Death means everything to Kareis. She lives it, for lack of a better word, and she would breathe it if she had lungs or functional nostrils. She feels it when she embraces her partners, who are just as not-quite-alive as her. Today, she will truly embody it, for there is an important funeral she must attend and she will dress the part.
Kareis always sleeps the night before a funeral. She doesn’t need to, but it clears her mind. When she wakes up her bed is empty, which she expected. Her partners are also viya, and they sleep even more infrequently than her. In the distance she hears a faint clattering, which is most likely Absom making breakfast.
Tyrenée sits at the bedroom’s vanity. She’s only halfway dressed, and she stares at herself with a pensive expression. The maggots that reside in her eye sockets squirm about, seemingly just as anxious as her.
“What’s wrong?” Kareis pulls herself out of bed and gently drapes her hands over Tyrenée’s shoulders.
“I’m not sure which veil to wear,” Tyrenée starts. She looks down at a pair of rectangular veils, each small enough to cover her eyes and nothing more. The one on the left is made of a smooth, deep green fabric that matches her robes, with a glittering golden string that she can loop around her head. The veil on the right is close in color to Tyrenée’s dark, ashen skin, and it has a pair of maggot-filled eyes painted on it. “I’m in the mood for the brown one, but Councilman Kakhak really didn’t like my maggots. It feels like it would be more respectful to wear the green one.”
“Oh, my rancid thing,” Kareis consoles. The wide vanity has three seats, and Kareis takes the one on Tyrenée’s right. “I can’t deny the possibility that Councilman Kakhak’s soul would be a bit insulted, but he was a fickle man. When I was mummifying him, I could feel his stress. I think he was upset about how it felt when I removed his organs.”
Tyrenée giggles at that. “Part of me still fails to understand that about humans. I’d imagine that having your organs removed feels much better when you’re dead.”
Kareis rests her head on her hand and chuckles. She’s rather hollow on the inside, but as she understands it, being dead makes the process significantly less painful. “I’m sure it does, but unfortunately the councilman was unaware. My point is, it doesn’t matter what you wear, since he wouldn’t like either option regardless. Besides, your outfit is plenty respectful. Stand up so I can see?”
Tyrenée sheepishly models her half-assembled adugem — her funerary outfit, which is currently just a forest green skirt that reaches down to her ankles. Kareis stands up as well and nods approvingly, taking in Tyrenée’s soft features and the way her round stomach spills over her skirt. Her long braids pour down her left shoulder. Usually they’re black, but she dyed the tips green for the funeral. The maggots in her half-eaten eyes peer at Kareis from their fleshy home, then return to feasting.
Kareis takes one of Tyrenée’s hands in both of her own. It’s clammy and lukewarm, like the cooling flesh of a newly dead corpse. “Look at you! The ideal model of rot and decay.”
Even after the centuries that Kareis and Tyrenée have been partners, the latter is still so bashful when she receives compliments. She fidgets with a braid and says, “Thank you. I was going to ask if you wanted to finish dressing me. My sashes and shawl are in the closet.” Tyrenée can dress herself, but sometimes she can’t resist the intimacy of being clothed by her partners.
Kareis can’t resist it, either. “Oh, of course.” The sashes in question are a pair of matching green lengths of fabric patterned with black and white diamonds. Green to represent the earth that all mortals return to, black for the night sky from which all viya came, and white for the souls of the deceased. Kareis wraps the first sash diagonally over Tyrenée’s right shoulder, and the second sash over her left. Then she ties the sashes’ ends together into a tight knot, so that they form an X shape on Tyrenée’s chest and on her back. She hums absent-mindedly as she does so, as if Tyrenée is a pot that she’s spinning at the wheel.
Finally, she gingerly pulls a black shawl from the closet. It has green and white diamonds on the back to match the sashes. Kareis ties it around Tyrenée’s waist and kisses her on the cheek, satisfied with her work. “You look beautiful. Did you spray on your perfume yet?”
“No. You don’t have to worry about doing that for me.” Tyrenée half-winks an eye — closing them completely is a bit awkward with the maggots in the way — and returns to the vanity. On it is a row of glass vials, each one filled with clear-ish liquids of all tints. The dozen or so perfumes here are only a fraction of the hundreds of perfumes that Tyrenée has crafted over the centuries. Kareis can hardly tell the difference between them, as her ceramic-like nose lacks hollow nostrils. This fact has never upset her, but sometimes she wishes to know exactly what Tyrenée smells like, both with and without the perfume.
Functional nostrils or not, Kareis still needs to get dressed. She’s been walking around the bedroom topless, and the funeral is in just a few hours. She assembles her adugem as Tyrenée spritzes on her perfume. She’s always preferred masculine clothing, and thanks to her high status as Sekharu’s most important mortician, she rarely got pushback for it when it was stigmatized. For today’s outfit she chooses black kitakaku gath, wide-cut pants that resemble a long skirt when she puts her legs together. Her black shirt has matching wide-cut sleeves and a downwards-pointing green triangle in the center. Black has always been her primary funeral color, no matter the outfit. It represents not just the night but how bodies go dark when their mortal souls wink out for good.
When Kareis is fully clothed, Tyrenée takes her hand just to feel it. This close, she can detect the faintest whiff of Tyrenée’s perfume. It’s something floral, and a bit familiar. “Which scent did you choose?”
“Hydrangeas and rain. Like the feeling you get when you’re standing in a garden and it’s about to rain soon.”
“The forecast said it’s supposed to rain later tonight, isn’t it? How fitting.”
“Mm-hmm. Oh, part of your hand feels unglazed.” Tyrenée’s thumb rests near a tiny patch of skin of the back of Kareis’s hand that looks a bit odd.
“Really? I’ll fix it.” A couple days ago, Kareis had painted her entire body with clear glaze and stuck herself into a kiln for a few hours. When she emerged she looked like she was made of porcelain, her skin possessing an eye-catching reflectiveness that would last for a few weeks. The black, permanent misdemet streaks that run from her eyes to her chin shine like oil, and her olive-green skin looks like it was crafted from the finest clay. But even the best vessels don’t always come out perfect, and there is a chance that some tiny bits of glaze had flaked off early. Indeed, the spot on Kareis’s isn’t as shiny as the rest of her body. She pulls a small bottle of clear varnish out of the vanity’s dresser and paints the spot over: problem solved.
“Thank you for pointing that out, Ty. All I need is my wig, and we’ll be done.” Kareis smiles at the painted face in her reflection and adorns the last component of her outfit: a wig to cover her hairless head, made of thick, dark hair styled into a choppy bob cut. If Tyrenée is the image of beauty, then Kareis is the definition of handsome.
“There. Come, let’s get something to eat.” Kareis takes Tyrenée by the hand, and the two of them make their way to the kitchen.
