7. The Willow Bears the Pain #4
She knelt beside him as the air left her lungs, and her body grew weak.
Alvira had seen many things across her years, many dark and horrid things.
But there would never be a thing more broken and wrong than a child suffering the agony of war.
Because that was what war was: agony and grief, and nothing more.
“Var… Varat… Varathis…” The word dragged itself out of his throat, every breath causing him to convulse. Father.
Alvira bit at her lip and stroked his scarred cheek. “L’ael sin’vala,” she whispered. I am here. She would not have him thinking he died alone. “Varathis er sin’vala.”
Father is here.
Alvira could already feel Vyldrar lift himself upright, feel his bones ache as he cracked his wings.
“Roh?r vaera saren,” she whispered, her thumb tracing over a patch of pale flesh along his jaw. “M? Heraya tael du ia’sine ael ar beskír du indil vir anarai andin. La’uva niassa du, I denír viel ar altinua.”
It won’t hurt anymore. May Heraya take you into her arms and watch over you until we meet again. I will love you in this life and through all time, always and eternity.
“La… niassa…”
I… love…
The boy choked the words before breaking into a scream as he convulsed.
Alvira pulled a knife from her belt. She placed one hand over the child’s heart, and with the other she pressed the blade to his temple. “Lael sin’vala… du vyin alura anis.”
I’m here. You can rest now.
She drove the blade into his skull down to the hilt as quickly as she could. As the last breath of life left his body, Alvira pulled the blade from his head and dropped it into the brittle grass. She slid her hands beneath him and stood, cradling him in her arms.
As she walked, she felt Vyldrar alight at the edge of the camp, his heart bleeding into hers, sharing the weight, holding the pain.
She pushed herself forwards, her legs threatening to crumble, not from pain or weariness of the body, but exhaustion of the soul.
She stopped as she came to the elven father who had called for help. He was pale and still, his chest unmoving, cold eyes staring into the night.
Alvira lay the child at his father’s side and folded the father’s arms about the boy who had been his only thought.
She knelt there, the dawn rising at her back, its warm light spraying through the trees, and she looked down at the two bodies before her.
Thousands more had died that night, tens of thousands.
And yet, this was a moment she would remember until Achyron himself called her home.
She did not take the blame fully upon her shoulders.
She was not that naive. No matter her choices that night, thousands would have died.
Had she defied the council and taken her Draleid to wing over the city, many of her kin would lie amidst the rubble, and many souls beneath the fallen bodies.
The fighting would have raged on, and the Karvosi would have pushed further into the continent.
No matter which path she walked, pain and suffering would blossom, agony and grief. One of the most difficult lessons in her life had been accepting that simple truth.
Alvira drew a slow breath in and pulled on threads of each element. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Spirit. She gasped as Vyldrar pushed his strength into her and brought their souls together.
As one, they pushed the threads into the earth around the father and son. Deep into the clay, down to the roots. She pulled upwards until those roots broke through the soil and wrapped around the pair of bodies, coiling, twisting, and spreading.
Deeper, she pushed, until both bodies were lost beneath the roots and vines, and until small pink buds bloomed, the light of the sun shining upon them.
“May you find peace where I have found war. May you rest where I wake eternal. May you love where alone I stand. I commit you to The Mother, to her waiting arms.”
Alvira stood and walked from the copse, only allowing more tears to flow as the full warmth of the sun caressed her face and her soulkin pressed his snout to her chest.
“Alvira?”
She lifted her head and turned to see Farda stepping through the flaps of one of the tents behind her.
The man’s tunic and trousers were stained in a thousand shades of red and pink, and dark circles hung beneath his eyes.
He staggered towards her, the exhaustion of the drain clear in every step he took.
One look into her eyes and he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her. He didn’t ask what was wrong, he just held her.
“If the choices were easy, Alvira, any soul could bear the weight,” he whispered.
“But they are not, and so here we stand. We live this life so that others will never know it. We carry the pain and stand against the darkness so that others may know the light. And we do it not for glory, nor for honour, because both are short lived and easily lost. We do it because there is yearning within us to protect. Because we were born with a fire in our hearts, a fire that keeps us walking forward when the centuries pass and bodies pile. A fire that gives us just enough warmth to survive when all others would simply lie down and die.”
Alvira pulled away from Farda and looked out at the light of the sun as it rose over Arathín. “What choice would you have made had you been in my place?”
“I would never put myself in your place, Alvira.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
Alvira turned and looked Farda. “How do I know if I’ve made the right choice?”
“You never know. Not truly. As you will never know what path we would be walking down given a different choice. All we can do is trust that we have done what is best and hold strength with the choices we make because they cannot be changed. We can learn from them, in time, but we cannot linger within them.”