Koe Tidraq (discant) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-05-31 17:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | koe tidraq, oaths, vedette uthral |
dawn (vedette)
It was precisely as Koe thought it would be.
The hardest parts of the journey had been the bodies. Souls that deserved rest, and proper burial, dragged behind a pair of horses who were anything but pack animals. Horon's had been the more difficult - and yet they managed to bring him back to Red, armor and all. Horon had never discussed with Koe a preference. That he be buried, or burned, or even receive a water burial. Nothing at all to suggest that he wanted or needed anything after his death. Yet it would have been a cruel sensibility, leaving him in that cavern to rot away along with the creature who had ruined so much of his life. Wrapped in a shroud, with nothing adorning his body save those scales of which he'd been so proud. The sled they'd rigged, out of camp supplies Horon had insisted upon bringing, was holding up well enough.
Then there was the son.
It was an oddity of his existence that he'd never been forced to go to a person, whomever they might be, and inform them that their world was ended. That everyone that person cared about was passed on to another world. One of the reasons he so despised battle and conflict, he supposed. One of the reasons he tried never to break his word. It was a fractious thing, full of emptiness even as it pormised life. And the more he considered it the more Koe wondered if he could ever have been said to live by those rules. Soldiers might have done this, perhaps. Or priests. He was neither in the traditional sense. And he could not help but feel true fear at the idea of watching life leave the eyes of the living.
Horon's son. He, too, was dragging behind on a sled. He, too, was wrapped in the manner most befitting the dead. Koe knew the armor - resting so carefully atop one of the wrapped corpses - would give them away. What he did not expect was the outpouring of citizens. Souls emptying into the streets to watch as they rode by. There was no hard pace to keep up. Only the fear that Horon's head would separate from his body, roll out from beneath the canvas. Unlikely. He just had to hope that somewhere beneath all of this was the will he needed to say what had to be said. That Horon died fighting for Mirram, for the honor of his children dead before their time. It was not meant to be comfort. At least, not today.
Muddy streets flung brown into Red's legs, into the proud boots of Koe's favor. There was no dust today, but no snow - at this lower elevation snow had become rain. Filthy homefronts nevertheless looked inviting. He wanted to disappear into one of them, and pretend that he had a normal life. This was not his duty. Yet it was his duty. There was a song that now was finished, and Koe needed to tell her. Needed to play that song. Gentle cold wind washed over him. Kept the exhaustion from his face, from his eyes. He could not deny that it was present. Yet he denied its effect on him all the same. Mirram's life was a shambles. Koe, at least, could rest soon. What would rest look like for a widow and mother to a dead son?
Like nothing he could imagine.
There was no comfort in the knowledge that Mirram was waiting on her stoop. There was less comfort in the knowledge that she knew, must have known. Her face said everything a single scream could not, yet she let out both, before she staggered down the stoop in anguish. It was not the armored body onto which she fell first, but the smaller one, unmarked by anything save a single gloved hand emerging from beneath the canvas rag that covered him. Galon, for his father. To lose a child was a pain too horrible to be contemplated. His mind was not great enough or large enough to encompass that possibility. In his mind Onainat would live forever. It had always been so. And he would not let that stop now, nor change.
Not in his mind.
Not elsewhere.
"Horon is dead!" someone called. "Galon is dead!"
Mirram's wailing grew ever more insistent. She could not stop the broken broken sobs that were piling out of her throat, nor the clutching hands that refused to peel back the canvas covering even as they refused to let go of her dead son's body. Koe could not stop the rimming of his eyes with tears, nor the hitch in his throat. A sensation unlike any other; you knew before you made your next sound that it would come out wrong. Even the clearing of a throat was not effective in such a situation. All he could do, then, was stare at her body as it collapsed even further into her son. Stare, and wait for something. Anything. From her.
"Tell me it's a lie," Mirram was shouting, near-hysterical. "Tell me it's a lie!"
There was no lie. He could not admit such a thing.
But there was no comfort in his voice, either.
He said nothing.