Sunlight bore down on Ophelia.

It warmed her skin as much as it ached. Even through the fichu and the hat, she could feel it, a prickling and warm that was all at once pleasant as it was foreboding. Her skin was not accustomed to the top layer. She came to learn later that it was permanent. Where others turned golden, gained freckles, or darkened, her skin flaked and peeled.

The worst of it was that she craved it.

Her arms tensed as she fueled that longing into her magic. She blocked the thoughts of what she was willing to do for that warmth. When a dragonfly zipped past, her attention renewed. She shook her head and wiped the bead of sweat. The Unnamed in the garden deserved the respect of someone without restrictions and comforts. They deserved a shred of decency.

For ten years, her magic crackled for money. Her hands splayed and grew mushrooms. Blooms crawled over bones. She had been the keeper of secrets for all, not just the illuminated Vista.

Condemned to a place without sun, where rot and ruin fed and sustained them, Ophelia and her family were still, in their own way, happy. Together, they tended the mounds of rot. Though foul-smelling, the decay bloomed all sorts of beautiful things. When food was wanting, Ophelia grew mushrooms. It was this skill that kept their family alive, but what ultimately killed them in the end.

In the Low, those not born into the stench suffocated by it. Low-Rot, as it was referred to, consumed everything. Even though her lungs had grown accustomed, her parents had not.

First it was her mother, who became too ill after a failed pregnancy; then her father a couple months later. Once the rot found a way into your lungs, there was nothing anyone could do. His body was serene when she found him, without suffering or the coughs that kept him up at night. Though she sobbed, she was relieved. She promised him something beautiful for her mother, and though he never asked her for the same, she felt compelled.

The day she decomposed him, was the first day of her new career.

Visiting from the Vistas was a cluster of gang members searching for new cave systems to smuggle goods. What they found was a rarity. Magic was a tool, studied and practiced. Not everyone could wield it, and those that could still needed to temper their bodies. What you practiced was what you could do. Growing life and plants was one thing, making it decay was another.

It was in this realization that the leader of the group drew closer to the grieving Ophelia.

She heard the flaps of the leather coat and stomps of his boots first. With a saccharine smile, he motioned for the grunt behind him to grab the dim torch lamp outside the home.

“Do you need help?”

“No,” she said immediately. Ophelia turned slowly, just as her parents had taught her. People of the Low were a suspicious lot, and anyone who was from there knew you kept your distance when introducing yourself.

The loose rocks crunched under his boot.

“Well, we do,” he grinned wider, “and I think you’re the most qualified to do so.” Though his stance was relaxed and his tone polite, a sense of disquiet hung after every word.

Her gaze fixed to the de facto Leader with unease. Remembering her parent’s teachings, she shook it off to survey. When her eyes drifted, he tried to capture them again. But, all Ophelia could focus on was the seven shadows in front of her fading to black as the lamp light dimmed. This man was not alone, but she was.

She backpedaled to match his pace, and tripped over her father’s femur. A cloud of dry dust and decayed matter flew up to greet the man’s approach. In the haze, she groped for her shovel blindly. Coughing and wheezing, the Leader lunged forward as his subordinates completed a perimeter.

Against the wall of the cavern, Ophelia threw her arms up in lieu of the spade. At first she tried to reach his face, but her malnourished arms were too short. When she realized the futility, she began to thrash about. The man lifted her with ease as she clawed and screamed. It echoed and bounded down the empty labyrinth of Vissereth’s caverns.

Through grunts of frustration, he kept his rehearsed tone even. “We just want to take you” --cough cough-- “to a new home. Many people would appreciate your gifts.”

The words rang in her head as he found a better grip of her. Ophelia looked around with desperation for something, anything, to fend him off. But, her house was empty, and her parents were gone. As she surveyed the darkness cast upon her father’s unfinished grave by the seven, she went limp.

It’s rotting all around me.

The Leader’s hand jerked at her collar. He dragged her forward, uncaring of her bruising neck and releasing his thin veneer of gentleness.

Everything here...is rotten.

She shut her eyes in frustration. The dust once again kicked up around the Leader’s head as they walked. His breathing now belabored.

...rotten.

“Good, you know your place. Come along.” She felt a tug on her shirt and a faint glow beyond her eyelids drew her attention. He coughed harder.

Rotten.

