Y O U R C R U C I B L E
"May you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you're dead."
Lottie Thorne, sister of the notorious Freddie Thorne, is counted as part of the Shelby family. And her loyalty is...
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"My brother's gone..."
A ghost stared back in the reflection. Life had vanished from the girl's eyes, her auburn hair seemingly limp and dead as it lay on her shoulders. The girl wore no red lipstick - she wore no lipstick at all. She was wearing all black; a plain black dress, small wrist length lace gloves and a black hat that sat upon her head on top of her light hair.
"Lottie, you ready?" Maxim asked softly from her bedroom door.
Lottie did not look over at him, she only continued to stare into the mirror. Then, without a word, she reached up with her gloved hands and pulled down the black lace veil over her face so that no one would see her lack of tears in her empty blue eyes.
The clouds were dark above where they stood by the coffin after the church ceremony, and it was lowered into the ground. Lottie stared unseeingly at it. A body was inside - her brother's body. He was gone. Just gone. She would never see his smile or his familiar brown eyes or hear him talk passionately or feel his arms around her as they hugged. He was just gone - gone... And there was nothing she could do to bring him back.
Since the news of his death, she didn't cry, instead, she fell into some sort of trance where she didn't feel anything. The shock of it all hadn't sunk in. The dread and darkness that consumed her as she stared at her brother's grave ate her insides up. She felt sick. Ada's tears were falling down her cheeks, but none fell down Lottie's. She couldn't even make her eyes water. She felt nothing... just an empty abyss. And that was far worse. Nic and Maxim stood on either side to her, Ada to the side of Maxim. In Lottie's isolated world, she felt a hand take hold of her own. She knew it was Nic's, he was her anchor, keeping her from drifting out into a treacherous sea that would drown her.
Tommy stepped forward towards the fresh mound of soil and cleared his throat. "I promised my friend, Freddie Thorne," he began solemnly, "that I'd say a few words over his grave if he should pass before me. I made this promise before he became me brother-in-law, when we were in France, fighting for the King."
Beside Maxim, Ada sniffled as her chin quivered. She was trying not to cry, to hold herself together, but Lottie could feel the immense pain emitting off her sister-in-law. The pain that Lottie should be feeling, rather than the numbness she was.
"Amen," said Arthur.
"And in the end," Tommy continued. "It wasn't war that took Freddie. Pestilence took him."
Behind, John's baby began to cry. He tried to shush him, but the crying did not cease.
"But Freddie passed on his soul and his spirit to a new generation before he was cruelly taken."
