Dated 2nd December, 2008.
He felt guilty for the emptiness he felt, the nothingness.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was sure that he felt some kind of sadness, some kind of longing and regret. But mostly he felt hollow and distant, like the ashes meant nothing to him, like there was nothing meaningful buried underneath all the shattered wood and grey dust. He should have visited sooner, before the bad news had come. He should have visited sooner, before he lost the last real, full-blood relative he had aside from his sister. And as a child, he should have cared more. Arkham wasn't used to this kind of regret; he wasn't sure that he had ever loved his father like he had the rest of his family. But he had seemed so sad that day, and the no-longer-a-boy regretted that had never been able to do anything for the man.
The coyote sat on the ground before the burned down cottage, much like he had before his brother's grave on the beach. Fire. It was always fire. He wondered how it had started, whether it had only been an accident, or on purpose like Rachias seemed to believe. He wondered if Laruku would have been able to survive the winter anyway. Unanswered questions. He wondered if there were ghosts, if there was an afterlife, if his father was happy wherever he was now, if he was nothingness, if he had become the air. If there was nothing more to contemplate than a pile of ashen bones. It was a quiet and lonely meditation. His cloak billowed in the wind, and he listened to the forest whisper about death.