<div class="floatleft">(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c2/5a/5b/c25a5b9d4712a0ffad833f263d4d9023.jpg)   </div><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">Aesa Wyrmborn</span>(https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=237173.msg11677350#msg11677350)<br/>Dragon-Blooded Elven Arcanist 1 (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=560159)<br/><hr/><br/>Aesa lingered for a moment while the others left, more than one obviously eager for less somber - and more intoxicating - entertainment.  She didn't share in the spirit, but neither could she fault it any more than the human priest's frown at the seed ritual.  Ways were different here, and who was she to say they were bad, to try to impose her own?  She'd learned the flaws of her own culture well enough.<br/><br/>The younger priests - acolytes?  Sextons?  She didn't know what to call them - darted forward to fill the grave with soil.  This, at least, she could do.  It was simple work, and it was in simple work that she had found the little joy of her life.  Nor was she ready for this thing to be done.  A life couldn't be over so quickly, could it?  A few ephemeral words, a bit of ritual, and they walked away?  It felt little better than what she'd done for the Sisters, their bloody corpses abandoned in the beds where she'd murdered them, probably still frozen in the mountain hold like a tomb.<br/><br/>There was an extra shovel and she made good use of it.  The strain felt good on her athletic physique, her muscles coiling and working, each spade of soil pushing her toward the satisfied weariness of a job well done.  None of them spoke.  She wasn't sure if that was more ritual or simply their way, but she enjoyed the metronomic hiss and thump of digging and pouring.  It was meditation, or catharsis.  It only took a few minutes for the work to be done, the loose dirt surely more easily moved downward into the grave than it had been to remove in the first place, but she was different at the end.  The pain was no less, but something had been completed, was finished.<br/><br/>When the last of the fill was moved, she returned the shovel to the clergymen.  She wondered for the first time about their lack of surprise at her presence for while this wasn't planned, they had never questioned it.  Did some humans do this, too?  Or was the Professor's funeral cortege too odd for this to stand out strangely?  The younger looking man softly murmured directions to the place where the mourners had gone; Aesa nodded her thanks and followed after them, ready to catch up for tea or, if she must, ale.  She brushed her muddy hands on her pants at the thought.  The dirt fell away from both in a breath of magic to leave her as clean as when she began.