Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts

Nayru · 01-08-2012, 02:22 PM

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Kahlo stirred slightly, as if the blind and deaf girl could sense the arrival of another. Nayru gently rocked the pup with her own body, it was comforting and calming perhaps more to the woman that than to the babe. As Kahlo became sleepy, so did Nayru, and through her tired haze she heard Saluce's words, spoken as if already she was not present, spoken only to X'yrin. I buried him, Out on top of the mountain overlooking Ichika. When Nayru feels better I’ll take her there. Nayru wanted to shake her head and protest but was too weak and tired to. Burying was not how it was done. He should have been burned up, like a phoenix, so that his passage to the next life was more swift. He should have been carried to the top of the mountain and burned up so that the ashes floated down and settled over everything and everyone. Yet the boy had had a tough life, so why not then a tough death? Surely sooner or later he would find his way through the afterlife, at least he had a name. The boy would find the white lady and she would care for him, Nayru felt comforted in this.

Easily her ruby eyes slid shut and she curled into Kahlo. Still she could feel her own weak body leeching the warmth of X'yrin, but she was only half aware. If Saluce and X'yrin murmured among themselves it no longer concerned her. Slowly her breathing became more shallow but even, her heart slowed and though the pain still threatened to keep her away, the sheer exhaustion of her ordeal was over whelming. That she was still coated in blood did not matter, that could be taken care of later. That a trickle of blood, her own, still leaked from between her two legs did not bother her either. That would stop—or not—and she would wake in the morning—or not. Nothing mattered much just then, except that the birth was over, Kahlo was asleep now and as Nayru herself drifted into unconsciousness two dark navy eyes seemed to congratulate her.

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