Logs:Death in the Family, Part 2
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| RL Date: 26 October, 2014 |
| Who: Anvori, Suireh, Riahla |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: A death in the family causes family reunions, a different perspective. |
| Where: Sea's Peak Hold |
| When: Day 5, Month 2, Turn 36 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Leova/Mentions, Satiet/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Continued from Death in the Family, Part 1 |
| The last time Suireh had seen this, it had been a boat without a body, one she and her sister had pieced together in memory of their mother. Had she ever been seven years old? Standing there, stoic, by an equally emotionless Riahla, the harper journeyman looked at the ivory pallor of the aged man in the boat as the various people of the small hold laid garlands in an outline around his body. Her uncle moved forward, joining those other uncles she recalled such little of, and placed his garland on his father's folded arms. Then it was Riahla's turn, a representative of their mother's blood, and Suireh watched her sister select their grandfather's head to place the bouquet of mountain heather against. Finally, it was their grandmother's turn, and as she was the only one left on this side of the boat, Suireh assisted the aged woman with a hand threaded through one of Veylin's, and a shoulder for the older woman to balance against if needed. Her grandmother, white-haired and fragile with age, placed a winter rose against the man's heart. There was no weeping, as that was not the Sea's Peak way, and shortly after her grandmother had placed her flower, and a few words were said by the eldest, the boat was pushed out to sea and set aflame. And that was that. There was food, hushed talking, and several people who came by her family's set of rooms to express their condolences, but this affair was a markedly quieter, and more private one than the one afforded her mother. It was these things Suireh reflected upon when her uncle drew up close by. His arm swung about her shoulders, the hug affectionate and so familiar. Her heart stopped, the yearning that might come halted before it could even begin. "Hey, kid. You holding up ok?" "I'll be singing later... something I wrote on the way here. I think grandmother will like it." I hope she will. Hazel eyes slanted her a sharp, chiding look, "You holding up ok?" Suireh's lips pressed and she looked about this room with all its familiar and not familiar-at-all things. "I haven't been here in turns. It's like time just stops here and everything else around Pern goes on." The harper's lips quiver, her words hesitating just beyond the teeth that ruminate over her lower lip. "There are so many secrets buried here, I think. I can feel them weighing heavy in the air in a way I couldn't before." Anvori exhaled, the arm about her shoulder tightening so she could feel that shudder. "You're going to make me ask you again, aren't you? You holding up ok, kid?" The smile came unbidden and Suireh's head ducked to catch sight of her toes. "Yeah. Yeah, I am." The hug became less crushing at her response. "You should talk to her. She misses the world you're in, you know. She was once a harper journeyman too." She knew, even if it seemed unfathomable until her grandmother played. "It seems so intrusive to even ask... especially now." But Anvori was no longer there, having been accosted? No, he had run away. That coward. Out of the corner of her eye she spied out her uncle Coram and his overly thin wife. She had played, the key minor, in a harmonic minor chord arrangement. The words, rough about the edges, carried charm precisely for that reason. Later, after polishing, it'd lose some of the emotion, but would be lauded for its technical merit and composition. But later, years from now. It was during her song that his mother had come to sit by him, a hand stealing across his knee to find his and hold it. She said nothing. She didn't need to. The reproof and disappointment in him could be felt in the bony grip she had placed in his hands. They were both silent throughout till the end, moved by the music but also by whatever silent conversation had transpired in the touch of hands. When she stood, she had said to him with a quiet strength of voice he thought her incapable of in this hour, "Bring them next time. Bring her. I'd like to see my daughter." And that was that. Suireh had volunteered to fill that role, the role of daughter, and share the first night with her grandmother. They lay awake in the large bed that had once housed a husband, a wife, and their countless children. Children who had all grown now, who had their own children. Children who were also gone. A husband who was now gone. It was a lonely bed for just the two of them, as it must have been lonely for quite some time now, even with husband and wife. "Suri?" The brittle voice, once a lovely mezzo, said her childhood nickname into the dark quiet. Suireh imagined she could hear the tears, that never seemed to shed from her grandmother's eyes, hanging in that one word. "Yes, grandmama?" The rustling sound of blankets were followed by arms that enveloped her and the faint floral scent her grandmother used, that had somehow embedded itself into her very being and lingered in this night. She could feel her bones beneath the sag of her grandmother's skin and found little physical warmth in the older woman's body that clung to hers in sobs. But her heart flooded and suddenly, the tears of turns found a way to shed silently as she comforted her grandmother with a plush embrace and soft kisses into the whitened hair. |
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