will you indulge this weary traveler?      ❜❜

INTO THE WOODS    »     [    @necrosess​​    ]

[verglarchive]

@necrosess​   sent:      ❛    when you are young they assume you know nothing.    ❜       —      accepting. 

the bitter smile that twists her lips seems sorely out of place.      beauty is meant to be honeyed,      saccharine      —      a cloying sweetness that tacks onto the roof of the mouth,      an ephemerally immutable impression.      

—      they once called her the paragon of pulchritude,      winsome as wintertide,      alabaster frost.      chronicles of the snow queen’s beauty soon outdistanced those of her power,      like declawing a hawk and calling it dove.      it was serendipitous,      and later purposive;      one need not cower before winter when it was so beautiful.          (   let the blizzard bellow when it would,      but not now.      not yet.   ) 

❛❛      i was young.      too young.      ❜❜      her smile is too bitter to be beautiful,      but this is not beauty.      this is the harsh tang of vindication,      a pyrrhic victory that rests on her crown like laurels,      gold on gold.      ❛❛      but i knew a great many things      —      and it was better to let them believe i did not.      it served me well,      in the end.      ❜❜      

there will always be two tales ascribed to the snow queen.      in one they paint a winter goddess,      or perhaps a boreal nymph,      immaculate in blues and ivories like snowfall upon a frozen lake.      in another,      with harsh,    hoary brushstrokes,      a tempest,      eternal winter given skin and bone,      cold as ice and twice as sharp.      let them wrestle with the choice of which to believe.