06-30-2017, 09:46 PM
Pinay didn't respond, at first. A wind kicked up, kissing her scarred face with flakes of charcoal and sending wavy wisps of gray dust skittering across the ashen dunes. The healer began to speak again, but its patient interrupted.
"Please," she wheezed, barely whispering through the lump in her throat. "Don't."
Hovering behind her, Mothra stared, looking down at the elf with her mutifaceted rainbow eyes. Reluctantly, the hybrid prime pulled its hand away. Its white robes and feathery antennae fluttered in the breeze.
"... I understand. I have business in the valley anyway - things I need to attend to in order to prevent Ghidorah from doing this again."
It began to drift away, floating backwards across the fields of ruin, its billowing robes evoking ancestral tales of diaphanous spirits. "I'll leave food and water in the hut, and my servants will arrive here soon. If you need anything at all, just call for them - they'll hear you. I'll return soon, Pinay."
Pinay absorbed her savior's words without comment. Several minutes later there was a distant rustling sound, and a sudden sense of vacancy overtook the clearing once more. The elf was alone again.
She rose to her feet. Her legs and the hems of her crimson robe were caked with ash, but she didn't care. The firestorm consuming her thoughts had begun to contract, growing hotter as it shrank, forming sharp, icy, mechanical edges in the mental spaces it left behind. Slowly they whirred into measured, painful, motion.
She was the only survivor. That meant there were things she had to do.
Pinay didn't gather the bodies.
Leaving aside the impracticality of digging through mounds of ashes and fallen trees in futile search for hundreds of corpses, she would just have to bury them again anyway. In time this forest would heal, and her people would be a part of it. Besides, Oskinder death-rituals were tribal events. They were times for the various clans to come together, to remember the one who had passed, and celebrate their return to the earth - but there was nobody left for Pinay to grieve with, and what few ceremonies and remembrances there were which could be performed by just one elf were woefully inadequate.
A jangling selection of alternative options rattled and clicked through the rudimentary machinery of her trauma-forged mind - but only one of them felt right.
She wandered until dusk, picking and digging through the ashes and debris for representatives from each of her tribe's four clans: the Dalren, who kept secrets; The Peshti, who knew woodcraft better than anyone else; The Oskine, who were insufferable, but also clever - and Pinay's clan, the Uln, known for their mastery of nature-magic and skill in battle. There had been five clans once, before Diablo's war, supporting each other, like the fingers of a hand...
All gone now. All five, gone....
She was careful not to dwell on the faces, friends, family, rivals and enemies wearing the masks of sleeping strangers. The elf checked their legends, their personal jewelry denoting their various relationships and skills instead, until she had gathered a complete set of Oskinder clan bracelets - circlets of obsidian or jade, amber or malachite interwoven with blue glass beads. As the sun dipped below the horizon, she sat down among the ashes and carefully unraveled the bracelets, removing the blue beads from each, then re-wove them and put them on, two on each arm, in no particular order.
Under more normal circumstances there was only one reason for an Oskinder to wear the jewelry of the dead - it was a sign that somebody close to them had unfinished business, and they had been elected, as a valued friend or family-member, to see it concluded. In those cases it was typically more specific parts of the dead elf's legend that were assumed by the surviving party - earings, or talismans from the deceased's hair, with certain beads removed to indicate that the owner was no longer among the living. When the business was finished, the elf would remove the excess jewelry and burn it in a small stone bowl, then sprinkle the ashes upon the owner's grave.
Pinay didn't ever intend to take these bracelets off. They bore the stolen futures of her entire tribe, and they felt lighter than she thought they should - especially because by donning them, she'd taken on a terrible responsibility:
In the case of murder, wearing the victims jewelry carried the burden of seeing justice done.
"Please," she wheezed, barely whispering through the lump in her throat. "Don't."
Hovering behind her, Mothra stared, looking down at the elf with her mutifaceted rainbow eyes. Reluctantly, the hybrid prime pulled its hand away. Its white robes and feathery antennae fluttered in the breeze.
"... I understand. I have business in the valley anyway - things I need to attend to in order to prevent Ghidorah from doing this again."
It began to drift away, floating backwards across the fields of ruin, its billowing robes evoking ancestral tales of diaphanous spirits. "I'll leave food and water in the hut, and my servants will arrive here soon. If you need anything at all, just call for them - they'll hear you. I'll return soon, Pinay."
Pinay absorbed her savior's words without comment. Several minutes later there was a distant rustling sound, and a sudden sense of vacancy overtook the clearing once more. The elf was alone again.
She rose to her feet. Her legs and the hems of her crimson robe were caked with ash, but she didn't care. The firestorm consuming her thoughts had begun to contract, growing hotter as it shrank, forming sharp, icy, mechanical edges in the mental spaces it left behind. Slowly they whirred into measured, painful, motion.
She was the only survivor. That meant there were things she had to do.
***
Pinay didn't gather the bodies.
Leaving aside the impracticality of digging through mounds of ashes and fallen trees in futile search for hundreds of corpses, she would just have to bury them again anyway. In time this forest would heal, and her people would be a part of it. Besides, Oskinder death-rituals were tribal events. They were times for the various clans to come together, to remember the one who had passed, and celebrate their return to the earth - but there was nobody left for Pinay to grieve with, and what few ceremonies and remembrances there were which could be performed by just one elf were woefully inadequate.
A jangling selection of alternative options rattled and clicked through the rudimentary machinery of her trauma-forged mind - but only one of them felt right.
She wandered until dusk, picking and digging through the ashes and debris for representatives from each of her tribe's four clans: the Dalren, who kept secrets; The Peshti, who knew woodcraft better than anyone else; The Oskine, who were insufferable, but also clever - and Pinay's clan, the Uln, known for their mastery of nature-magic and skill in battle. There had been five clans once, before Diablo's war, supporting each other, like the fingers of a hand...
All gone now. All five, gone....
She was careful not to dwell on the faces, friends, family, rivals and enemies wearing the masks of sleeping strangers. The elf checked their legends, their personal jewelry denoting their various relationships and skills instead, until she had gathered a complete set of Oskinder clan bracelets - circlets of obsidian or jade, amber or malachite interwoven with blue glass beads. As the sun dipped below the horizon, she sat down among the ashes and carefully unraveled the bracelets, removing the blue beads from each, then re-wove them and put them on, two on each arm, in no particular order.
Under more normal circumstances there was only one reason for an Oskinder to wear the jewelry of the dead - it was a sign that somebody close to them had unfinished business, and they had been elected, as a valued friend or family-member, to see it concluded. In those cases it was typically more specific parts of the dead elf's legend that were assumed by the surviving party - earings, or talismans from the deceased's hair, with certain beads removed to indicate that the owner was no longer among the living. When the business was finished, the elf would remove the excess jewelry and burn it in a small stone bowl, then sprinkle the ashes upon the owner's grave.
Pinay didn't ever intend to take these bracelets off. They bore the stolen futures of her entire tribe, and they felt lighter than she thought they should - especially because by donning them, she'd taken on a terrible responsibility:
In the case of murder, wearing the victims jewelry carried the burden of seeing justice done.