player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.

Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.

Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.

Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.

Comments

[untiltheyarent]

Fifi nods, and, having no other point of reference, defers to what Ellie is doing. Delicately, so as not to touch any of the painted designs, she does the same, lifting them like a sheet and carefully bringing them to join with Ellie's side.

Even if the ritual isn't quite right, the sentiment is there: the shroud is handled with reverence, as much as any urn or coffin might be.

[notathreat]

Ellie is quiet, and she appreciates the care that Fifi takes. They've spoken once or twice. Banalities, niceties, please and thank you. Good morning.

Would you like me to help you fold your partner's funeral shroud?

Tears prickle at her eyes, but don't come. She's not trying to hold them back, she just... can't relax, can't let go.

They fold it like two people with a bed-sheet, separately and then coming together in the middle. Ellie's eyes flicker to Fifi's once, then away. She's not worried so much about what she'll find there, as about what Fifi might see- or not see- in her face.

"Thanks. I'll- cleans up in here. Bring these dishes down."

She's suddenly uncomfortably aware that she's probably making Fifi's life harder.

[untiltheyarent]

It's a response that Fifi knows well, and she knows just as well not to press on it. Sometimes keeping things professional is a kindness.

"No need," she answers, "someone can come up during the visitation." She doesn't personally do all these things, anyway, and everyone is scrambling for reasons to keep their mind off the sad reality.

[notathreat]

The visitation. Right.

Ellie doesn't respond. She leans on that kindness for the moment, letting herself drift and try not to think too deeply about what she'll see. She hasn't been down to see them since the first night, when she had trouble leaving. It hadn't seemed right, after getting them home, to leave them there in their cold wards and runes.

She knows they're just bodies, just shells, and corpses have long since stopped freaking her out. But it's so different, knowing she's going to see them one last time.

Her chest feels tight. They finish folding up the shroud, and Ellie presses it to her chest.

"Thanks."

[untiltheyarent]

Folding her hands in front of her, Fifi inclines her head in a quiet, respectful nod. There's a deference to it, because there always is, but also a gentleness, a comprehension of shared misery.

"If you need anything," she offers, and lets it stand there. Ellie knows what to do, and Fifi already suspects she won't ask. But she means it.

[notathreat]

"I know," Ellie says softly, grateful for it. Fifi barely knows her, some things, apparently, bite deep. Ellie hugs the shroud, pushes it into her chest, and makes her lungs fill with air.

"Thank you."