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Puzzling

We’re really earning that title of Timeline Jumper now, folks.

Can I interest you in another blast from the past?

—

Trolls are not known for giving too much attention to their dead, short of dispatching them so thoroughly that they do not return as the shambling members of a daywalking horde, their fates aren’t really worried after. A corpse is burnt or sent to the ditches, never to be considered again. That’s just how it is. Clowns are much the same, if not worse, a crushed skull keeps the daywalkers away and someone else will be by to clean up the mess. Maybe. Or some wild animal will pick it apart. Or the sun would come along and swelter it so thoroughly, baking the rot into it in such a way that no one will want to touch it. Who cares?

All of this to say that it came as quite a shock when the three leaders of this particular subjuggulator sect set aside some actual space in an unused cellar for one of their followers to tend to their dead. Somehow this strange man convinced them that this would be a service to the Messiahs. Why would we leave our sisters and our brothers to fester as a prize for their glory? What sort of legacy does that leave behind? And it worked. From then on fallen subjuggulators would be dragged back to that strange man in his strange den and arrangements would be made for them.

Perhaps this ability to get the crowd on his side is what drew Harlan to him in the first place. The visits started infrequently enough, just a little something to satisfy an itch of curiosity, but steadily they grew into a routine as his fascination with the man started to rise.

Harlan sits with his hands folded into his lap, watching the peculiar mortician flit about, with grace, the fresh wave of bodies that’d been brought down to him. The careless way with which the average troll tends to handle the dead means that many of them were worse for wear, their appearances left a lot to be desired, by the time they made it down to him. But his magic of prepping the dead never seemed to wane, he always got it done. Today the wave included only three fresh corpses; This one needed a portion running up their side stitched shut, that one had a trocar needle and tubing placed beside him for cavity filling, and the last was made ready for embalming fluid to be sent through their veins.

The smell of formaldehyde hangs heavy in the air. It used to be that the chemical smell of the morgue clung to his senses and made it difficult to sit still and enjoy the process, but as his visits became more frequent so too did his tolerance for the sting in his eyes and the muddling of his sense of smell start to rise.

His gaze falls on the hands of the mortician, as it often does, as he returns to the cadaver in dire need of stitches, learned hands navigating around the bulk of the black nitrile gloves that encase them with ease to weave a fine thread through the infinitesimal eye of a needle on the first try.

Silence always suited the pair and as such, sometimes these sessions would pass in their entirety with barely a word passed between them. Harlan appreciated having a place away from the rowdy going-ons of the church above them and especially from the odd friends Orfuse has a tendency of bringing around his hive, so he rarely finds himself being the one to break that silence.

Rarely does not mean never, however.

“How is a cadaver any different?” He asks when the needle pierces the skin with a squelch that must be more audible to the mortician situated just above the source.

Thanat does not look up from his work, one deft hand pinching the offending wound while the other goes through the motions of suturing it shut. “Different from what, Harls?”

His own idle hands tingle as the neat row of stitches are neatly closed off and tied shut.

“From touching people, how do they differ?”

The mortician shrugs, dropping the needle into a tray of discarded instruments and moves on to the trocar needle that awaited him. “Well, to start, I am still wearing gloves.” He holds one of his hands up for emphasis and wiggles his fingers. Harlan exhales a humored breath and rolls his eyes. They both know what he meant.

He pierces the abdomen with the trocar, and surely being so near the contents of a stomach cavity would be a germaphobe’s nightmare, but he does not flinch. He instead goes about inserting the tubing necessary for draining. Harlan has seen him do it a handful of times, so he is not surprised, only ever fascinated with the mortician.

“I think there is something cleansing about death,” he explains, in the middle of trading the sullied gloves for a pair of new ones. “It is different because they are cleansed, I guess.”

Harlan moves to cross one leg over the other, bringing a hand up to rest his chin upon. He lets out a thoughtful hum. “What a strange mind you have, Thanat Lycaon.”

“No more puzzling than yours, Harlan Mahkir,” he says with just the faintest of smiles. “Besides, there are not many trolls tending to the dead around here. Someone has to do it.”

“Unless you count Lenore, of course.”

“Carrion birds provide a different form of tending, I’m afraid.”

Harlan only hums again, still humored, distracted anew by the mortician handling his instruments and cadavers when he takes up moving about again.

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