Can a dead person ever learn?
Things do change. The beauty of life, opposite of death, was the constant possibility for change. Ever present, always there, every day.
(Yet he could change too. How were life and death different, then?)
People change. Emotions gain new colours. Possibilities.
All that happened to Claudia.
All that happened to Cedric.
(Was there a difference between life and death?)
Punishment.
That was the difference.
He wasn't solely, simply dead. He was being punished for a crime. Yet another one.
He dared believe in hope and dreams. He dared accept the happiness Claudia gave him.
Claudia changed, because of him. Because of her. Because of her children, because of society.
The beauty of life was also its downfall.
The soul he tried so hard to maintain in the human world, alive and happy. Changed from a beautiful, loving... to a frightening, ruthless soul. One that found that being so close to Death for so long meant it was expected, embraced, no longer feared. No longer mattered.
Was no longer important.
(The most important thing, that he tried to stop such a short amount of time ago.)
So she defied it. Challenged it. In Cedric, in her life, in her Queen.
She was beyond Death now, and it no longer mattered for her.
The difference between life and death blurred for Claudia as it did to Cedric.
...But Claudia was alive, and Cedric was being punished. What he was destined to be, what he kept proving he deserved to be by every crime he commited.
Daring to end a life of suffering.
Daring to save a life of happiness.
Daring to borrow happiness for himself.
Daring to break taboos and rules.
Daring to love and give life to love.
How ironic that this would be the worst crime of all.
He did not learn.
So foolish, so hopeless.
.
to be continued
.
.
Sour words from a sour heart
Hollow and so hopeless
The scream and the screamer