We Shall Dance in Decay

She weaved her way through the tombstones, her fingers lingering upon their decaying exteriors, and nails catching the stems of the wild plants that clung to them. Valentine Dew was much like any other adolescent female in appearance; but it was the mass that sat within her head that set her aside from others; the way she found beauty within decay, and splendour within purification. Her eyes devoured the words upon each and every headstone; there was not one epitaph that she had not inscribed upon her heart – well, all but one. There was one epitaph, guarded by a marble angel. It repulsed her.

However, her horror and revulsion were equally measured with her longing to read the inscription. The tombstone would hiss, “We shall dance in decay,” with all of the ardour of a lover, and her blood sang with yearning. Oh, she had gazed upon it from afar, the marble angel in all of her cold cherubic beauty. It had become the denied, and as others had yielded to temptation before her, she was to as well.

Upon a day when the sky was wet with woe, and the earth sodden with its tears, she stood before the angel, as close as she had ever dared before. Her fingers fell over the letters, attempting to make sense of the once clear, yet now painfully confusing words upon them,

“Here lies Valentine Dew,

May your soul dance in decay

And you spirit ascend to the heavens above

1890- 1908”