faderift | [open] you'll come back when it's over

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[open] you'll come back when it's over

WHO friends and family of Sina Dahlasanor
WHAT: post-mortem interactions
WHEN: the evening of 7 Haring and onward
WHERE: the infirmary and elsewhere
NOTES: CW for death and illness. Apart from the main post I will not be tagging in. This thread is for wake/funeral/burial arrangements and anything else you guys want to play out pertaining to Sina's death, so feel free to make top levels or do whatever else!

It was the evening of the sixth when Galadriel paid her visit to Sina, after which the girl became mostly unresponsive. Still breathing, she slept through the night and day, waking up in the late afternoon just long enough to reach for Nari's hand and whisper something to her before falling away again. The candles grew dim and the shadows long before she stirred again, pulling in a last rasping breath, her lips moving soundlessly to form two unknown words as she exhaled and fell still.

It was hardly ten minutes later when, witnessed by friends and clan, the glowing green patch of magic that had plagued them all for the last couple years simply... vanished from the elf's sternum, as though it had never been there. Lying small and wasted away, destroyed from the inside out, anyone who looked at Sina for the first time would not understand what had killed her.

The room was then vacated by all but Keeper Thalia and Sina's parents, a balding large-eyed man with a quivering chin and a plain, sandy-haired woman, neither appearing all that much more vital than their late daughter. It was they who prepared the body for the resulting rites, silent and weary, their miracle baby laid to an untimely rest.

Out in the hall, Nari found herself surrounded in a collective embrace by a sea of russet-haired Dalish, her family. Even in a time like this, being with their daughter and sister brought comfort, and they hoped she might find some as well.
Sedi and Nymii stood as sentries on either side of the door, permitting only mourners and scowling down otherwise unrelated onlookers.

At last, at long last, it was over.

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i. the death watch and right after

Fern has never watched someone die before. Going through it this once, she decides she never wants to experience it again, because long before Sina draws her last breath, Fern has hit a wall of numbness that keeps her from feeling any of the things she'd expected to feel. Quiet and out of place (or so she feels) she hides at the back of the room as all of Sina's family and friends--her clan--cluster around her bedside; because that is their place, to be close to her.

When the end finally arrives, Fern doesn't even notice it at first. It's only the soft gasps and cries of those closest to Sina who witness the fading of the shard in her chest that clues her in to what has happened--and that's when the wall of depthless, intolerable anguish hits her like a wave. Catching her breath, Fern draws her hands up to her face, then quickly turns and slips out of the room into the corridor.

ii. approaching nari

It is some hours after Sina's death when, in a lull in the activity, Fern approaches Nari. It hadn't seemed right, before, to accost her while she was surrounded by family and clan... and Fern's composure had fled her at the worst time. Now, with red but at least dry eyes, she comes up to her side and places a gentle hand on her arm, looking up to her face wordlessly.

Pel approaches swiftly, carrying a six-month-old in a sling, balanced on her hip. Her steps slow when she sees Fern, her expression changing because she knows what those tears mean. She knows what a death watch is like. She knows what it looks like to slip away and cry a few tears away from the sight of the dying, because somehow it is unforgivable that a dying loved one see you cry for the loss. But this urgency is different.

Sina died.

Tears are already in her eyes when she reaches Fern. She doesn't know her, but she reaches out to wrap her arms around her.

Who is Fern to reject such an open-hearted gesture of kindness, of compassion? When Pel reaches for her, Fern goes into her arms without a word, muffling a cry of grief into the hands that still cover her mouth. Her shoulders shake with the effort it takes not to let her sobbing reach too far into the hallway; Maker, nothing has ever hurt like this, not even catching the Fade shard--

"She's gone," she manages to choke out tearfully.

Fern can't see it, but Pel mouths no. At the declaration, all the air goes out of her. Her eyes squeeze shut, knocking tears down onto her cheeks. Wordlessly, she pulls Fern down to the floor, leaning against the wall, and clings to her, Little Sina between them. No more strength is needed for standing or even sitting, only for grieving. Whoever this young woman is, she is hurting, and Pel is hurting.

"I saw--" she wheezes when she can, "--I saw her in the Fade. She must have been on her way out. She must have been just leaving."

She'll find it quite easy to draw Fern down to the ground with her; Fern's legs give out, and she curls against Pel, and little Sina, and cries. For a time that's all she does; it's all she's capable of.

"I'm sorry," she says breathlessly at last, starting to disentangle herself from Pel's arms, and wipes away tears from her eyes. "I don't--I don't even think I should have been in there, I'm not her clan..."

"What?" Pel pulls back, staring incredulously, and shakes her head. "Yes, you are. We're all her clan. And if she wanted you there, if you loved her like I did, you're my clan, too."

Little Sina reaches up to try to stick her fingers in Fern's mouth. Pel takes that little hand in hers and kisses her daughter's head.

"I'm Pel," she says hoarsely. "This is my daughter." Her breath comes faster, and she starts to cry again. "My daughter, Sina."

Was it love? Could it even have been called that? They'd only met for the first time just two months ago; could love form out of that so quickly?

