The closer and closer to Hatharida they came, the heavier and heavier the snow became. As she had squinted against the wind, Vera felt as if riding had also become a sort of digging. The rhythmic walk of the horse, the painful gulps of air as the wind stung the back of her throat, the burn of muscles leaning against the elements, the striving to either have rest or to deliver rest... burials always clung to her thoughts. The opening of the earth. The cold faces of the dead. She remembered all of the eyes she'd covered in soil. Their stares cropped up when she was awake, when she was asleep, when she was mending an arm that belonged to a living, breathing being. She even remembered the ghosts of the missing, ones likely dead that she could not find. How many villages had she visited like that one? How many more would she walk? In the blizzard shoving itself upon them all, Vera's soul felt the thin unforgiving fingers of Amasa. Graves did not save spirits. How could they? How could something like soil save the substance of a life? Burials only existed as a comfort to the living.

Vera wondered, then, if she shared her memories with the Riders around her...would they understand? She met Raed's eyes as they pitched a tent in the cursed weather. He barely held her gaze for a second before he looked away. As if it were a part of her strange talents, Vera knew the answer before she asked the question. Even in the white, she was on her own.

( .... )

The cloak felt tighter than normal. Constricting him. So he cast it aside. There it lay draped upon bony branches, ridiculous pale things that belonged to juvenile birch trees. They dotted the river, caressed it without possessing it, so that Eragos had to wonder at their sincerity. It didn't matter. There was a great deal at that moment which felt as though it didn't matter. The camp had passed by him in a haze. A haze brought on by shoulders that ached. And a heart that was heavier than normal. He felt as if every corpse he'd carried into its final resting place, dug by the hands of one White Rider after another, was resting on his back after all. Weighing him down. It was impossible to tell if he could even draw his sword. Let alone swing it, or do damage with it, the sort of damage a dragon ought to do. He wanted someone to kill just then. Someone to pay in blood for what had been done. One wasn't enough, one corpse to answer for an entire city.

( How many was enough? )