| Who | Hannah |
|---|---|
| What | Remembering the Fallen |
| When | The night after. |
| Where | Southern Weyr |
Shining ice-and-violet, it lies crumpled on the floor turned to rags. Unable to sleep, with bare feet pressed to the cold, stone floor of my weyr, I stand before this garment so hastily discarded. My arms are wrapped around myself, the shivers suddenly quaking through my body like the very earth were shaking apart. I feel like I’m bleeding out.
It’s so stupid, but looking at my gather dress it’s like the whole world has fallen apart. Shattered like glass, with the remains at my feet. I shouldn’t be crying over a stupid dress. It’s just sisal and gossamer silk and tiny stones woven into a thing that’s been trashed. It should be trash. I should throw it out, but I can’t bear to turn away from it. To resign it to the final death.
It’s not like the last dress I wore. That got ripped in the midst of the aftermath of Dhiammarath’s flight. That memory… It was a goodone.
Teeth bite hard into my bottom lip, drawing blood. I’m bleeding out. I can’t protect anyone, everyone. My weyr. My Weyr.
The shuddering sob takes me by surprise. The fingernails of my hands dig deep into the skin of my upper arms in an effort to not scream. To not wake the weyr with my grief. In reality, I make only the slightest of gasps, but it matters naught. Th’seus is with the other wingleaders, formulating a plan with Q’fex. Lendai has fallen into an exhausted slumber. We’re all getting up in a few hours. Bailey will be here soon. I can’t be crying over a stupid dress.
Resolutely, I gather it up gently. I gather it up like I would if there were limp limbs in between the folds of cloth. As if shoulders and a head loll gently to the side. As if there would be legs and feet to be careful of and not just a torn and dirty skirt. Everything is dirty. Everything is dirt. They’re gone, but I can’t consign them to the final death.
So I take my little bundle and walk out of my weyr. Bailey will wait. I won’t be alone. Dhiammarath’s presence is ever comforting, there to protect me against the worst of the sinking feeling that starts in my breast and drops down to the pit of my stomach. I have reached deep inside… only to find my heart still beating. I am bleeding out.
Across the weyr, I steal. Through the entrance way until I am in the clearing. Moonlight spills down from high above. I am in all white; a wraith with an ice-and-violet offering strewn across my arms. My precious cargo. Stepping off the path, my toes curl into soft loam and grass but that doesn’t stop me. I am not stopped by the darkness, by the dangers of the jungle, by the fear of anything. My purpose is single-minded: to get to the spot beneath the shade-tree of the ancient trunk. There, I gently set down the dress and dig into the dirt.
It’s not about the damn dress. It’s about the remembered screams. The remembered fear as those who died passed into between forever. This is a way of remembering. Of remembering not just the agony, but the faces that I barely knew. I can see them so clearly now.
Into the night I work, feeling the pain of the threadscore across my back. It’s a shallow hole that I dig, but it’s enough to tenderly lay the garment in it. The cloth shines in the pale light of the moons. The cloth of silver-and-ice glitters, carrying some beauty even in the dirty remains of death. Like the memories we all carry, good or bad.
So with little ceremony, I bury the dress that I wore to the gather. The tears that slide down my cheeks are real and felt. Not just for the dead but for the living. For what’s to come. For what will come. And when it’s all said and done, I stand. My knees are dirty. My hands are dirty. My hair is wild. I am bleeding out. I’m bleeding out for you.
I close my eyes.
I take it in. The feelings that stir on the wind.
The innocence is gone.
I feel the hands on my shoulders that cause my eyelids to open. To seek the eyes so familiar to me now.
“Oh Bailey…” I whisper, suddenly adrift. Hanging onto the arms that bolster. The torment unleashed.
I echo Khalyssrielth, involuntarily. Thread is coming, has come. But more comes. This… this is nothing, compared to what’s coming.
It’s only just begun.
It is exactly like my memories, played out anew.
I gather it up like I would if there were limp limbs in between the folds of cloth.
Reverence. A shroud. And something gruesome in those limbs.
I wonder how many people stared at their clothes that night, not able to process.
<3