The commotion was far enough from Kel that he caught only the distant edges of it and could see nothing of who was involved. Quiet returned soon enough that he didn't feel the need to investigate further. Instead he found a twig near at hand and used it to draw in the sand, sketching simple, sweeping lines. A tree, the edges of a face, a leaf that belonged to no tree of Caido. The candle burned with a clear light, glowing green within its leafy lantern, but Kel kept a cautious eye on it to make sure it didn't catch the greenery on fire.
For a moment he glanced up and thought he caught a familiar shock of auburn but... no. He blinked and it was gone, whoever it had been swallowed up into the crowd and the shifting light and shadows of a hundred and more lanterns. The homesickness swelled in him, painful enough to burst as he reached up to tangle his fingers around his mother's necklace as he fought to hold in the tears he hadn't cried since he arrived. It wasn't the dead he mourned so much as those he had lost.
And he felt like the one who was the most lost of them all.
For a moment he glanced up and thought he caught a familiar shock of auburn but... no. He blinked and it was gone, whoever it had been swallowed up into the crowd and the shifting light and shadows of a hundred and more lanterns. The homesickness swelled in him, painful enough to burst as he reached up to tangle his fingers around his mother's necklace as he fought to hold in the tears he hadn't cried since he arrived. It wasn't the dead he mourned so much as those he had lost.
And he felt like the one who was the most lost of them all.
