who we are and all that we're trying to be
Finality spun, scratched and claws its way down his spine, rendered his breathing stilted. For all those days spent guarding her makeshift tomb, he’d known this one was coming too, and it didn’t make it any easier. Time after time after time he’d dug graves for brethren, for comrades, for allies, and then loved ones in between the afflictions of war and brutality. And today Rexanna would go up in flames, and he’d ensure the cinders, the embers, paralleled her strength, her convictions, her courage, honor her aspects of life, instead of the damned brutal, bitter end.
Movements were numb, seemingly nonchalant as his mind attempted to piece together what was necessary in the depths of the tragedy. Another poignant, haunting fixture eclipsing over the contentment in his mind – never for long it seemed – erasing those monumental occasions for the consuming, devouring edges of anguish and despondency. He maneuvered and ceased, stalking motions towards leftover brush, grabbing hold, and then continued the actions until his arms were full. Something to do, an action, a respite, however minimal, needing to commit to motion, the restless fringes and vestiges crushing lungs and that nefarious, blackened heart.
Deimos still couldn’t look over at Bastien, at the Penumbra clutched in his hold, couldn’t face it without crumbling himself. Over the last week, he’d barely glimpsed upon her, refusing, in those gnarled, decrepit, savage angles; yearning to remember her as she’d always been, instead of now. A steady breath was taken, a massive inhale to right himself, to bear down into his misery, to clench his jaw and continue in his machinations and ministrations, making the pyre, piling the dried remnants together.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
