How had it come to this?

This weight he carried.

His burden.

His curse.

How had all his dreams been so perverted?

He had wished to dress her, properly, as her appointed kimono attendant, the one who would help her get ready, each day of her life. To help present her to an important audience, or to the world in general.

His yearning had been tainted and twisted, turned into what he was now reluctantly, dutifully doing.

~

His whole life had been similarly skewed from what he had hoped for. He had wanted to help create beauty, or at least supplement it, amplify it. To be the kimono dressing assistant to any geisha, to aid them in looking their absolute best.

But..

Due to his family's tradition, their past.. he was inescapably cast into the same role.

Death.

He was a mortician.

Almost no one would ever hire him or any of his family, or his possible children to do anything but help convey the dead from this world to the next.

And so.. he had become one who attempted, day in and day out, to beautify the dead. It was not truly beauty, though, not ever. It was a mockery of it, a pale imitation that only made the loss all the more keen. A cruel sham of life, and rest.

~

The girl he now held had been found dead, in the mercifully soft but nevertheless fatal embrace of freshly fallen snow. It had blanketed her 'slumbering' form. Even though she had died, it seemed like nature.. the world.. had been protecting her body. She was preserved first by the cold and now by Rokurou's work.

He had been granted his wish to dress her, in the one way he never wanted it given to him.

He had wanted to help her, and so he was made to help when she had absolutely no way of helping herself.

He had wanted to present her to an important audience, and so he was now presenting her to the most important audience she or anyone would ever encounter. The Lonely and Only. She would be with Him soon.

Rokurou could not help but feel a perverted sort of pride in his work, for once.. although he hated himself for it.

His conflicted pride had manifested thusly: Unlike all others he had worked on, she was truly beautiful, even in death. He had worked as hard as he could, to ensure that fact. Thanks to the mortician's work, Oojirasagi Himself would have to admit that Nae was the most lovely of His subjects when she reached His heavenly realm and took her place among the stars.

..So, with her eternal rest thereby assured.. why did he find it so hard to let her go?

~~

The amazing little story above was done by my big snake, the one and only   Amethystine! <3

This is a collab with   edge-chan, featuring Nae and her Blade Under Mask fancharacter Rokurou. Rokurou is a giant hornet and comes from a family of nokanshi, a type of mortician or encoffineer who practices the Nokan. Their job is to prepare the deceased for cremation by cleaning, dressing and applying make-up to them. His family is very wealthy but not very communicative due to the nature of their job. There's some sort of taboo or prejudice against the nokanshi, since they work with the dead, it's believed they carry the plague of death in their hands, and thus the other Greatlanders avoid them.

Rokurou doesn't like his job, he wanted to work with something else, designing kimono or maybe being an appointed kimono attendant, helping the geisha get in their heavy kimono and tying their obi belts.

And Nae... you know who she is. :)

Obivously, this is not canon! Nae is very much alive! I just love tragedy and apparently Edge does too, so she came up with this idea and the sketch. I tweaked it, lined and colored.

There's symbolism in the cherry blossoms and white chrysanthemums too!

We collab'd once too:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/12289145/