Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2023 8:58:42 GMT -5
[for @kaveri and @kezia ?]
Kester had walked and run and fled across battlefields before. She knew what they looked like. The ruins that lay before her now were no battlefield.
They were a massacre.
She did not weep or scream or collapse to her knees. Her face might have been etched in stone for all that her expression changed as she memorized the wreckage of her people, their failed defenders, and the hard-won sense of security they’d nursed back to life over the past five years. Bloodied and broken and burnt, bodies of Dresmondi and dyrs alike lay strewn amongst the remnants of wooden wagons, but they were outnumbered by those of the Arynnite Peacekeepers. The Eldouir hadn’t wanted to capture them, after all.
Arms crossed, Kester pulled her gaze away from the landscape before her and turned toward @kaveri , doing her best to ignore the smells and sounds of death all around them. Such observations went into the same little box as the shrieking of her heart. We will have to decide how to honor them, She said through Walnut, and if @kezia and her dyrs were nearby, they would also hear the words. For those closest to the deceased cannot. The Arynnites, she assumed, would have their own traditions for commemorating and disposing of their dead.
Perhaps, given the number and state of the bodies, a large funeral pyre would be easiest. Something like a bonfire, which inevitably reminded her of the campfires they would build whenever their caravan settled for the night. Traditionally, funerals were celebrations among the Dresmondi, but Kester didn’t feel much like celebrating anything now. She didn’t feel much of anything right now. Nothing except the grim determination to kill as many Eldouir as possible before they killed her.