[And yet dying is so final. Or it should be. When it isn’t well then, that’s when you end up with so many questions and aching hollow spaces where it hurts just to remember what there was before. If she asked her creature if it would rather live than die, it would still say live because everyone is an animal and animals are all about survival, about striving for the next generation.

They cry when they know they’re going to die. They do as commanded, they fight as viciously as they need to but there are tears on their faces when she finds them later, blood still wet on their mouths and the body not even fully cold.]

You should come so I can tell you to your face, come for tea like you did before. We could make a whole evening of it; tell your boring little love a lie and come to me when it’s late, that’s the best hour for such things and if I need to, I can always kill my pet and have a Shade all my own.

[Bind the spirit and the soul and even when they depart they can be yours until you cut it away.]

Can something be only one thing? What if death is the great release? La petit mort, the little death, that’s what we call orgasms where I come from after all, so death can be many things and light isn’t always good. Light might cast out darkness but only light can cast a shadow so who is to say the darkness ever even left in the first place?