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saturdaysh0rts · 1 year

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Chrysanta Propaganda

Chapters 2 & 3 of backstory

Read chapter 1 here

Vote Chrysanta in @homemadegirlbossbattle here

Chapter II

I woke up on a tatami. My mind felt numb. I must of passed out on the road. I looked around and found myself in a small, undecorated room, the tatami the only piece of furniture there. My stomach dropped as I thought maybe I'd landed myself in a jail cell, but a quick glance at the window showed it wasn't barred. Warm late-afternoon sun turned the leaves what filled the window golden-green.

My jacket was gone and I had on an unfamiliar shirt. Underneath it, my left shoulder was heavily bandaged and ached like a bitch. I stretched my fingers on that hand, then bent and unbent my elbow and found everything but the shoulder was just fine, if a little stiff. The slightest movement of the shoulder itself, though, sent a shock of agony through it. Using my right arm as support, I sat up, and my head spun. I felt like I’d been ate by a wolf and shit over a cliff.

A Dwarvish man dressed in all white entered suddenly. He looked surprised for a moment, then relieved.

"Oh, good," he said. "You're awake."

The man had a wrinkly, weather-beaten face with an age spot under one eye. He must of been in his sixties or seventies, but he walked like a man in his fifties at most. A thin beaded braid was nestled in the center of his long gray beard. As he handed me a cup of water, I saw swirling tattoos peeking out from his long sleeves, stretching over his wrinkled fingers. He was a Gravekeeper. I set the cup on the ground next to the tatami.

"Sorry I don’t have any chocolate for ya. We're a little low on coin here for that kind of thing," he said. "I do have one saved though, in case you take a bad turn."

Another shock of white-hot pain went through my shoulder as I shifted on the tatami. I wanted that chocolate. "Give it to me," I said, and rocked forward to stand up as I reached for my gun. The holster wasn’t there, and the movement made my vision black out for a moment.

“Settle down,” the old man said as I blinked my vision back. He didn’t sound bothered. He simply knelt and put the cup of water back in my hand. “You shouldn’t move that arm too much. Here–” From a pocket he produced a white cloth. “You wanna tie your own sling, or do you want my help?”

I shoved the cloth away. I had to get out of here, I had to keep running. When I tried again to stand, though, I near fainted. The old man caught me by my right arm and my back and helped lower me gently to sit back down on the tatami.

“Drink that water now,” he commanded.

I couldn’t think straight. I had to leave but I couldn’t. So I drank the water.

"Your horse turned up on the edge of town late last night," he told me, and reached slowly for my left arm. I yanked it away from him, then cried out at the movement. He held the sling out then and looked at me, waiting for me to offer him my arm of my own accord. I looked up at him, then down at his hands. It was just a sling. He’d done nothing but help me so far. I gingerly set my arm in the sling, and he brought the corners of the cloth around to tie behind my neck. He kept talking as he did.

"Well your horse turned up and your foot was caught in one of the stirrups and it was draggin' you along like a sack o’ potatoes. You looked half dead. I thought I was gonna have a task a bit more in line with my normal work, if you catch my drift. You was still hangin’ on, though." He lowered himself with a mighty sigh to sit on the floor facing me. "And as luck would have it, I was a doctor before I joined the Order. I'm a little rusty, but you oughtta be just fine. Luckily that bullet mostly only hit muscle and a little bone. Exit wound was downright nasty, that's what had you bleedin' so bad. You're past the scariest bit, though. Now we just hope it don’t get infected."

I sipped my water. I still felt numb, but my head was clearing a bit. Why was this man helping me? Was it possible this was the only town east of the war that didn't have mine and Corvus' bounty posters up? Or maybe he was waiting for the town guard to arrive and take me away so he could collect his money.

The man continued. "So what's got you all battered up?"

