[SWE] Festival of Lights

Phoebe

I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

Phoebe had not attended the Festival of Lights the year before, but she had heard what it was. In the year prior, she had been too swept up in trying to get back in her feet she had missed it. But this year she couldn't. She had lost more than she could have ever anticipated, and she came with many lanterns. They were not particularly ornate, not skilled with magic or maker trades (that wouldn't light on fire) but each had been made with love and melancholy, cloaked in her memories for each person they represented

The first series were for her patients that had been lost to labor or stillborn or miscarried. There weren't many, her practice having only ramped up late in the year. The simple wooden lanterns with rice paper walls were carefully decorated and personalized to each person, hung gently, a light frown on the usually sunny countenance of the midwife. She never forgot a woman or child she could not save, and that practice did not stop in Caido.

The next lantern was for Emmett. Made of wood and rice paper like the last, it was simple, not fussy, like he had been himself. But on one side she had made careful cuts in the paper so light shone through - a donkey walking towards a group of people, the reunion she knew he had with his family upon his death. A lump of emotion knotted in her throat as she gazed upon it. Their relationship may have ended well before he passed, but it still made her heart ache, to know he was gone; her first love's life extinguished far too soon.

The final lantern she held in her hands for awhile, staring at it. This one had been decorated like Emmett's, little cuts in the paper in the shape of a small bunny, hopping around the lantern in a lilting pattern, having no real beginning or end. Beneath it hung a small pendant she had shaped from clay and painted; a woman holding a swaddled infant in her arms. This lantern she knew she would make every year. She hung the simple thing, imbued with a mother's love and sadness, lit by a flame from the candle she had kept alight since her visit to Ludo. Phoebe stared at it, tears welling and rolling down her cheeks, willing herself not to break into full sobs. Two seasons had nearly come and gone and yet it felt like only yesterday still.

Pim rubbed his head against her legs, as comforting as a dragon could be, standing gaurd next to his person as she was overwhelmed with emotion.