So, I'll sing Hallelujah

[arlathvhen]

WHO: Beleth, Kit's CR, Kit in spirit
WHAT: Kit's slightly belated funeral service, come pay your respects.
WHEN: Backdated to a bit after he died bc I suck
WHERE: A forest outside of Kirkwall
NOTES: Death, grieving, I'm so sorry this is late

Beleth had tried to speak to Orzammar--argue with them, more like, and had only stopped when she realized that she was more likely to cause a diplomatic incident than get them to agree to take his body. So, as she usually did when people failed to meet her expectations, Beleth took it into her own hands.

Kit's funeral is a bit of a mishmash between dwarven culture and Dalish--Beleth had to draw from somewhere, after all, and she knew more about Dalish funerals than any other. Kit's body is buried in a nice clearing in the forest, body lined with stones instead of branches. Instead of a tree, there's a large rock marking his grave, his name carved into the stone.

The songs sung aren't in Elven, nor are they Dwarven funeral songs. But they're still somber, and full of grief of a life lost.

Anyone who knew Kit and wishes to send him off is invited, and to the wake held afterwards. It takes place, in what seems to be most fitting for Kit's memory, in the Hanged Man. Food (from Beleth, decent quality) and drink (from the tavern, dubious quality) is provided, and people are free to mingle, drink, get rowdy, and remember a man who fit a lot of living into being dead.

Comments

Nari

[nadasharillen]

I. Funeral

The memories of the last funeral Nari had been to are like jumbled shards of broken glass: out of order, refracting the world around them strangely. She wants to remember, sometimes, but can't. The pieces are so razor edged that reaching to try and put them to some semblance of rights cuts so exquisitely there's near no room for blood to come.

She's glad it's stones that cover him. That in the end Kit rests in a close comfortable solid embrace of something less shifting than soil. That seeing him laid to that rest is different enough to be able to see and hold on to. The clean whole sorrow of it, one she can put her hands around and find the edges of, is almost welcome-- it's a guilty thought.

Not knowing the songs, she'll just listen to the rise and fall of them, trying to pick out the different threads of the voices around her.

Afterwards, she'll be standing with her arms crossed over her chest staring into the cairn thoughtfully.


II. Wake

Nari's never been one for wild abandon, but it feels good and right to sit quietly in a corner inside the wooden lamplit chaos of the Hanged Man with an as yet untouched (and dirty) glass of the same liquid fire she'd been drinking with Kit a bare handful of days before his death; to hear the snatches of conversation, song, and laughter-- some light, some raucous-- that bubble up through the rowdy hubbub of the still living.

It's relatively sheltered over here, should anyone need a break from the room.

I

[onlyhymns]

Cade stands with her in total silence, his eyes clear and far away, his hands folded in front of him for the duration of the service. He's been to many of these, albeit never for a dwarf, but for once it's nice to attend one with people he feels some attachment to. Never mind that it's for someone he felt attachment to as well.
Feeling the difficulty of mourning someone with a different set of beliefs, all Cade can do is reassure himself that Kit is with Andraste, welcomed alongside all the other good people of the world regardless of whether or not they prayed every day.

[nadasharillen]

It rolled into her head like the smoke that he blew sometimes, as she looked simultaneously at the grave and beyond it. Kit's voice, smooth and dark and filled always with a cheerful resignation that should have been contradictory but wasn't: I'm a dead man walking. Then her own: We're all dead walking, Kit... Don't wait too long. Our lives aren't fair or just, and things happen.

Nari had never met Vandelin. She wonders if Kit had waited too long. If they'd talked, before, or if the silence that Kit had meant one day to fill with words would only be filled with the stones of his cairn now that the dwarf had run out of 'one day's. She wonders if he's here, if while she stands here there's someone else breathlessly grabbing at handfuls of shattered glass.

When it finishes, she feels the same sort of difficulty as Cade. While it had been lovely-- Beleth had done him well-- she can't help but quietly say something to herself, even if the gods only took their own. Perhaps, selfishly, because she couldn't make herself say anything back then.

"He was born, then died, then lived more than most. Kit, Falon'din enansal enaste." And then, after her eyes flicker over towards Cade, back again to the stones, "We only know the prayers we know."