Her hair sits perfect on her shoulders, though it is barely strong enough to stay in place. The bones are laid as perfect as I could get them. Dug them from the ground the other night and found a perfect place to spend time with her. Lilacs sits on her chest.

Rule 1: Souls come down, must go up.

Rule 2: Don’t let Chief know.

Rule 3: Flesh decays the moment life is taken.

Grandma said it in her journal. It convinced me. Why does the flesh fall off the bones on Sac Day? I do not recall a time where life on the mountain dies, besides on Sac Day.

That’s all grandma said, really. But the line made me think. Made me think about how when I watch the flesh fall from the bones as Chief knives the villager through the back and chest, as he draws the heart straight from the chest, flesh just falling to the feet, bones staying perfectly in place for only a moment, how it doesn’t seem right.

How it sends a fleeting thought through my mind each and every time. I haven’t been able to slow the thought enough to grab it. Hang on to it. Process it. But with Odon’s bones in here, I hear her and feel her and know she’s with me as I swipe the first color, the second, the third. Hours go by and hours and hours and Odon sits beside me, smiling. I just know it. Though her jaw barely hangs on to the head, I know she’s here smiling at my work.

Dragon in my pocket, Odon will be here when I come back tomorrow to work on my portrait. To the Mainstay and to my home. Grandma’s book splayed across my lap.

Souls come down, must go up. Don’t let Chief know. Flesh decays the moment life is taken. Bones + flowers + the den of monsters + a monster = life

So I’m going to try, Odon. Going to try to bring you back to life. This life, no matter how awful it is because without you, is it worth all the trouble we’ve gone through? Memories locked away, only in disconnected thoughts and notes of Grandma telling me it’s finally time.

Time for what, you ask?

A little dinosaur figurine sits next to Odon. I put the rest of the set in her pocket the day she died.

“You know that, Odon?” A paint streak and another. “I put those little dinos in your back pocket right when you went up to the altar.” Red, white, black. “Grandma said to trick Chief. Throw him off the scent.”

What scent?

The glow of the torch makes her bones dance. I miss the time she took my hand and we danced slow, her head against my chest. Nothing but the wind swishing against the grass. The sun on our shoulders.

Firelight touches my masterpiece. My final one. I won’t do another Sac Day, I won’t. Chief doesn’t know a lot of things, a lot.

Grandma said it was better that way. Better Odon didn’t know either.

Know what?

The white background forms the perfect balance. The outline of me and Odon, in the field. Her head against my chest. Her hand in mine. It’s not done, nowhere near but life without her is nothing, even in this ghost of a life.

Grandma said it.

Maybe grandma had dementia or maybe grandma is really the goat on the horizon, watching Odon and I dance in the field surrounded in lilacs.