Dragoncrest Cliffs [BWP] A Lyke Wake Dirge

val remained silent, involuntarily following njord's gaze to the direction where he had first seen the enormous bear emerge. something cold seized his heart.

he looked away. towards the sea, the cliffs, the puffy white clouds that hung in tendrils suspended across a sapphire blue winter sky.

njord's quiet words brought him back to reality. he thought of his older sister, unaware of her true relation to him. she had always been stern, hard. he often had gotten the sense she did not like him, or did not like to see him.

and of kaertok, val knew very little. the man had been his escort from redhawks to home, and for that val viewed him as something akin to a guardian.

and now both of them were nothing at all -- like the clouds that moved above him, they were there and gone the next.

sapphique lived on because of all of them. val's forehead wrinkled in hard thought. "how come the bear had to come?"