It was too warm, too wet, too… different. The snows should have covered the ground for this, the world sleeping in the embrace of winter, silent and cold as the grave. To light a candle while surrounded by greenery was almost sacrilegious in Kel’s mind, but he had attended the festival of Caido’s dead and knew that this was the time for it, on this strange, distant world.
He had no siblings by blood, none that he knew of, but the dryads of the Grove had raised him while his mother wandered, and they had been a true family to him. Aunts and grandmothers, cousins and friends, and even a rare few uncles and brothers had played with him, taught him, admonished him, hugged him. He missed them all, but on this night of Lights throughout Caido he lit the Ghost Queen’s candle for one in particular, even though she was a world away.
The dark-haired young man with the sun-kissed brown skin looked up at the alien sky with its alien stars, seeking some rhyme or reason among them, but his eye kept returning to a bright star to the east, twinkling blue-violet against the sable dome, and as he lit his small white candle with flint and steel – too poor and small an offering, but all he had this year – he leaned back against the lighthouse and faced away from the ocean, letting the crash of surf beat in his blood.
”Mhamo Rowan, I miss you so much,” he whispered to the candle, and the flame that burned with a flickering light even sheltered by the lighthouse’s bulk as it was from the ocean breeze. ”Now, more than ever. I bet in all your centuries you never heard a tale like this one. I could really use your wisdom right now. I bet you’d know what to do…”
He had no siblings by blood, none that he knew of, but the dryads of the Grove had raised him while his mother wandered, and they had been a true family to him. Aunts and grandmothers, cousins and friends, and even a rare few uncles and brothers had played with him, taught him, admonished him, hugged him. He missed them all, but on this night of Lights throughout Caido he lit the Ghost Queen’s candle for one in particular, even though she was a world away.
The dark-haired young man with the sun-kissed brown skin looked up at the alien sky with its alien stars, seeking some rhyme or reason among them, but his eye kept returning to a bright star to the east, twinkling blue-violet against the sable dome, and as he lit his small white candle with flint and steel – too poor and small an offering, but all he had this year – he leaned back against the lighthouse and faced away from the ocean, letting the crash of surf beat in his blood.
”Mhamo Rowan, I miss you so much,” he whispered to the candle, and the flame that burned with a flickering light even sheltered by the lighthouse’s bulk as it was from the ocean breeze. ”Now, more than ever. I bet in all your centuries you never heard a tale like this one. I could really use your wisdom right now. I bet you’d know what to do…”
