Not Kingsfoil, You Fools

Edith stared down at her body on the table while those that called themselves her disciples scurried about performing various preparations. Some were crushing herbs over her head, others were assembling candles around her. She sighed.

"It's like they didn't even bother to listen." She said to the hulking form of Death beside her.

He shrugged.

"They're all too young, I think. None of them were thinking about the grave. Not that it really matters, none of it's true. But it's the principle of the matter..." She trailed off, scowling at the people fussing over her corpse.

Death raised his non-existent eyebrows. "Mother Edith, High Priestess of the Thirteen Hives, a non-believer?"

She shrugged back. "And Mother Theresa was an athiest. These things happen."

Death chuckled silently to himself.

"After a while, you realize something about magic." She moved about the table, examining the faces of the people buzzing about her body. "It's not about energy, or spirituality, or alchemy. It's about results." She nodded to herself after looking into each face for long enough. "The thing that matters, when you work a spell or craft a talisman, it not what it is made of or how it is created, but what it does. And if what it does improves the quality of a life, then it has worked. Magic or not."

Death watched quizzically as she moved from disciple to disciple.

"If I had a nickel for every potion of courage I helped some kid brew to ask out their sweetheart, or every curse that caused someone to seek forgiveness from the one they wronged..." She paused in her rounds and looked down at her body. "Well I'd still be dead. But I'd have died in nicer clothes."

Edith and Death shared a smile.

"The placebo effect. It's a wonderful thing." She sighed, and a sense of contentment radiated out from her.

"If you knew it was all a façade, why keep it up?" Death asked, genuinely intrigued.

"Because the façade works." She smirked. "Best one I've found for getting people out of their own heads, and out of their own ways."

"Hm." Death nodded slowly.

"Case in point. I was so disappointed in this lot," she gestured to the disciples currently chanting some ancient ritual almost correctly, "because I felt like they hadn't learned what I tried to teach them. But while they might not be getting it right, you and I both know that doesn't really matter."

Death shrugged innocently.

"What matters is that they're here. That they came, to honour my wishes. To do right by me. And that they miss me." She smiled, and let her hand rest on one of their shoulders lovingly.

Death hefted his heavy scythe, and rested it gently on his shoulder. Edith understood what that meant, and turned to depart.

As they walked away, she cast one last glance over her shoulder to see her disciples consoling each other, and becoming closer for it.

Just as planned.

She took Death's bony hand in her own, and the two of them walked off into forever.