Starglow Basin [m] vengeance is hereby mine

it was horrible to have her here.
it was wonderful to see her again.
red, red, red. redbird. redblood.
colt remembered, and the ghostly bones sank behind whatever passed for flesh in hell. purgatory, more like. the thing about being dead was that over the heads of the ones you missed, you could see their own date.
their own date.
colt drew a breath. something like it. he flung out his arm. couldn't she see, the wraithlike skeleton inside his wrist? but she spoke like he'd never died. briggs spat. wait. he couldn't, confound it all.
she was rail-thin and red-eyed. colt snorted upward at the sun and then set his still-vibrant crimson eyes on her. "i told myself when i was out here i'd be back fer yew."
a rakish grin. "nothin' keeps me down, redbird," colt said in a low voice still full of death-smoke. "not even passin' on over t'glory."
colt hadn't even remembered the couple of days prior. the last thing remaining of the life before was entering this basin and seeing scorpions scuttle out of it. the end was the sun, engulfing him, mind, body and spirit.
passing on over to glory, indeed, but no pine box for this unfortunate. them scorpions and beetles and rattlers, they'd gnawed him clean and left him to a fitting end.
now, a wolven jacob marley, he pointed at the place where what was left of him lay. "yer gonna die out here so far, red."