Chapter Text
It is dark.
It is a night made for blankets and braziers, for mugs of spiced tea and sneaking into his parent’s bed. Instead, he stands before the pyre, pressed to his mother’s side as the flames release his father to his next life.
The news had come days ago, a messenger whispering apologies and pressing a tattered, but familiar cowl into his mother’s hands. He had watched her dissolve into tears and listened when she told him what happened. He saw the neighbors come and go, felt their tender pats on his head, and ate the food they offered (though he did not taste it). He had seen the men ferry his father into the house; watched as they washed the blood and grime from the unmoving body and wrapped it in a simple white gown. He had helped to stack the kindling below the pyre, then clung to his mother’s hand as the flint was struck and the Mystic chanted the releasing ritual.
All along he waits, convinced his father would wake up any minute, laughing at the all the fuss around his nap and teasing everyone for worrying. He waits for himself to wake up, for his mother to smooth back his hair and for his father to mess it back up; their presence reminding him that the past few days were nothing but a terrible, awful dream. But as the flames grow and the smoke rises high in the sky, and his father still doesn’t wake up, it hits him all at once.
His father is gone.
Tears spill over his cheeks, his chest aching as he gasps for air around the sobs that claim his body. The flames burn hot, but all he feels is the aching cold inside him where his father used to be. His mother, who had stood pale but composed through the ceremony, crumbles at his grief. Dropping to her knees, she pulls him close, silent tears dropping from her face as they mourn together. There is nothing to say.
It is dark, and although they are together, they are alone.