a velt screen between your self and the brutal art of dying

[serjeant]

Who: Seoraj and Hasibe Ozcelik
What: Grieving.
Where: Amaryllis.
When: Over the weekend.
Notes: Sad faces.
Warnings: Discussion of death.

Grief is not something that Seoraj has ever done alone.

He knows loss - it's a familiar path to tread, a fallen comrade, a lost lover. They've never been the same person, before, but he's no stranger to the quiet that comes afterwards, when motion can no longer be maintained and the space where they aren't feels accusatory. The space where he isn't. Seoraj wakes up to silence in the wee hours of the morning, unsettled, and drinks tea alone in his kitchen, spreading his hands on the rough wooden table where he got accustomed to drinking, sometimes, with someone else. At home- at home he would never be alone, right now. He's never known a kitchen to be empty; the sound of someone trying to sleep filtering down. A cat sleeping near the hearth, where it's warm. His cousin sitting beside him with something stronger than tea and not meeting his eyes- Ewar is a boy in his memory, but he knows that hasn't been true for much longer than he's been in Baedal. He is, he's sure, still a boy in the mind of his brothers. In the mind of his sister, especially.

He tries to imagine, while he's saddling the horse who is now his and who will probably never get a name, what she'd say. Everything he can think of sounds disapproving - uncharitable of him, maybe, but that's the way of sisters, and it comes of love. He's had few problems in his life she wasn't pretty sure could be solved by a wife, and he finds himself leaning against the side of the horse, laughing-

It's just he's never done this by himself. He doesn't have it in mind to start now.