Bitch, Malachi kept tucked between his teeth.

Least his cigarette hadn’t bent to the point of breaking. He kept it fixed at the corner of his mouth, rested between the frown that curved his lips. When he pulled out another match and struck it against the church wall, he considered pressing it into Hurley’s hair.

But – no. The smell. The smell would be awful.

It relit his cigarette instead. Burnt itself out on his tongue, and then dropped uselessly to the cobblestone or whatever the fuck the stones beneath their feet were.

Smoke suffocated his next inhale, thick and pungent. Malachi’s tongue glided across the sharp edges of his teeth as if that’d push the scent out, but all it did was agitate the blackened spot left by the match. His low hum sounded as dissatisfied as he looked.

Mummies. Mummies were… well, he could not say that he’d ever seen one up close, but they were not what he meant. Neither did the mortuaries interest him.

A far cry from the indulgent, luxurious fashion in which the parasite enjoyed a cigar – like it was as natural and expected of him as breathing, like it was a measure of status, of wealth, of disregard – Malachi smoked his cigarette like a man in desperate need of distraction. Of something to occupy his mouth, to push with his tongue, to bite if it so displeased him. He exhaled from the side that Hurley was not standing on.

“I conduct a lot of funerals,” Malachi non-answered in turn.

“They say you’re not supposed to burn them,” he added on, seemingly without purpose. Perhaps it was.

He turned to face the parasite – which is to say, he angled his body to block the wind for him. More of a habit than smoking was.

“What are you here for? To pay your…” what had that other one said?

“Ah- to pay your regards to the poor, dear widow?”