Tanin sat on a hill, staring up at the sky as the stars emerged. If the young man heard Jeid approach, he gave no note of it. Tanin simply stared up at the stars, silent, leaning back. Jeid approached his son, sat down beside him with creaking joints, and stared up at the sky with him. For a long time the two men said nothing.

Finally it was Tanin who broke the silence. "I know I'll see her again someday, but the wait seems so long. The years ahead seem so empty without her."

Jeid thought back to his own years of grief. For over a decade after his wife had died, Jeid had hidden in the escarpment, wasting away, imprisoned not only within walls of stone but by his grief. That time now seemed a haze to him. An entire decade—just a blur, just missing time, for he had barely been a man in those years, only a shell. He looked at Tanin, and he refused to let the same happen to his son.

He spoke slowly. "The pain never really leaves you. Loss is an eternal emptiness inside us, and time does not heal all wounds. But that doesn't mean we should let the grief claim us. That doesn't mean we cannot go on. And you will go on, Tanin. You will build. You will plant gardens and raise walls of stone. You will help build our kingdom, and you will build a new life for yourself. With me. With Laira. With Maev and Dorvin. With all those who love you."

Tanin nodded. "But it hurts. And I miss her."

"It always will hurt. And you always will miss Issari. Pain is like that. Sometimes comfort, time, even love cannot banish it. Sometimes pain is like a scar, forever with you. But that doesn't mean you can't feel joy too. Old pain doesn't chill the warmth of new happiness. Old shadows cannot extinguish new light. Saplings still rise from burnt forests; thus can new happiness rise in a broken soul. We'll find new happiness, all of us. Together."

They sat together in silence then for a long time, watching the stars, and the Draco constellation seemed to gaze back down at them, its eye shining.

LAIRA

 
LAIRA

Spring bloomed in Requiem—a spring for a charred forest, for a united people, for shards of scattered life.

Many of the birches were still black with soot, but some still lived; leaves sprouted from their tips and birds fluttered between their branches. Saplings grew between them from ash. And beyond them, past where the battles had raged, older birches shrugged off the cloak of winter and gave forth new leaves, fresh and sweetly scented. The song of birds rose across the land, and bluebells bloomed upon the forest floor, a lavender carpet that hid the soil.