The burnt out shell of the building filled the vision like a blackened skeleton, the corpse of a once happy era laid to waste before the eyes of all. The scorched ground still held the shadows of the explosion, where so many had lost their lives. The ghosts of victims clung to the mind and body of any who visited, be they real specters or merely the despairing imagination of the mourners.

It was hard to tell if anything was being done at all, really. It was a place forgotten and removed, taken from the stream of time to be forever framed in tragedy. Then again, midnight was not the time when most would frequent the dessicated remains.

Viator knelt inside the wreckage, black soot and ash blackening his knees and hands and face. His sea bag rested on the ground beside him, bits of glass already snagging it's coarse linen weave. Sitting alone in the dark, the stars blazing above him in muted, citied brilliance, and the air itself seemed to be thicker and less pure.

A vacant air hung about him, in the set of his chin, the cast of his eyes. Nobody home, all were away it seemed to the no-ones that flicked in their lack of being. The empty shell of Viator rested harmoniously... though in reality, too many were visiting. Too many persons experienced the vision of death and fire. Somehow the battle between the pasts was almost as painful as the loss itself.

Is this where you died, father? In some... some tavern? Or were you killed in the aftermath? Viator slowly felt himself loosing control of the reigns; someone older, stronger (weaker) felt things. He tried to force her back, tried to control the swelling of emotion, but it was too much; they both grieved... and neither wanted to see.

What happened, daddy? Cathernar wasn't the type of man to be here. She'd been away from him for nineteen years, but somethings never changed. I missed mother's passing when I was a slave... now I lose you to random violence? The entire family was gone now, save the last two... or one.

Shaking away the old, Viator firmly pulled himself together. There was only one place to visit now... and the sooner done, the sooner gone. Stalking his way up the street, he watched as his feet carried him over familiar flagstones, across memory laden streets and through agonizingly known blocks. And then... there it was. He'd been drawn there like a moth to a flame, even as the insect knows the fire would engulf it, consume and destroy its fragile form.

The Levent manse. Just close enough to the center of town, just far enough from the rabble. It had been prison and universe to the two who had roamed it's halls and gardens, the maze and grounds. Libraries and studies, all had been cages that opened to adventure. All old. Ages gone and dead with a name and a number.

Can you see me, little girl? Do your eyes reach that far ahead? I know they didn't, but could I somehow see myself, see the wasted battleground of my body and somehow know?

See me.

Change me.

Kill me.

~

Jumping the fence with the fluidity a life on the waves gave as compensation for it's abuses, Viator waded through the miniature of Dorhaven with some particular bitterness. Had he been anything but a sailor, he would have stomped the all the buildings to the ground, but superstition killed the urge even as it formed. No. Not all of them. Just one.

Coming to where he knew Cathernar would be placed, Viator paused. The ground was still turned; soft and loamy. The realization that he'd only been dead a short while sunk in.

Cathernar Levent

Moina Levent

He's been dead to me for nineteen years. No letters, no admission that there was any relation. Just him and... names hurt. No names, not anymore. Kneeling beside the grave, he kissed the plaque, resting forehead against the cool stone. The dirt felt loose under is palm, and he grabbed a handful of it, the feeling of death and ghosts hovering just outside perception.

There was space for one name left on the plot, and a place for a fourth. But there was no empty plaque there. Standing, he moved over to the unmarked space, hands shaking as he bowed over the scar removing the stone had left in the ground. Emptying his father's grave dust over the spot, coarse hands smoothed it in place, packing it down. Scratching something with one finger, Viator shook with compacted grief and rage, sundarkened skin pale beneath the moonlight.

Finished, he stood again, unimpressed with his handiwork. Staring blankly into the dark, he fished something out of his pocket and threw it against the fresh grave, the tiny frame shattering and glass tinkling over the faded picture of a family forgotten.

"Rest while you may, Cathernar. May Alioe and the rest of the Lords and Ladies watch over your cold soul." He turned and walked away, leaving two filled graves, one empty plaque... and a space where, written in the dirt, was a name.

Adalare Levent

There now lie only one grave that rested empty.