Her eyes opened as the hand on her retracted. She nearly crumbled under her own sudden weight. A glowing blue cloud of fungus attached itself to the man’s throat. He scrapped and hissed, unable to speak, before falling to the ground. The bioluminescent mushrooms from the wall dug into his trachea.

Ophelia scrambled away from it. Her hands to her bruised neck and mouth in horror.

The other men closed in quickly to assist their leader, but it was too late. The fungi grew and stretched toward Ophelia. It wisped around her shaking legs and connected with the decaying form of her father.

Ophelia's jaw dropped and she screeched her throat raw. Her tears stung and blurred her vision. The glowing form engorged itself on the remains. The group turned their eyes past Ophelia. Contorting and twisting on the bones of her father and their fallen leader, the fungus grew until it was a single, sharpened point, as deadly as the stalagmites around them.

“Cut it down!” They drew their weapons.

“Leave me alone,” she bellowed.

Her arms flung forward, as did the spike that convulsed.

slish.

The front-most man gasped. His hands reached for his neck, fingers twitching. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth and down the spike. When it encased him, he crumpled in an instant. Whatever his final words were gargled out above him as, floating and waiting, the glowing fungus sought its next target.

The men froze, eyes glued to the still dripping membrane. When the frightened Ophelia wobbled, they scattered away. The dust they kicked up from their heavy boots began to glow and cloud around them. Hacking and wheezing filled the area, and Ophelia’s vision began to clear. Without tears, she watched.

One by one, the men collapsed with blue web-like material around their mouths, eyes, and throats. Their death throes muted by the beautiful blue and green hues of the fungi smothering them.

She slipped against the wall again and eased herself to her bottom. She couldn’t pull her eyes away. Each hurl and thrash made her tense more, until the last boot scrapped across the floor, and silence once more filled her caverns.

Ophelia shook. Her rage and fear fizzled into whimpers. The blue and green light dimmed and fell into a puddle at her feet. The fungus had killed people.

No. Ophelia knew better than that. She had killed them. She, and her gifts.

Adjusting her gaze to the dim light, she finally realized the ramifications. They wanted to use her powers to escape this place.

They wanted to see the sun.

Ophelia turned to her father’s unfinished grave. With a still shaking hand, she held it over him. Again the muscles melted, and the form diminished to bones. When it was done she retracted her still crackling fingers. It was easier that time. The easiest it had ever been. Ophelia twisted to the bodies before her house. One by one, she did the same until all that was left of them were their bones and boots.

I do, too.

Ophelia used the last of her strength to move to her crumbling, cavernous home. She fell onto her cot, barely enough energy to pull the blanket over her. Outside, over the bones and rot, the torch flickered and faded. She watched it as it dimmed into shadows, and the glow of the fungi emanated in her small, dark corner of the world. Her eyes focused on the halo and pretended it was solar, until the blackness of debilitation took her.

For days, her caverns were silent, except for the distant drip of the stalactites, a metronome to her final hours. Unable to move, Ophelia drifted in and out. The false-sunlight the only thing that she could focus on as her body groaned and begged for food. When she heard steps again, they were tepid.

“The fuck--” someone gasped.

The door blew open and a tall woman in an oversized fur coat filled it. Tension eased as their eyes adjusted and lifted a lantern into the home. Ophelia had enough energy to turn her head.

“You’re blocking…” she groaned, “...the sun.”

The woman moved to the edge of her bed and pulled out a bar of gold. She placed it near Ophelia.

“Do you want to see real sunlight,” she asked and smiled. Her teeth were golden and brilliant.

Ophelia nodded, and the Woman with the Golden Smile snapped her fingers.

Now, Ophelia wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked up to the brilliant, blue sky, to the white of clouds, brighter than clean bones. She smiled when she felt the breeze wiggle through the strands of her hair.

She turned back to the skeleton in the Manchester's garden. The no-named girl, now without a face. Ophelia looked the skull over, as she tried to remember the golden curls of their hair and the freckles she had seen. She thought of this as the soil filled in the eye sockets and nasal cavity.

When there was nothing but freshly turned dirt, she reached into her bag and pulled out a container. She pressed her fingers into the soil. With another wave of her hands, stems sprouted. A hydrangea opened. Ophelia pulled off her mask and inhaled deeply.

With a single snip of her clippers, she held a bloom in palm.

Then, she stood and knocked the dirt off her hands. The warmth washed over her. So much that she pulled off the fichu wrapped around her neck and chest. Her head tilted back and bathed in it.

Until it ached.

Sun, for just a little while longer.