The water was cold, unforgivingly so in face of the chilling autumn temperature. The mountain climate made the difference even more tangible, but she would clench her jaw in unspoken protest to the chatter of her teeth. She had overseen the processions of the funeral from a far. There was a sorrow in her breast she didn't quite find an understanding of. Was it the true Arabella they had taken to find her grave? For even though they had her own role filled, there were two caskets she had witnessed. Uneasy trepidation whispered that perhaps Aethelos found himself in the other in effect of the war he had so adamantly marched off towards. In spite of how hard she tried to remain unphased by the notion, she could not stop the bitter wound of her heart at the consideration.

Save for Arabella, however, all the Beleverons deserved death.
Until their line was wholly ended.
Just the same as her own blood.

It was to this end that she endured the malevolence of the crystalline spring. To say good bye to her family, to finally give her grief its own farewell. She could no longer hear its festering; could not allow their rites to be ignored any longer. She was all too familiar with the strife of opposing nations. It had robbed her of everything, after all. She needed to be cleansed of the world's impurities, the first of the ceremony's send-off. Normally, the pyres were built by those known as Lumens, oracles of the gods and the rightful conductors to whatever awaited after death. They would bathe in waters showered in moonlight before beginning to lay the final fire's foundations. It was to ensure the beginning of the path was paved by unsullied hands, so that the only stipulations of sins were bore by the soul departing itself, not corrupted by the world around the altar.

She felled the trees that would serve as the fodder for the flames. She placed them and arranged them in a fashion to burn well despite the size of the construct. She was uncharacteristically solemn as she did so, a sensation that was not forced, but felt as natural to her in this moment as her own skin. She would not stop and tire, nor would she take heed of breaks to lament the callouses the ax blistered upon her hands. Her palms bloodied and sore were only wrapped so that she may continue on with her task. Her hands had never been intended to be soft, and this was but the first of many reparations for herself.

Atop the construction, she placed an item for each of those she wished to bid adieu. A laurel of thorns for her eldest sister. A form of punishment that the woman had taken upon herself to mar the enemies they would not slay. She would place the garment about their brow wrists bound so that it could not be removed, over the eyes so that their steps would remove their sight. Many of them fell prey to the desert itself, only a quaint and small amount ever made it back to the city. While Daesn'yri had claimed it cruel at the time, there was a piece of her that had come to understand the barbacy of her sister. The lesson she carved upon their countenance was not only one they would not forget, but a warning to others.

The second would be a long and braided tuft of horse hair, not procured from the elegance of Envy, but another. A steed she had bought for herself. She had plaided the elongated piece and within the weaving she had affixed feathers, beads and other baubles she had often seen within her father's long, dark hair. He had held the beasts of burden most endearing. He'd taught her how to sit proudly within the saddle, to fire a bow while at a brisk gallop as their life revolved around hunting small game that was far too fleet upon the dunes. She remembered the horror, the sickness that had creeped through her body upon finding the nearly beheaded body of his war horse upon the earth. Savage red seeping and clotting the sand, flowing like an angry red river while his nostrils still flared, holding desperately to life. The giant of a man was not too far from his companion, unmoving. Stagnant. Both of them had been immortal in her eyes, incapable of meeting that finality. Perhaps that's when her tiny world had begun to truly fracture. Maybe he had grown careless with the loss of his first child. She recalled bitterly the way he had held himself together before their people as they merely burned Cairn'yri in their haste to prepare for the next onslaught. Then the way he unraveled in the privacy of his smaller family. She had thought the mountain incapable of tears, unable to be tender or soft. The way his shoulders heaved and shook with the burden of his grief had returned to haunt her in the reprieve of her lost memory. The way he mourned her so, claiming a parent should never live long enough to bury their child. He had wanted blood. Revenge. So it was that he had first captured the prince of the enemy, and for the first time she ever knew of, they retained a prisoner.

The third trinket was a piece of raw, unworked leather. It was small, nearly all she could afford after the purchase of Fox. For her second oldest sister was a fine crafter of the material. Armors. Bows. Weaponry. Pouches. Shoes. If one could bring her hides, she would transform them into beautiful works of craftsmanship. Her skill was unmatched, and her advice was just as valuable. She was the only one of them to be wed, though she was never able to have the child she so horribly yearned for. The small strip was akin to the shoes she had fashioned and placed neatly upon a shelf when she'd thought she was to be expecting. Out of all the infant articles she had made in that time, they were all she would retain, the others given away to those who were actually blessed with babes. A piece of her heart quietly attached with each one until she only reserved one small fraction for herself.

