[Flashback] Water for the Dead [Issima]

[Tabarnac]

23rd Winter, 510 A.V. "She gives water to the dead," whispered one little girl to another, their faces hidden behind the hem of their headwraps to keep the dust and sand of the street out of their mouths. Bright eyes in dusky faces followed the pale Drykas girl around the market, had followed her all the way from the chapel of Dira where her tears were noted. In the desert, water was precious. Even with Ahnatep's oasis and the sea, these desert creatures knew that the water was the life, and it was strange to them to let one's water, one's life, leak out to evaporate for the sake of the dead. Her dead were lined up in the chapel's morgue, awaiting their funeral shrouds. The girl could weave the shrouds, but she would have to find a Drykas Ankal somewhere in the city to properly bury her dead in the Drykas fashion, else she would have to settle for burning them and hoping their spirits would fly toward Cyphrus to catch in the Web and be reborn as Drykas. She came to a stall built over the facade of a storefront, a Benshira girl with her face covered tending a varied collection of thread, yarn, and even finished textiles. If one could read proper Arumenic, its sign read: The Spider's Loom. For the less cultured, it was also written in Common.

[Issima]

It was difficult to choose colors when her eyes were swimming with tears that wouldn't abate. Issima couldn't think beyond the ashen, lifeless faces she had just left behind. Her mother had often told her that her weaving was an art. But art required vision and she had none, now. Only misery and the jingle of useless coins to keep her company. She'd buy what she needed with them, those coins, and what did it matter if the Benshira gave her a fair price, or not? They were only coins, and even if she amassed all that there were on the face of Mizahar, it wouldn't bring back what she had lost. Issima chose a red that reminded her of her mother's lips. Blue like the sky over Endrykas. A fawn color, the tone of her eldest brother's strider. The list went on, a nonsensical purchase spurred on by nothing more than aching memories. She had no idea what she would craft out of the things she bought, only that she must and she would. She couldn't sleep until this task had been completed, and her love had been buried with them. She had no voice for the Benshira, only gestures to guide their engagement. She plunked enough coins into the outstretched palm to satisfy, and then went away with her purchase. Had she eaten today? Did it matter? Issima sat with her loom stretched across her lap for the longest while, staring blankly at the mechanics that would create beauty for her beloved. She had only been a small child when she'd balanced upon the knee of an aunt and tried her pudgy hands at weaving. She'd loved it from that moment on. She had just never imagined that the skill she possessed would be of use in this scenario. With her mother and father behind her, Issima could have grieved for a lost brother. Perhaps for two. But Dira had taken them all, taken everything, and there was no one to wipe the tears that fell onto busy fingertips as Issima began to work. Still she wasn't entirely certain of the image she sought to bring out in the shroud that would take so much of her spirit to create, so much effort when she simply wanted to curl into a ball and sleep forever. But her hands were swift and remembered well the task given them. Colors began to bleed into colors, and she worked until her fingers were stiff and aching. Someone offered her water, once, but after she refused to acknowledge them for long enough they eventually went away. The Drykas girl felt dead inside, at communion with her lost. And still the work she created took form beneath unseeing eyes, as daylight faded to night, and then returned again to greet the laughter of small children and the scurry of vendors with the break of a new day. They would rest in peace. Even if her entire body ached and fatigue and hunger bit at her heels, Issima was determined to complete what she had started - a gift of love crafted by her own hands and salted by her tears.

[Tabarnac]

Water came, and food too. She had to eat and drink eventually, and so some of the cups were not full when they were replaced. Some meals were picked over. As the shrouds began to form on the loom, colors spun in strange and new ways to the eyes of the desert dwellers, more people came to stop and watch, others left little oddments to aid her in her grief. Lit candles, coins, flowers, one scrap of parchment with a prayer written in beautiful calligraphic Shiber. Her grief, or perhaps her expression of it in textile form, reached out to touch people, to include them. This is the color of the sky over my home, said the one. This my brother's beloved Strider.. And in her grief she seemed a woman possessed to these covered people, her designs coming as if by accident, but beautiful and strange to their eyes. A spider-like Eypharian woman watched enviously before saying a prayer in that most beautiful of languages. Finally a strong hand gripped Issima's shoulder, strong despite the wrinkles and the veins. "You must rest, little sister, or you will join them," he admonished with a deep, resonant voice only recently gone reedy with age. He set down a reed mat and rolled it out for her, that she might rest without leaving her work where others might touch it.

[Issima]

That she had an audience was a fact Issima was completely oblivious to. She wasn't doing this for them. For any of the strange people wrapped in layers and colors. Her work was for her lost, for the comforting arms of a mother, the protective gaze of not one brother, but many. It was for the deep rumble of a father's voice, the certainty of family and belonging. It was for her own loss and misery. "To join them would be a relief." Such words could have easily been self-pitying or caustic. They could have been bitter, angry words. In Issima they were neither. A bland observation, a statement of fact. What did she have left? Nothing. Nothing but this gift to give. And yet she was among the living, forced to carry the burden of this monumental loss alone. The idea that she might have been with them, had not a girlish whim carried her elsewhere, was not an unwelcome one. It would have been easier, cold death. Despite the remark, Issima did give pause. She could not bring herself to relinquish her efforts entirely, but she did slow her relentless pace. One hand continued to smooth and stroke the fibers in the slowest moving progress, but progress she did. With her newly freed hand, she reached for the water. "I cannot rest in peace until they do."

[Tabarnac]

The man moved into her peripheral vision and knelt beside her, the only one so far to keep true vigil with her. He did not offer to help, for that would have mitigated the creation of her gift and he seemed to understand that. His arms were bare in the heat, and a windmark wound its way down his arm from his shoulder, a beautiful weave of ink if she took the time to notice, which it didn't seem like she would. "Living is often more difficult than dying," he observed quietly. "But I think they would be glad to know that you remain with Kihala a while longer." After a few more quiet minutes of observation, as he watched her family come to life through the creative expression of her soul through the medium of the loom and its various colors, he spoke again. "They look to have been amazing people." She didn't want to talk; he understood that. But he did not leave. It was not the Drykas way to leave another alone in a time of need. The Web bound them, even if only the Ankals and Sapphire shamans could see that interconnectedness in plain lines. The Web was more complex even than the work of her loom, but then the scale was entirely different, and the souls of her dead were likely tangled up in that Web, waiting to return to the horseclans when Kihala made new life. He waited for her to finish, whether temporarily or for good.