November 2nd, 1895 — Fisk/Meadowes Shiva, Bartonburg

Nearly two months of mourning and Zelda still did not feel prepared for the funeral for her siblings, brother-in-law, and nieces. It was also particularly difficult to hold a funeral without bodies, and the rituals at the synagogue felt cut-off because of it. (The rituals at the synagogue also felt cut off because it was difficult to manage her children and coach her husband through what was happening and mourn her family members all at the same time.)

Shiva, though — this was easier to handle. Whenever she was not doing the minimum to help get the Ministry through things, in the next week, she would be at her father's house engaging in formal mourning. (More formal than the outfits and isolation that they were already required to maintain by society's expectations, to Zelda.)

Zelda rapidly gave up on getting her son to wash his hands and gave him to Alfred, and settled instead to shuffling around the Fisk house and covering mirrors. It was hard to make her father's home feel cramped, after so many children had been there at the same time, but there were so many of them here for the Shiva that things were already busy.

(Did the busy-ness, the inherent weight of them all, undermine the mourning? Zelda felt empty, lately — all this loss was impossible to reckon with. It was as if they had never even existed, and yet every morning she woke up and remembered that they had, and that they were gone. And what would she do when Alfred was underway, without Katia's support? How was she going to balance it all?)

She finished covering the mirror hung in the hallway with black fabric and stepped into Nemo's room. Zelda started as she realized that she was not alone, and was instead with a brother that she was not sure how to speak to, outside of the clinical setting of the hospital. At the hospital, she was usually trying to cheer him — here, now, it was impossible to pretend that everything was fine.

And how could she pretend that she knew how he ought to get better, that she knew how the world was fine, when the world was not fine and what was the point?

"Mirrors," Zelda said, holding up the black fabric. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

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   Rosalie Hunniford

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AMAZING set by MJ

He had felt adrift since the funeral, though he couldn’t tell if that was from mourning their family members or existing out in the real world again. East Staple House did not advise patients to leave prematurely, even temporarily – but his had been a voluntary admittance and his father had signed him out for the time being, so there had been no protests; and a week or so confined to the Fisk house to mourn was not so drastic a change from where he had been already. Perhaps it would even be a more constructive thing, not to try to grieve in isolation, at such a far remove from what remained of their family.

Still, Ari felt less used than ever to the chaos of a Fisk house, even one shrouded in sombre circumstance – maybe he was too used to the orderly hallways and timings at the asylum, and to spending many hours quietly in his own room. He had never lived in this Bartonburg house, himself – and Katia he remembered better at her Irvingly home, surrounded by her children, which he supposed had vanished too – but this had been Nemo’s room, and it was empty.

So it felt like a place where he could sit with his sadness and think about his siblings. He felt terribly, horribly calm and empty in a way that didn’t feel quite himself, a little hollowed out. He hadn’t been able to cry at all, even with Kons sobbing in front of him in the institution room – and of course he was profoundly more useless now. When their mother had passed away, he had at least still been a healer, been someone people still came to for comfort. Now, he felt far from that; he felt weaker than he’d used to, and paler, quieter; felt everyone looked at him differently now, that he had become too frail and fragile to be much good to anyone.

So it had been as much to give the others space in the sitting room, coming up here to think about Katia and Nemo and how much less it felt without them. Ari was sitting on the floor by the foot of Nemo’s bed when someone came in, and his head jerked up to glance at the door when it opened. Zelda. “It’s alright,” he said simply, shaking his head. “You aren’t.” Interrupting. Her hands were full of black fabric, besides. Zelda, who was already twice as busy as some of them – with her children and husband and no doubt darting back and forth to her Ministry work when she had to, like the others; keeping busy still. “Do you need any help?”

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