faderift | So, I'll sing Hallelujah

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I. Funeral

Julius almost didn't come. He'd have gone to the wake either way, but he feels a bit of an intruder at the funeral itself. He's not sure where his own faith has landed, in the mess the world has become, but the likelihood that he and his friend are bound on the same journey after death is almost none by practically everyone's belief system. But... for all of that, Kit deserved those who'd cared about him showing up to pay their respects. Julius can be one more, standing in the group. A silent reminder that Kit had mattered to yet one more person, for anyone who is looking.

He's not seeking anyone out, but he won't avoid a conversation if someone approaches him as they leave.

II. Wake

Given the wake's nature, it's hard for Julius not to think of the fact that the last time he'd seen Kit, they had planned to meet for a drink. It seems more than a bit surreal now. He plans to have a drink, thank Beleth for her work in organizing things, and then slip out. He's not good at this sort of grieving; he wasn't raised with it and suspects he hasn't the knack. But he's hard to miss, if anyone has an eye to catch him before he goes. He doesn't want to look like he's running away, after all.

Not an eye for catching Julius, precisely--and had the older mage remained as silent through the wake as he was at the funeral, Myr might've missed his presence entirely. But a chance word caught through the crowd pulls at his attention, pulls him away from his own drink (nursed, not touched) to seek after his research partner. Some inchoate need to--comfort, to reach out drives it; Myr doesn't question it too closely, dealing as poorly as he is with his own grief. Helping someone else means he doesn't have to think about that, though why he chose to get up now when he's awash in people to help is opaque even to him.

His own misery reached a tipping point, maybe. Hard to think of, right now.

"Julius?"

"Yes -- oh." He turns and there's something like relief in his tone. He touches Myr's arm, briefly, a gesture meant to comfort that he hopes is taken in the spirit it's meant. "I was honestly beginning to think there wouldn't be anyone here I knew. Not that it's important, I suppose, but..."

...but he's glad he was wrong, all the same. He feels marginally less at a loss, this way.

Myr reaches to return the gesture, all wounded instinct--a touch on the arm or the hand, an I'm here when digging out the words to say it is too hard. "But it's less lonely," he picks up, and promptly drops it again: "Having--having someone familiar around."

Though most of Kit's friends were familiar, at the weakest; it drives home how large a part of Myr's life he'd become. How large a part of all their lives, wrenched so completely out of it--

"--Do you--were you leaving? D'you mind company to the edge of Lowtown?"

"Not at all. I'd appreciate the company, actually. It's been..." a shitty day doesn't quite convey it. Julius has lost many friends, but somehow it never gets easier. Kit feels somehow unfair when he'd been braced to lose someone he cared about to the illness and dodged that blow. He's too old to imagine life is fair, of course, but the sensation is still hard to shake.

As they move to go, he comments, "From observation, it seems he was a man with a lot of friends who seldom saw more than one of them at the same time." Julius and Myr hadn't been the only ones unsure who to talk to, in Julius' observation.

"It has." Whatever it has been; there's nothing he can lay hands on to properly circumference the wound Kit's left behind him. No word to define it or fill up the gaping abyss, no way to get around it enough to understand and diminish it-- Myr swallows back a grief that threatens to choke him; it's not getting any easier with practice.

Maybe with time. Sina's--

Hadn't, yet, though it had grown quieter and less strangling. Why it should be so that the friends he's made since joining the Inquisition hurt deeper for their losses than near-family back in Hasmal, he doesn't know; isn't in any condition to suss out.

"He'd a way with people like that--I don't know but some of his friends didn't have anyone but him, to begin with." Benedict certainly hadn't. "He was--a bridge."

"That's an apt way to put it." They walk a little, and instead of circling back to Kit right away, Julius adds, "How are you holding up otherwise? I know you were right at the center of the work to find a cure for the plague, that had to be exhausting work."

So, I'll sing Hallelujah

Julius

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