BOOM! update time!! Arthur spoke up. "So then... Are we going to the showing?" "The showing of what?" Lucas asked. "The showing of the dead. Once a month everyone in the village was supposed to go to the village courtyard to see all the people who have died. Most of the time they just use pictures, but sometimes they might show the corpse. That is, if they can find it." I replied. It's compulsory, but most people don't go if they can. If you don't go you apparently get punished. Painfully. I stopped going when my family was killed. They wouldn't have used my parent's corpses, they were too mangled. But they would use my brother's. I couldn't bear going. I couldn't face what I had done. It was clear he was shot by a person, but it didn't matter to them. All that mattered was that he was dead and put up on display. I wasn't punished when I stopped. They probably thought I had run away or been killed too. Or maybe they just didn't bother now that hardly anyone came. Lucas is lucky they don't have this where he comes from. "I suppose we can if you really want to..." Lucas said to Tom in a slightly reluctant tone. Ten minutes later, we are on our way to the courtyard. I turned my collar up to conceal my identity, hoping people didn't recognize yesterday's thief. Me, Lucas and Cassy managed to sneak in undetected, but Arthur just walked up and signed in. I wonder why he didn't stop going? It would be a lot easier. We met up with him and looked at the deceased. There were pictures of two young girls, a teenage boy, a few adults and some other ones. I looked at the corpses with Arthur while Lucas and Cassy had gone to pay their respects to the picture of a girl Cassy had known when she was younger. We were looking at a particularly gory corpse when Arthur went pale and a look of recognition came on his face. "Daniel..." "Who's Daniel?" "My... My cousin..." I looked at the corpse more thoroughly. It was a young boy, about 4. One of the eyes had been gouged out, but the other one had the same bright blue as Arthurs eyes. The few strands of hair that weren't clotted with blood were a light blonde color. The rest of the body was a complete mess. I turned to see Arthur on his knees. Was this why he went? To see if anybody else he knew was dead? I looked at the pictures and saw a man and a woman next to each other, the top of a child's head in-between them, just visible at the bottom of the picture. Arthur was already crying too hard to get up, so I decided not to tell him his aunt and uncle were dead too. That would just be cruel. I knelt down beside him and comforted him until Lucas and Cassy came back. I got up to speak to them. I opened my mouth to explain why Arthur was curled up in the mud and sobbing when someone behind me said my name. "Stephanie!?"