Marrow and Marigold
fantasy◐ MatureVeska set the silent rib down and reached for the next body in the yard instead. Work was work, and the dead kept coming. But when her thumb touched the new femur, it too stayed quiet. Same faint gray line. Her stomach turned cold. This was not one strange death. Someone was hiding many.
Veska followed the bodies backward. All eleven silent dead had passed through one place before reaching her: the town's free soup kitchen, run by a gentle old healer everyone trusted. She did not want to believe it. But the bones did not lie, and they all pointed to the same kind face.
What happens next?
2 ways forwardVeska visited the soup kitchen and ate a bowl herself, slowly, watching. She saw the old healer slip something gray into one customer's portion. Marigold poison. Veska set down her spoon. "You feed the poor and you bury them in my flowers," she said. The healer smiled sadly. "They were going to die anyway. I only chose when." The watch took her before dusk.