It was never a taboo or morbid topic, it was just one of life’s many truths. The sky is blue, the sun is bright, water is wet, and one day Mother would succumb to the circle of life when her youngest had blossomed into adulthood.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I blossomed, more stumbled blindly into maturity. Even now I consider myself to be in the ugly duckling stage of adulthood, compared to my four older siblings and of course, our dearest Mother.
She’s long passed by the time I’ve decided to officially write this, and for that, I’m sorry. You would’ve adored her. She was an absolute spitfire of a woman; a boisterous shadow of inky black hair, a near-permanent grin on her face, and one hell of a sense of humor, too. She always had a story to tell, accompanied by a song she made up off the top of her head. Her wits were only matched by her fierce love for all that knew her. Of course, Mother had her flaws and oddities, she was only human, so to speak, but the good always, always, always outweighed the bad.
That’s why despite our prior knowledge, it hurt so badly when we finally had to say our goodbyes. You should’ve seen Dearest Lilith, usually so stoic. The poor thing could hardly stomach it. I wasn’t doing much better of course, but I’m the baby— that’s to be expected. Jonathan handled it as well as he could, though he and Percy held each other uncomfortably close during the whole affair. Ophelia had planned the event, so I could only assume it steeled her resolve in being the only dry-eyed individual that night. Elder sisters always have something to prove, but I digress.
Our Mother had comforted us until the end, a smile on her increasingly greying face as she sang us the songs we had all heard during our scattered childhoods. I wept and wept into my hands until she was done, just as she had told me I would. See, she had known this day would come down to the gritty details, relayed it every few years or so until we could recite her dying words on memory alone.
It didn’t help.
Cobwebs formed in the cracks of the minutes it took for her to take her final breath, and when the graveyard clock struck midnight, the lot of us sat in silence. The world had stopped and the moon smiled down at us almost mockingly with her star children giggling behind her. The fog only worsened our stupor as we watched our mother’s body lay completely still for the first time. It was unnatural, seeing her like that.
Ophelia recovered first, of course. She moved like a snake, her heels kicking up dirt as she lowered herself near the body. She brushed Mother’s eyes closed with a gentleness I forgot she had and after a quick prayer, she locked eyes with me. Hell swam in those gray eyes.
“Come now, you know what she needs you to do.” She hissed. Her voice was pure ice, and for a moment I could see all of the bad Mother once had surfaced in her. Out of all of us, Ophelia was our mothers’ twin.
I nodded shakily as I joined my sister, not once losing her gaze. The dirt and grass pricked my legs and sullied my dress, but at the time I barely noticed. As I was the youngest, it was my duty to honor our Mother’s wishes first.
Gingerly, I took her hand in mine, and couldn’t help placing it on my face, just as she used to do. I closed my eyes and basked in her fading warmth for twenty seconds too long. Ophelia squeezed my shoulder roughly and it was enough to snap me out of it. I slipped my mothers Ruby red ring off her finger and onto mine and began to pray. The rest of my siblings followed suit, a chorus to our dear Mother, the one being who kept us together when our destinies led us apart. We could only hope that the love we all had for her could reach her wherever she was, and that it could even glimmer in comparison to the way she loved us.
When the prayer was done, I laid a gentle kiss on her ring finger and then promptly bit down. It shames me to say but the only thought that rang through my head at that moment was about how terribly tangy and chewy it was. Her hands were mostly sinew and bone by this point, but I chewed vigorously until a well of blood trailed down my maw. I was nearly to her index finger when Ophelia pulled me off.
“Enough, you’ve had your fill. Leave some for the rest of us.” She spat, and beckoned our other siblings to take my place. Numbly, I let them pass me, mostly because I was far too caught up in not losing my lunch and my moms digits.
I could hear my siblings hungrily wolfing down our dear mother, and it was nearly enough to make me gag, but the thought of her smiling face brought me back. This is what she had wanted, and we had fulfilled a dying woman’s final wish. The first part of it, at least.
See, our mother had been preparing us for her death since childhood. It was well hammered in, one of life’s many unfair truths. However, in all her reminders she neglected to mention something I suppose now you could never truly explain to another person.
The taste.
My siblings handled the rest of the ritual rather methodically, gathering up her hair, blood, and bones and clearing the area where the ceremony went down remarkably well. It’s been a few months since then, and we’ve gathered the rest of the materials. If all goes well, we’ll be seeing Mother very, very, very soon.
Until then, a part of her will always be with us.