| Current mood: |  pensive |
| Current music: | NYY vs BAL postgame |
| Entry tags: | 100 kalin pieces |
#27 - Parents
I decided to try and just work through my funk. The Saga is a good compromise; it can be frustrating and difficult, but I love it to death (even if I do let it languish...). It won't ever be salable (first publishing rights and all) but at least it's important to me and doesn't feel like nothing. Anyway. I decided not tto go to bed until I felt like I'd accomplished something (and paid for that all day today, ught) so this is short and awkward. But something.
Kalin stared at the grave and waited for emotions. He felt the cold of the wind as his face and limbs chilled; he felt the whip of his hair as it lashed against his face. He felt the sharp edge of the air as it seeped into his lungs with every breath. But inwardly, he felt nothing.
By her request, the gravestone was simple. He read the text over and over again, waiting for it to become something more than words. But no: Slenna Malistar, Beloved Mother.
It didn’t give away that she was the greatest Knight of her generation; it didn’t state that she’d been hand-picked by the Goddess to lead the Knights. Slenna’s death had been tragic and mourned by all who knew her, but there were rules regarding these things. Erra had explained to him that it had been a battle just to have her buried on sacred ground.
Never mind the life she’d lived in Kaleal’s service; her death had been a suicide. A disgrace.
Kalin’s breath rose in puffs of steam as he stared. He knew several things with absolute certainty at that moment: that it was his fault she was dead, and it would be his responsibility to honor her memory. And he’d start with the grave stone.
He didn’t remember her, not really. The memories he had felt more like dreams, half-remembered impressions from his first seven years of life. His mother had been tall, lithe, graceful. She’d loved flowers, rare as they were on Cresula. And she’d loved him. Of that, he was certain.
The rest he’d learned later: that she had led the Knights away from the rest of Kalatsu to this isolated, frozen island; that she’d turned them from a scattered band into a true army for the first time in generations. That she’d once spared the life of a prisoner Warrior, only to have him escape later. And that after Kalin been taken by the slavers, she had changed, withdrawn from her friends, given up on her duties. She had grown reckless with missions, leading charge after charge to Arpiar. Her goals were not strategic, but instead, she was praying for a glimpse or word of her lost son. After several years, she stepped down as the leader; after that, she could no longer sleep and barely ate.
That they’d found her dead by her own sword, looking at peace for the first time in years.
No one had said she’d killed herself because she couldn’t find him, she held herself responsible for losing him, and she couldn’t live with the guilt. But he’d known it from the moment he learned how she died. And because of that, she was considered to have left the Goddess’s service dishonorably, to have run out on her duty.
Kalin shut his eyes against the cold, adjusted his scarf to properly cover his mouth and nose, and opened his eyes again. He looked up at the sky; dusk was descending slowly. The moon glittered, barely a sliver, just at the horizon.
I will fix this, Mother, he promised silently, and left a flower on her grave.
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temira) wrote,
