Time to Die [ story ]

[Lyraciilee]

Gone again. He should have never gone alone. Why did he always go alone? Why were men so stupid? Why did they think they could do everything themselves? K'luha's worry had been ceaseless since she had received the news. Every step away from where K'ile had been took enormous effort. She tried so hard to hide her worry from K'tahja, but it consumed her completely. It was eating her from her core and hollowing her out, leaving only a husk in its wake.

 

It was not unusual. K'luha had always worried incessantly about her daughter in years past. It had always eaten at her, but she had always recovered. Even when she had lost her child and everyone had lost any hope that she would live, she had recovered. Recovered and had another child, but now that it was gone.

 

A single pair of stormy eyes caught her thinning figure. Her mismatched eyes failed to return their gaze. When K'yohko looked at her, at the girl whom he had saved thrice from her own ambition, he was sad. His ears twitched downwards faintly whenever he looked at her form. When had she become so thin? So long ago, she had been curvaceous with a full round face. The small belly she had once had caved inwards and hinted at her ribs, and whenever his stormy eyes passed over it his ears twitched downwards again.

 

As the heat of the day died away and no word was given, the nighttime camp was set up. Hollow smiles turned K'luha's lips every time she looked to Tahj, but K'yohko could almost hear her cracking with every movement. The Nunh pushed the thick pole into the sand, his eyes turning away from her form. It was sad to watch. Too sad. It saddened him as much as it saddened him to see K'takka's form so thin when she was wet. But sadness accomplished nothing, and K'yohko set his mind to the tasks at hand.

 

The moon was a ghostly galleon over the thick black of the night sky. K'luha should not have been up. She should not yet have tried to walk on her own, or climb for that matter, but she had done both. The thick handholds over the small cliff were easy enough to pull herself over, and her small form silently clambered to the top of the rocky face. She sat with a small sigh upon the top of the plateau, her eyes transfixed upon the moon.

 

Her lips parted softly, as if words could come forth but there was nothing but silence for a moment. And instead a soft song slipped from her lips.

 

"Fate has been cruel and order unkind

How can I have sent you away?

The blame was my own; the punishment, yours

The harmony's silent today.

 

But into the stillness I'll bring you a song

And I will your company keep

Till your tired eyes and my lullabies

Have carried you softly to see...."