Jo Hawley-Norris’ funeral took place on an usual winter day. Thick, grey clouds hide the sky. The wind is subdued, yet cold.
A great crowd gathers in the local graveyard. There are so many people, the graveyard feels awkwardly cramped. There aren’t usually many people that would come here. There haven’t been many famour people buried here.
As the eulogy is given, the people bow their heads. Though they are all in black, those that attend are dressed in a surprisingly diverse manner.
The dedicated Jo-fans would be able to spot it immediately: The lady with regal black pearls laying the flowers is The Empress, her friend by her side Temperance; the girls with shell tiaras upon their brows, weeping in silence, are Manta and Grey; a mother and a daughter, both in Victorian mourning dresses, Tethnda and Ninse; an officer with his police dog wearing a pair of black wings, Chief Warden Justice Archie and Phai… Jo had always had a fondness of larpers and cosplayers, though they only ever played tabletops. They said once in an interview that some of their best works were inspired by a group of friendly larpers they once encountered in the woods, though they never revealed what system those larpers were playing at the time.
“I am a great believer in collaborative storytelling,” they wrote in the intro to The Collective Works of Jo, “some of my best friends showed me how the stories we tell may save or doom worlds.”
And surrounded by characters who have gained a life of their own, readers, and friends, Jo’s coffin is laid in the ground. Slowly, slowly, soil softly covers the white wood.
The gathered people trickles away, eventually returning to their lives. The last few staying behind now come to pay their final respect. They were old, not as old as Jo but traces of white can be seen in their hairs. One in a black trenchcoat bows to the tombstone, and as he steps back, he draws the hood up once more to hide his face. One is dressed like a normal uni professor, though when she bends down to lay the flowers, a few squirrels scruttled out of her coat pocket. They look at the tombstone and the flowers confusedly, until their owner picks them all up again. The last stands far to one side, a funeral shroud covering her face. But a small lizard jumps down from her shoulder, and solemnly lays a piece of coral at Jo’s grave.
Softly, rain falls.
Just another winter day.