002.

[outsidebones]

The movie we are watching today features Harrowhark Nonagesimus, tiny ten year old genius. Despite her age, she stalks the gloomy halls of the underground stone castle with confidence, and every person she meets behaves as though she is more than royalty, something more akin to a saint or a saviour. Even her mother and father, though grand and imperious, don't muster the same level of devotion. Harrow treats both of them with incredible deference and attempts to please, which they meet in turn with effusive pride and praise and yet there's a chilly reserve towards her that's difficult even for a ten year old to mistake. To everyone else, Harrow is gracious, if incredibly haughty and spoiled, but the obvious over-the-top affection means nothing to her. She thinks, most days, about finding the best way to die.

The people of this House are adults, most of them of advanced age. There is only one other child in the whole of the House, and today Harrow comes across her in the crypts, surrounded by stone cairns built into the walls. She's about a year older but much bigger, brawny and red-haired. She looks at Harrow differently than the others do. There's no awe nor fear in her expression, only hatred, and Harrow finds it different enough as to be irresistible. She's in the niche where they buried a particular corpse, the one the orphan girl was found with, although Harrow happens to know the body inside has long since been moved elsewhere. The girl hasn't noticed Harrow yet, instead is carrying on a conversation with the burial niche. Harrow waits, hiding, until the girl calls it mum, at which point she emerges out of hiding, triumphant at having caught her doing something so embarrassing.

"There isn't anyone in there, you know," she drawls, haughty. "Really, Griddle, the bones were put into service years ago. Then again, even if she were in there, I can't see why she'd want any more to do with you than anyone does."

When Gideon responds with the fury she craves so much, she sighs dramatically, as though it is a pointless tantrum, and turns the bone rings and bracelets on her hand into shards to pierce her skin and eyes. They fight for a while, and Harrow pretends to be inconvenienced even though she sought this out and caused it. The fight gets nasty quickly, violent, and soon she has Harrow on her back, and she wraps her hands around Harrow's neck and chokes her until her vision goes black.

That much is fine with Harrow, but then when Gideon hisses in her ear, "I bet my mother loved me a lot more than yours loves you," Harrow spits in rage and claws desperately at her face and eyes, drawing warm blood onto her hands. She lets go, and storms off, and Harrow isn't dead but she can't manage to stand. She crawls away and vomits and then collapses, neck throbbing, hands bloody, unable to move or breathe, sulking and desperate.

When she finally gets up, she stumbles with each step, but she walks with purpose. She knows how she wants to die, what she wants to do first. It is the most goth possible way one could die. There is one place on this whole planet that otherwise seems to revolve around her that she is forbidden to enter. The Tomb beneath the castle, the one they pray every morning in the chapel will never be disturbed. This isn't her first time trying, but she's more determined today than ever. She makes it through the variety of necromantic traps that would stop anyone less talented than her, and she makes it to the rock that is never to be rolled away, but when she presses her bloodied hands against it, this time it gives way.

It moves beneath her hands, and the thrill of it carries Harrow away. Of doing something she should not be able to do, proving her genius and therefore her worthiness to live; of doing something so terrible and blasphemous and proving her unworthiness as well. But that feeling of triumph and sick pleasure gives way to something else.

She can see what's inside. It's a pool, the same pool whose waters fill the other caverns and rooms in the base of the castle. But at the center of the pool is a crypt, and within it is a woman, wrapped in chains, encased in ice, frozen and dead. She's taller than a person should be and beautiful, with matted, wet hair and long, ice covered eyelashes. Also, just obviously a corpse. It's fine.

Harrow loves her, instantly, and she realizes for the first time that she doesn't want to die.