[Li Mauta] Second Hand

by **Cosette Merryweather** on December 3rd, 2013, 5:07 pm

Timestamp: 20th of Winter of 513 A.V.

Maintenance was no source of small drama for Cosette. Finding a new body was always a unique and troubling experience. Always the thought that she was stealing, or that she was desecrating the memory of the dead floated to the surface of her thoughts... no matter how well she acted and was careful of the bodies she took, in the end she felt like the mere act of occupying the dead shells of what once were people was a crime in itself.

"'Aven't seen ye round these 'ere parts before." said the aged fellow who was casually liberating organs from a still warm corpse of some murderer that had been gutted rather efficiently by a squire on patrol. "...young, yer eyes still be bright. Come fer a new body?"

"You are... Benoit Grivin then?" there was hesitation there in her voice, fear too. His ability to see through her guise was impressive, there were things she couldn't hide even with the glamour of morphing. "Yes... yes... I need a new body..." As cathartic as it was for her to admit that she wasn't human, that something was wrong with her, Cosette never seemed to find solace in the feeling for too long. It would only take seconds for her to remember the anger she felt when she was brought back from the brink an abomination, her hatred for the man - the nuit - who'd turned her flared up for a moment and her hatred for her kind almost threatened to make her lash out against this man who was innocent of any crime against her.

But almost was not quite there yet. Her disposition was poor soil for such feelings to take root and she pressed forward, wishing to be through with this business.

"Seen many like ye," he eyed Cosette vacantly before turning his head away and cleaning his gloves free of the blood and entrails clinging upon his digits. "Kill themselves before too long, dat they do."

"Got three ye might like." he told her, a come-hither gesture from his hand imploring the girl to follow his foosteps. And he did. Three women were laid side by side on a table like dead cattle. "Dis one hung herself, or so we think." his old fingers curled towards a brunette in her mid-twenties. She was actually very pretty, a little taller than she liked, if one didn't pay attention to the deep indentation on her neck. That wasn't a real problem now, but it might deteriorate faster that a perfectly ordinary body.

He turned the body of another girl, ordinary features that were neither ugly nor charming, stature that was a little on the short side which suited her fine, pale with golden hair much like her own in life. "Kidney problems killed 'er dey say, could get messy once I begin embalming."

The last woman he turned on her back had olive skin, was tall, her features were handsome in her own way and her body looked very easy to use... it would have served her well, this Myrian corpse, except Cosette used morphing to maintain her features and the upkeep of changing the mass of a body this big would be heavy on her in the long run. "Warrior, died in a fight, spear to da liver."

"Which one's fer ye?" he asked, eager to dispose of the other two so he could make more space for the fresh batch of bodies that would come in the morning... they always came.

Out of Char.Obtained approval from Acco to run solo.

by **Cosette Merryweather** on March 24th, 2014, 7:41 am

"This one here." she squeezed the feet of the ordinary looking human girl of short stature. "Does she have a name? Remembering it would be the very least I could do to honor her memory..." on top of desecrating her corpse that was.

"Elise, could be wrong." the man grunted before the girl's corpse was unceremoniously stripped with remarkable efficiency. He carried and flipped on the body upon it's back on a table not too far away. "Help me wash her." the request sounded more like an order to assist, but given that she was taking advantage of the city's kindness to nuit's she wasn't about to refuse.

With a gentle hand, she washed the body with a cold but clean piece of cloth with a simple sliding swipe from crown to foot. It was not an intensive process but it did take time. Still, being meticulous was critical in preparation of the body and Cosette wasn't foolish enough to compromise the body because of her foolishness.

"And now a cleansing agent..." water, a disinfectant of some sort that was most likely alcohol based was poured into a cup, which Cosette poured into a funnel that finally released the contents into a baster. This she simply, if almost crudely, stuck into the corpse's nostrils where a quick squeeze sent a high pressure flush of water to rinse and clean the orifices. She did this with both nostrils, the ear canal and the mouth repeatedly until there was no longer any residual matter leaking out when she turned the face to one side - allowing gravity to draw out what she needed to remove.

"Ye done dis b'fore?" he murmured while he prepared the tools upon a clean tray.

"Yes..." her reply was soft, almost evasive. It was clearly a topic she wasn't comfortable with but embalming was... well, nuits had to learn the profession, it was practically a requirement to survive. "It made me throw up initially, but once you get use to it it's just like cooking you know. Especially the part involving organ removal, people and animals, they're not much different once they're dead. Sacks of organs, water and meat." the clinical if detached way she spoke of the bodies of people frightened her, but she suppressed the feeling of disgust. Better she get through this quickly.

"True dat." Grivin took a scalpel and with a surgeon's acumen buried the blade exactly where it had to be placed and with only an inch's depression of the metal drew the blade down from the point at the abdomen he made the incision. The organs were left exposed to the tools he would use.

A flimsy rubber tube, a hollowed out needle, they were tools Cosette hadn't had access to before but Grivin was kind enough to explain. "Ye wan't te get de blood flowin' like in live bodies." he told Cosette, who mystified had leaned in to listen attentively. "One of de hollow needles permits fluid ta go in, the other da drain needle will go into the heart. I would use... maybe three gallons of water with some mild disinfectant and an anti-coagulant - alcohol normally - for flushing out the system." without further ado the needles were attached and secured and the water from a pail with a funnel hooking up to the tube was allowed to flow.

Grivin offered the nuit girl the rubber tubing. "Don't let water flow too fast, use yer fingers to regulate the pressure."

