something wicked {this way comes} ele/pyth

A T R O P O S F A T E

This morning she had pressed her thumbnails into the the eyes of a boy named Jared Stone until his eyes had exploded in his skull and blood had swam over her thumbs and nearly up her arms with the force of it. He'd screamed beautifully, she had an idle fear that the restraints would snap and send his arms around her neck in a hold so tight that dear old Death might even be jealous. However the pain had made him sorely weak. He'd flopped about a bit like a fish on dry land and stilled even as his mouth moved like he was crying. She'd ruined his tear ducts, he couldn't. She had laughed at that. It was funny.

Then she'd taken her knife and raised it high into the air, one hand wrapped around the hilt, the other pressed against the end and brought it down, over and over into the boy's chest. It made an odd tearing sound as it went through the skin between his ribcage. She'd made note of it to compare it to her other victims. Maybe she'd tell Decima about it later. She wasn't sure yet as she wrapped the body up in some old sacking and sent it tumbling into the canals for Bastille Styx to find and deliver to the Underworld as per their monthly agreement.

Then she had walked home and had a cup of tea. She did not take sugar but did delight in the smallest bit of milk.

After the morning tea break, Nona had told her that it was her turn to watch the shop and seeing as she knows that my insanity is fabricated I could not spit in her face and shake a dead ferret in front of her eyes to get out of it. So now she's stuck here, watching the shop door, working through some knots in a clump of wool. It seems that the afternoon shall pass in this way, wool sorting between customers until treat of all treats, the most perfect of all customers enters the shop.

The sisters have been waiting for this particular customer for a very long time. Not because they particularly care for him but it's because they know something absolutely wonderful. They know who he is of course, all of the underground world do. He's been a bit of something to raise a glass to ever since it happened, near two years ago now. He and his brother that is. You don't often come across one so noble that it takes the three meant to take two to only be able to take one. We're certain he must have lost a lot of blood in that transaction.

Atropos watched the boy angrily move about the shop from her place behind the counter. Oh he was beautifully mad, like a perfectly lovely piece of furniture that's been told it's useless after only two uses. She would be angry too, she supposed. After all, she was so much more than the wood that was used to shape her.

Her fingers flew nimbly over the pile of wool in her lap, disentangling even as she watched the boy pick up an old bit of wool that was from a man who grew them lovely and proud in his yard on the edge of the district. He had chosen a thicker strand, when it was used the holes would be bigger and the wearer would feel the cold far more. Usually such a wool was only used to make a throw for a couch o an extra blanket on top of three others. This boy didn't seem to care.

She barely moved as he dropped the wool on the counter and announced that it was everything. She stilled her fingers, resting her elbow on the counter and her chin in her hand, staring intently at the boy who was beautiful in the fact that he was in so much pain. She adored the little things that boys did to be so lovely, pain being at the top of her list of things that she found agreeable, just above them taking their shirts off by grabbing the back and lifting it over their heads.

"Oh lovely Mr. Tobias, we know what you need," she said softly, a grin spreading slowly across her features.