Lion Head Mesa Crows will hang pine boughs at your window,

second-entering-third day after this

She had spent a whole day and then some by the body of Maegi.

Birds had come for it and she shooed them out with snipping teeth. She found a harsh need to keep the body forever, to hold it and never let it go. Let the cold body melt into her own and from those things, she carried the fresh stench of death. Whatever the body had released in those thirty-or-forty-so hours she had spent by it —

Her.

Maegi.

Nona.

Love always.

— had pressed into the furs of Jakoul. Wrought her into a foul beast, the harbinger of death in a way she loathed so deeply. Maegi was not supposed to die. Not yet. Maybe she could turn around, bring the body back out of where she had stashed it away with great care, and Maegi would rise once more. It all had been nothing more than a horrible, dark fantasy.

But the reality of it all clung to her in putrid clumps of fur.

She sank along the border of Akashingo in the dead of night. A mourning sound screeched from her lungs with every last tired cell she could muster into the act.

She wished for the abyss.

She waited for @Ramesses in a stupor.

invades...

A noise ruptured the stillness of the night.

Raimo was awake. He was not often awake in the late hours, but today had been more lackluster - the heat had been dangerous, and Tavina had petitioned more breaks for him so that he did not fall ill again. Thus, he had more energy to burn despite the late hour.

The cry was long and high-strung. It reminded him of the mourning songs during the queen's funeral; drawn to it, Raimo soon found himself face to face with his companion.

He did not get nearer, and tried to study her in the dark for signs of physical injury - but instead he only found the smell of death, and grew more concerned.

maegi had gone and pharaoh was deeply ashamed to wake from wending flesh and berries and find he had avoided all thoughts of his dying friend.
and as a strangled cry rose raw and fierce over the palace he somehow knew it to be the harbinger of death. and hot tears scoured his face, of shame as much as grief.
it was solemnly and alone that he at last came, and looked upon jakoul, stricken and reeking of maegi's poppysweet scent —
the end.
he sank down. "tell me it is not true."

Raimo.

She had heard the names in the hall and while at first she may not have placed him, he seemed familiar now in a healthier state. There was temptation to shove her way under his form.

But he did not draw nearer from his post.

She would not either, only shoved herself against the earth.

Next was the pharaoh himself. Hot tears and grief. The smell of Akashingo clung to him. The last scent that had been Maegi's before the scent of death had become hers. Now it was Jakoul's, woven into clumps of her dark fur.

She could not speak, but she scooched forward along the ground. Submissive and horribly grief ridden. A low whine of apology.

his throat tightened.
ramesses looked at jakoul's mourning form.
"where?" his voice caught.
"shall akashingo bring her here?" tones cooling, growing more formal as ramesses departed behind his royal facade.

Blackfeather.

She croaked from the ground, body clenched with her grief and a lump in her throat for it all.

Home.

It would be up to the pharaoh, if he wished to retrieve the body she had laid to rest.

"you knew her." no accusation, only observation. "would she have wanted a burial here?"
but he knew the answer. his odd, vibrant, tormented friend had never clung to the halls of akashingo. and in the end she had gone somewhere else to die.
he bit back tears. he looked far beyond her shoulder.

Home now.

Her throat clenched. She begged the pharaoh to see her limited words for what they are.

With family. With woods. Home. Rest now.

She tried to grow smaller, pitiful beneath the weight of her sorrow.

Don't raise the dead, she silently pled.

there it was, then.
ramesses took a slow breath; his chin lifted. his eyes glowed. "she has gone into the night, into the embrace of the One Who Walks with Stars."
"akashingo will make a place of tribute for her." he swallowed. "as prince siptah did with his , i want you to oversee this building. not a tomb. only an altar. an obelisk."
ramesses spoke no more.

Altar, She croaked pitifully.

Make altar. Love Maegi. Always.

She was tired. Exhausted. Wracked to the bone by her grief and the adrenaline of it all seemed to finally settle into a numb shock.

She wished to lie in the dark for some hours, if the pharaoh had no words or actions left for her.

ramesses was silent.
and then he rose.
pharaoh went to the top of the mesa, the ceiling of the palace, to bring home the sun with his great mourning.