The swamp was not a home to sympathy.

Teeming with darkness, the water stained the mud surrounding it with cloudy shadows. Occasionally, a lily pad would glide across the surface of the water, the flower’s perfume battling the smell of rot that hung in the air like heavy sighs.

The village near this swamp could be described in a similar way: slowly decaying. There was never a moment that was not shrouded with disease, and, eventually, death.

The man in charge of collecting the village’s dead had a fondness for women who possessed extraordinary beauty. These were the women who had stardust in their eyes and hair that fell down their backs in delicate tumbles.

Many a maiden with such appearance, once dead, were taken to the swamp, where the man gently laid them down in the water and watched their body be pulled under. Once the maiden was too far gone to see any longer, he would return to the village, where he was greeted by low murmurs and the soft sound of dragging feet.

Later, once the day faded, these women would float to the top of the water, their eyes pale and wide. They’d flail about, crying into the wind, begging to be saved.

The women already above the surfaces scowled at these loud nuisances. Eventually, one would pull the thrashing woman out of the water, but that was as far as their kindness often went.

To be dead was a concept some accepted more easily than others. Though everyone required mourning, a vast majority understood that they would only know the pulse of the water from then on.

Still, there were the naïve women, those who still clung to the ideals of life. They put the drifting lilies in their hair as a final effort to be beautiful, and paraded about, ignoring their common grave. Many found comfort in this, but usually the feeling faded into obscurity.

After all, most of the women realized, beauty doesn’t matter much when you’re dead.