The Cold Passed on Reluctantly

As travelers, death follows us on every adventure, even though adventure is our momentary way to escape it. While no one can escape death, St. Michael’s Church has embraced it.
My breath was so heavy that it concealed the sound of my footsteps. The clay floor absorbed most of the sound and light around us. As the guide tapped my shoulder, our shadows played tag in the flickering lights strung along the walls. She gestured to push past me; alluding that a 13 year old couldn’t navigate 16th century tunnels. Down here, the cold passed on reluctantly so I began to kick a rock along as a distraction.
“Pouring salt and lime,” the guide attempted to explain in a heavy Austrian accent.
“She’s making us margaritas,” translated my brother, as he kicked my rock into the darkness below.
As frequent foreigners, my family and I had grown accustomed to confusion while travelling. And this mysterious underground in Vienna had been no different. But, as I searched for the rock, the underground suddenly became illuminated in clarity. A few feet away, what my brother and I had kicked back and forth, had cast a shadow on the ground.
“It’s a bone!” my yell tapered off into an echo.
We had entered into the belly of an expansive chamber. My family glanced all around me and what had been hidden by our shadows had now come alive in the crevice walls. Bone layered upon bone used like stacked bricks for the catacomb’s walls. Our stunned silence began to feel stiflingly over inhabited.
“There must be thousands of them,” whispered my mother.
“Mummies,” answered the guide, observing us coolly.
As I turned to acknowledge her, my breath grew heavy in my ears again. For at her side was an unfathomable tiny coffin. The first thing I saw were her eyelashes. They were long, like that of a doll, who’s closed eyes could be awakened by rolling her up. She was three years old and lovingly preserved with a delicate, secretive smile. Her hair was curled around her cheeks with a crown of flowers of a halo. Her burial façade was so meticulous, that by leaning into it’s suffocating intimacy; you thought your breath would elicit her into giggles.
She was holding on to her secret close, tied up with her bouquet of potpourri. She was arrested in her development but held a secret that toils under our impermanence. A secret that enviable watched me open the catacomb doors and return to the land of the living.
As my family and I left St. Michael’s Church that evening, the cold passed on reluctantly.