Moonspear you could turn my sorrow into song

Meerkat sang with her husband in a lugubrious, warbling duet as their melody joined the colors in the sky. He could not know what thoughts formed in his wife’s mind, but he felt her companionship – her proverbial hand in his – as she walked with him through these sorrows. Njord was so very thankful… he doubted he could have survived it alone.

As their notes waned Njord felt himself let go, one by one, all the secrets he held close to his heart. It felt like a baptism. Like all of his sins were being forgiven in anticipation of the new path they would walk upon Moonspear. Sobo was the first... and with each consecutive breath, another was liberated. It floated from him like a released balloon. Until only one remained. 

Njord could not understand why he held onto it so tight.

“I once had a dear friend named Merlin,” the words spilled from him. “He was Sapphique. As much as any of us. But… one day, he washed ashore.” Dead, the setting implied. “We buried ‘im on tha cliffs,” Njord reminisced.

“Erzulie took two suitors that year,” he went on to explain, “an’ I believe Merlin tae be Mireille’s true Da.” He had never admitted it to anyone. A moment passed the words sank in. “She is the exact image of ‘im. Freckles, stripe, an’ all…” Njord’s voice waned. “I dinnae ken if anyone’s told her.”

Njord loosed a small huff, exasperated, and looked around as if in a small battle with himself. Why do I say these things? Why does it matter?

“No one ever spoke of Merlin again. It hurt. An’ I fear, if I dinnae tell you about ‘im now, his memory willnae live on. Forgotten.” Njord put it upon himself to become the custodian of the dead. It was a difficult role.

Njord looked at the cairn and its jagged pieces with a melancholy gaze, but his breathing leveled out as the last burden lifted from his shoulders. "They were good kids," Njord reflected. "Sobo, Loko, Mireille, an' Coraline."