Stone Circle how we love is what will last

All her words are beautiful, filled with hope and things Taktuq wants to be true. To know her mother is free of suffering. To know she is in peace, perhaps even with father, now. The thought that Siarut might be gone too pains her, but she has not seen him since she left Easthollow with Takiyok - and she knows too much about the world to hold to the childish belief that he is, for certain, alive and well. She will think it, but she will not be surprised if she learns he has died, just like she will not be surprised if she hears the same about Selamuit, Kallik, or Ikiaq.

She will mourn, but she will not weep like a daughter, or a sister, unprepared.

Merrit once told her about a similar belief he had begun to hold onto after Auntie Valette - his own mother - had died. He would have gotten along with Tauris, and she decides that if he ever follows the Lost Stones home, she will introduce them.

Taktuq smiled, and offered a gentle laugh, for Tauris gave her those, too, how can things so beautiful mean nothing? If we are given meaning, surely even these things so small must have meaning, too, even without she or Tauris here to assign them such. They had meaning simply because they were.

These flowers, she turns attention back towards the green ones Tauris had drawn her to, you do not have much of this, you say. Nature and plants? Or harmony among your people?