With some hesitation Cosette took the lead, regulating he flow of water while staring with some mild amazement at the blood vessels that began to bulge. She immediately stopped the flow and soon enough the water found its way out again and the veins returned to their normal state.

Moderation and patience was key.

"After we empty the flush liquid go prepare your embalming fluid. I'd recommend my own, but I don't want ye to blame me if it goes bad." the older nuit barked a harsh laugh and disappeared for a moment, no doubt fetching new tools.

by **Cosette Merryweather** on March 24th, 2014, 9:10 am

Embalming fluids often came pre-made in Syliras, which was convenient but it wasn't personalized to Cosette's tastes. While other nuits would have been satisfied with something that prevented decomposition, Cosette valued an embalming fluid with a subtle, if non-existent odor as well as those that had dyes to restore the natural color of the skin more than their preservative qualities. Humectants that lent a corpse the appearance of being hydrated without looking bloated where also something she liked, but that was entirely optional. Of course there were other types of fluid that were far less liquid and more gelatin-like that she used for other parts of the body, but she could live without them... so to speak.

The process of filling out the blood vessels of embalming fluid wasn't too difficult, Grivin was a master at looking for insertion sites and his equipment made the work far easier and cleaner. Before long the body that had been drained of blood was looking full again, if a touch too pale, but it was clean and would last her through that season.

The messy part involved the actual removal of organs. Hollow organs would be cleaned first, if not tied at ends to make the organs virtually self sealing and removed from their positions. Cosette's experience as a cook helped her here. She shifted organs around, keeping them from the walls of the intestinal linings as she sewed and cut off organs like the liver, intestinal tracts and replaced them with filler that wouldn't rot and would far outlive the body that she inhabited. The lungs she would clean as appropriate, not because nuits needed to breathe but because the inspiration air was necessary in speaking. That and it was habit for her to breathe, it was only the really ancient nuits that tended to forget to breathe unless they spoke and she was young by her race's standards.

Eventually, she would finish her work on the body, depositing the organs that were no longer critical to her existence in a bucket that would be used as fertilizer or burned before being buried. Sewing it up would be child's play compared to everything she'd done thus far. Her hand would move the needle and thread carefully, multiple stitches, interwoven, crossing each other for maximum support all the way across the incision on the front of the body's torso.

Then the disgusting part.

She would ask Grivin to excuse her as she prepared to make the jump from one body to another. The hard-coded symbols in her mind would come to the surface and she would practically zone out as her instincts took over. A hand, a brush, water based paint, all these would come together as she painted runes to whose meanings were lost to her upon the new body which she would inhabit. The flowing lines would dance around the corpse's skin, from the forehead to the feet in a grotesque arrangement of tatoo's and then finally Cosette herself would straddle the dead body, pinching it's nose, tilting its chin up and opening it's mouth.

And then she would kiss it, not because she enjoyed some kind of taboo sexual activity involving the dead, but because it was the safest way to prevent any of the ichor spilling while the ritual was underway.

by **Cosette Merryweather** on March 24th, 2014, 9:21 am

A dream. That was what the entire ritual felt like, if ever Cosette was to explain how she jumped from one body to the next. With instinct taking over she felt like she wasn't herself, as if she were watching someone else doing everything and she was just a passenger in her body.

The strangest part was when she was in the middle of the ritual, when half of what defined her being, her soul, was in the donor and the recipient of her ichor. For but a moment, she could swear her consciousness was split - though in theory it wasn't. The constant line of ichor was unbroken, like a snake's body, though one end was separated from the other by a fair distance it didn't make one end any less of the snake than the rest.

By the time it was over Cosette would feel spent, almost like she could sleep - even though nuit's didn't have to. Her perception of the world would shift, she was looking up at the ceiling instead of down upon a corpse and she would feel the weight of a dead husk upon her chest.

The nuit sat upright, her eyes adjusting to the dimness and she used the back of her hand to push ichor trailing from her chin to her lips up. The tongue that was still naturally red slithered out and she licked her lips clean. Dead eyes seemed to gain life as they focused once more, their glassy gaze turning livid and then relaxed.

She cleared her throat, testing her vocals, finding the strength of the voice a little more than she was used to, but that would change in time.

And then she would feel like crying again. The whole act tore at her humanity, or what was left of it. Dehumanizing choices left to a girl who hadn't a real option besides death. But she pushed down the sorrow, forcing herself to calm down, an easy task when the body was agreeable to relaxation.

She stripped her old body of the clothes it wore, picked up a cane that she used for support and opened the door to see the other nuit who had just finished embalming his nth corpse of the day. "Where do I put the old body?" she asked him, her feet still unsteady because the soul was still synchronizing with the corpse it was inhabiting. Had this been another city she could have buried the girl she'd used and paid her respects, but Syliras' own rules had to be followed.

"There, in dat pile, for cremation." Grivin pointed.

"Right..." Cosette nodded, feeling so very awkward at being exposed to someone else in one of her most personal moments. "Thanks again."

"Don't mention it."

by **Xira Hezmek** on April 10th, 2014, 7:17 am

Cosette Merryweather :

Additional Comments: This was a well written and entertaining thread! It was fascinating to get an insight into both the thoughts of a nuit, and the process of embalming. So few Nuit actually play this out, so I commend you for that! Good job!

Did I forget a lore or skill? Did I make a mistake? Any questions or concerns feel free to PM me

Skills	Amount
Observation	+2
Socialization	+3
Cleaning	+1
Embalming	+3
Sewing	+1

Solo [Li Mauta] Second Hand