The fourth was simply a golden piece of wheat for her third sibling. Perhaps she was the one that Daesn'yri had had the most in common with. Both wild, both merely raised to be guardians of the two eldest intended to be queen and advisor for their tribe. Insu'yri had been like fire, brilliant and cunning. They had often bickered, and she had teased her younger sister relentlessly for her brash naivety in comparison to her razor wit. She hadn't been present for the grieving after Cairn, after seeing the way their father had drowned in his abhorrence. She hadn't come to see he or Llenya depart. Instead, she had lost her mind, the gem she had once so flaunted. She had tried to breach the walls of the enemy in solitude, to have the head of the king that would so callously condemn them. She would fail, however, and all they would receive of her in the end was her soiled, tarnished locks of gold carved from her skull. 

Fifth, she would place a simple golden leaf. It wasn't the same as the ones that flourished from the Mother Tree, no, but those were no longer obtainable. And this was a farewell written to herself - for the person she used to be. The one that had died with the rest of them back upon the sands. The woman who's mind was bent until it broke. She still didn't remember what had exactly happened, and no longer did she wish to. Dreams would come to her atimes, and she would wake from them drowning in cold sweats and the violent upheaval of her stomach was swift to follow. She could never remember them, she had not the courage to try. There was no denying, however, that she was just the same. That she had perished, not among the dunes she had so loved. No, it was a dark, festering pit. It was cold stone and mortar in place of the warmth of golden grains. Never again was she meant to see the light of day, and yet, somehow, here she was. And here she was again after the last attempt upon her mortal coil. Death, it would seem, would only continue to spit her back out.

Lastly, a small collection of silver bangles. For Khalila. In truth, perhaps the youngest of her siblings was still alive to this day. But it wouldn't be the woman that she had known. That she had grown up with. It wasn't the girl that had taught her about the stars and how to dance. For if she yet lived, she was a traitor. A word seething upon her tongue, but unspoken. No, only the birds called - and the limbs of trees whispered against their boughs and one another as leaves brushed like fingers through hair. The forest around her remained a constant calm despite the depths of her welling emotions. Turmoil that waged war within her. She had debated even making an offering to the youngest, but the patchwork within her chest bled that she do so. That she bid a good bye to the little sister that she had cradled when thunder shook their tent. That she send the sweet babe who had wailed like her heart itself was breaking when she had learned their mother had departed this world giving her life. The hand that had held hers so tightly when they had been the last of their blood. Was she genuine then? Were the tears upon the dam of her lashes true, or a mere ploy to cover the writhing poison within her? She could only accept them as the last good within her.

To do otherwise would be far too much for her to withstand as she wound the string wrapped around the stick to and fro against the dry kindling until the first breaths of smoke began to form. Until they would alight with the embers of a fledgling flame. The pyre would begin its destruction in full and she would kneel before it, ignoring the way the moss damp ground chilled her knees. Her hands would clasp, finally encompassing the anger and hatred she had held onto for so long until she came to recognize it as only sadness. As grief. She knew despite this semblance of letting them go, proof of them would remain under the cover of her fingernails, just like everything else she had lost. She knew that as long as she continued on, so too would they, if only in memory. They would continue to live as they once had. It was only once she joined them that they would truly vanish from this world. Their names may continue to move through the shallow tributaries of history, but it would be from the perspective of those who had won. Her people, her family would only be known as the villains of the tale. They wouldn't be remembered as kind-hearted siblings and the adoring father who had raised them. Only she could retell those stories.

Despite herself, in her ritualistic prayers, she wondered if the Mother Tree and her governing children would still receive her askance and bless the paths that her family would tread? After all, the great gilded tree had been felled and burned. She wondered if the golden woman depicted to await on the other side of the door was still present, waiting to lead them away. She felt ill at the notion. That they would all just be there, enshrouded and lost in the darkness forever. The very same that would await her on the final closing of her eyes. Would they even be able to find one another in that abyss? Then came another wake of discovery: there would be none to perform her rites of departure. Even if the great spirit remained despite her physical form being destroyed, she would never meet her. Her path across would never be revealed to her. Her fingers squeezed upon one another just a bit tighter, a trembling breath departing her as she finished her silent renditions.

Glass eyes would peer upon her work, the branches now wholly engulfed within the vestiges of flame. Her offerings made to each of those she had lost to bid the guide find them in the eternal fog and lead them to the end of their long delayed journey. The pyre itself embodying the light so that they may be seen in their entirety, their bones and actions lain bare for judgement. She would remain seated before it, her hands lowered to rest atop her thighs as she settled into somewhat of a more comfortable lean back. Slowly, her gaze would follow the billow of the smoke as it rose far above the colorful autumnal canopies. A small, apologetic smile loomed upon her lips, one that did not breach the emptiness of her dulled stare. A quiet whisper interlaced with the cadence between fire and wood.

"I'k kurrae es suud ka ku rums... Praoka rakakbar ka."