Dragoncrest Cliffs Death of a Rose

Raleska.  Kaertok.  Regin.

She could not bear another.

Rosencrantz.

Erzulie had told her his wounds were grievous, and the likelihood he would make it slim.  Still, she hadn't accepted it, not untill she returned to find Njord quietly weeping over a body whose spirit had been lost to them.  She stopped, stricken, and the weight of another crushed her already flickering resolve.

Perhaps if she'd known his hand in Raleska's fate, she might have found the strength to harden against it.  Instead she only knew that they'd lost him again, this time for good, and that the silent moment in the woods - he and Chacal, playing - was the only one she'd ever bear witness to of it's like.  Her silent hope, that the gift that had never been hers, that had never been her son's, might one day belong to her daughter died alongside him.  Lover, guardian, father, and now nothing.  I never even got to tell her.  And now she knew that she never would.

For the first time, the tidal wave of grief crested over, and her legs folded beneath her.  She wept for them all, mindless of Njord's proximity, raw with grief and the despair of watching, one by one, the few beings she allowed her soul to tie itself to sever and depart from her forever.