Little Sina's fingers poking at her mouth startle her out of her maudlin thoughts, and he can't help but smile a little, if awkwardly. Babies aren't Her Thing, but they're cute, and sweet--and even knowing that this child shares a name with Sina isn't enough to chase the smile completely off her face.

It's good, she decides, that there's someone still around to carry on her legacy.

"Hi there, Sina," she whispers softly and offers her hand out to the baby, to be gummed or played with however she sees fit. "I'm Fern."

Sina takes one of Fern's fingers, eyes wide, exploring and experimenting as children of her age do. Pel smiles, salt tracks down her cheeks, face red, but something beautiful has come of this devastating moment.

"When she was born, Sina bathed her, like the tradition my clan had. Usually the Keeper will bathe a newborn in water and halla-milk, the first bath they ever have. Sina...was so very, very different from anyone. She was so gentle, but there was steel underneath."

"Were you part of her clan?" Fern asks softly; now that she's gained some measure of control over her feelings, the questions come pouring out of her, questions she'd have asked Sina herself in due course if... if they'd been given the chance. "Did you know her very well? I only just met her in the late summer, but she's--" She catches herself, swallows. "...she was the most lovely person I've ever met."

"Yes. And no." Pel lifts the baby out of the sling and sits her on her knee. "I was Clan Ashara's First, before Sorrel. I left them to research elven history. I've known Sina for more than two years now. We've been through so much together. I...I'm going to miss her so much."

After being with Korrin, after attempting to get herself into a state where she can speak to other people without her throat closing or her chin wobbling, Araceli starts looking for Fern. Her head is pounding and her eyes are raw by the time she does, outside fortunately and away from everyone with fewer eyes, less noise.

Taking a shuddering breath, she sets a hand on Fern's arm, opens hers in an offer; this is a girl she invited into her home, into her life, if she hadn't already felt responsible in some way she'd feel it now.

"Breathe," she just about gets out as if she should be taking her own advice here. "You were there. You were with her."

"Breathe. You were there. You were with her."

"I can't--" Pressed into her arms, Fern still has one hand held to her face, muffling her weak sobs as she cries against Araceli's neck and shoulders. Each breath is a labour to pull in, and it never seems to be enough, and each time she breathes out again all she can think of is how still Sina was, at the end. So still, so quiet--

Sina's soft, misty eyes, her gentle words, a stolen kiss, "Oh, da'len--" she'd said--

"I don't want to feel anymore," she manages to whisper, curling her fingers tight into the fabric of Araceli's clothes. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut.

Desperately, Araceli wants a drink. Two bottles of good brandy in a kitchen cupboard or the hidden flask in her office, even the one at her hip with a sailor's ration as ever but she can't. It's unfair to Fern to do that.

Rubbing circles on her back, she croons out nonsense for the worst of it until Fern's breathing again, until her own voice might be something approaching trustworthy. "Don't say that. You say it now but hurting is being alive sometimes. Don't make yourself hard, Fern, don't do that. Accept what comes. Stay gentle, stay soft, stay kind; I can promise you it hurts worse to live any other way."

"Stay gentle, stay soft, stay kind; I can promise you it hurts worse to live any other way."

Something worse than this? Fern can't imagine it, but she doesn't want to, either. Something in Araceli's soft voice and tender embrace makes the dam break in her, and if she'd been holding back at all before, she isn't now; the tears and sobs pour out of her unchecked, her slight frame trembling from the force of it.

"...what do I do now?" The words come, at last, once she has managed to quiet her breathing enough to speak. Tearful and with reddened eyes, she looks up to Araceli's face, desperate for some words from her that will make the pain less acute.

There can't be more than a few years between them but the life a person leads ages you in different ways, and it's how Araceli keeps her knees under her, under them both, hooks her chin over Fern's head to better balance them even if it's a stretch to do it the way they are. It's a convulsive swallow. Working at the knot in her throat, forcing it down, away, later, later, later, swallow it not for the first time only for this--

"You live. You live because you're alive with a heart beating in your chest. Because that heart is a thing made for loving the world and people in it," Fern's shown that already and to hold it in, to hold in what had come so close to coming out of her mouth that night at dinner but when the tide has worn them both to sea glass, that's when she can tell it. "You can cry. Scream. Feel like there's a hole in you. It gets better, when you've been hurt in a way that makes you feel like lying down and dying, it does stop hurting."

Not today, or tomorrow, or the day after, and she's tired trying to say all that when holding both of them up.

"...it does stop hurting."

But it hasn't yet--no, not remotely. The ache is acute and raw, and Fern realizes as she looks up at Araceli's face that it is ripping her apart, too. The guilt stabs into her and makes her look away, bringing up a hand to wipe quickly at her eyes. How selfish she's being, she should be more... something--

"You should cry, too," she offers, voice unsteady but genuine. She tries to square her shoulders, but in a moment like this the action only corrects her posture. She doesn't feel any stronger from it. "You're so kind to me, to everyone else..." The rest of the words escape her, but her worry for Araceli is plain in her eyes in a way that she can't articulate.

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[open] you'll come back when it's over

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