Work Text:
Francis is fifteen years old when he watches his father be lowered into the ground.
No other family member had passed, not to the boys knowledge. His mother's parents were on a whole other continent, ashamed of their daughter. He was never their grandson, not really. He couldn't speak their language, didn't know the man she had run from that was supposed to father a different child. Any other child. A disappointment in all ways. The woman who brought him into this world sat along side him at the back of the crowd. She was a dove among ravens, clad in white among the sea of black. If he were still a boy, they would have given Francis the dignity of a glance. If his mother wore a ring, perhaps more.
Would the corpse cry "neglect" if he fled from their eyes? If he decided he could not bare to look?
The body in the coffin didn't exist. Not a teacher, not a father, not a name. It was a gentle hand, a forgiving smile, a strong force to lift him above the mushroom covered stump. It was not the owner of the property that Francis had tended to all his life. Gardens, chickens, their hound and Royendar (or whatever Latin spelling could be applied to that kitten). The forest, the roe, his dearest friend. Woven baskets and sourdough jars. His mother spoke her piece, Francis refused. She knew the body, Francis knew the man.
He had not been good, had not even been okay, but he had been there. Now he was gone.
Grief is unfamiliar to a blossoming mind. One is only made by the others, pistil of a soul holding each contributing petal. When one is lost, the entire being feels the absence, looses the nutrients. It takes time to adjust, and heeling to recover. Many years later, a kind eyed doctor will explain this to Francis' remnant, who will have no use for it. Fungi have no need for petals, they feast on decay.
All it needed was a snapped, dead stem of a soul, and spoiled venison. It had plenty of blood to feast upon. There was a abundance of grime, filth, and rot to cover up with a digestible, extravagant decay. A flashy one. A purposeful one.
But Francis is not that man yet. He won't be for a long time. Many bodies would be lowered into the dirt, either by a god to blame, or by him.
All things become easier with repetition.
For now, there is only one fallen. A man who looked just like him. A man who taught him. Whose family, Francis' family, sat ahead of a young man, dare not turning back.
For now, the young man—still human—could curl into his mother's white woolen dress, and pray to fill the gash with long talks in the grass, a maincoon curled in the lap of the woman whom Francis called a friend.
He would never return to that grave, even as the mason craved his first name into the stone less than year later, laying it back where it was said his body was held. Even when this woman joins who she wishes was her family after decades on that land, he will not view it.
Years later, against all odds, the fungus itself will die. No one will grieve. Flowers will grow over the rancid corpse.
Right now, in his mother's living and silent embrace, the flower shrivels into a sob.