I took another sip of water and didn't answer right away. I tried to think through the thick fog that had settled in my head. I was riding last night, bleeding bad cause I’d got shot at that tavern, right after…

The events from the night before all flooded back at once, and it was like it unfroze my numb brain. Anything I mighta tried to say turned to blubbering as I began to weep. Corvus was gone. That was all my head could grasp. My fingers found the bird stone in my pocket and I clutched it tightly. The heaviness of the empty space where he shoulda been felt like it was about to rip me in two. I wished for the numbness back.

There was a hand on my good shoulder. "It's okay," the man said. "Let it out."

I don't know how long I sat there in tears, but eventually I stopped crying, sobs giving way to hiccups. "I lost m-m-my brother," I said, perhaps to the old man, maybe to myself.

He nodded. "I wondered where the other twin was."

So he did recognize me. "W-we ain't twins," I sniffed.

He frowned. "But ain't you–"

"Yeah, the fuc-c-ckin' Rosetti Twins. Just c-cau-cause we're siblings and look it don't mean we're twins. I'm two years older.” My voice shook, my heart in shreds. “I was s’posed to protect him."

The old man was quiet. He only looked at me sadly.

Staring at the floor, I failed to clear the last of the tears from my eyes. "Wh-why-why did you help me?"

He shrugged. "Well if you was dead, I'd of been obligated to bury you and all. Since you turned out not to be, I couldn’t justify it if I'd just got to diggin' while I watched you finish bleedin' out."

“You turnin’ me in?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so," the old man said. "This damn town won't allow me to perform death rites for executed prisoners. I'd be acting against my Tenets if I was to hand you over so you'd die without bein’ afforded your death rites."

"Not even for the bounty?"

"What would I do with a buncha gold?" He chuckled. "This place runs as well as it needs to with what we’ve got. And as for me, I'm likely gettin' to the end of my time. I can't take any o' that with me when I'm gone."

"How d’you know I won't just kill you and run?"

"Well I suppose you could. I'm not all that bothered by dyin'. Like I said, I'm close enough to it anyway. But good luck killin' me what with the shape you're in." He stood slowly, stretching his old joints gingerly as he did, and started toward the door. "Run if you like, I won't stop ya. But my advice is to stay here and recover a bit. You're mighty lucky to be alive. Don't waste it." He stood in the doorframe. "My room's right next door. Just holler if you need anything."

He closed the door behind him on his way out.

True to his word, the old man—Osada, his name was—didn't turn me in.

The monastery consisted of Osada and Kori, a young Kenku monk with a permanent scowl. Kori made it very clear very quickly that they did not approve of my presence, handling my shoulder roughly when they helped Osada change the bandages, barging in loudly to clean at ridiculous hours of the morning, and "accidentally" spilling mop water on my tatami a few too many times to be accidental. I thought for sure they'd rat me out, but to my surprise, no one ever came to haul me away.

My shoulder got worse before it got better. Just as Osada feared, a bad infection set in a couple days after I arrived. Personally, I blamed Kori's mop water. The skin got all red and swollen and the bandages came away coated in pus. I was feverish to the point I’d have to feel better to die. Osada tried to treat it himself at first, but I cussed him out so bad every time he so much as touched the bandages that after a couple days he caved and gave me the chocolate he'd saved.

That healed my shoulder right up. Not all the way, but at least to where I could mostly use it again. Osada gave me exercises to do what he said would help it finish healing right and strengthen it up again. It hurt, but not near so bad as when it was infected.

Now that I could stand and walk around without near passing out, I discovered that the entire monastery wasn't, in fact, as drab as my little room with the cot. I was just put up in the only unoccupied space. The place, while not exactly beautiful, was full and lived-in. Tools of the trade, personal belongings, and general household clutter decorated every room. The yard, which I could see out the window in the daytime but wouldn't venture into til after dark, was home to four hens and a small vegetable garden. Blossom was out there too, next to another horse that I assumed belonged to Kori, given the amount of time they spent tending to it. They spent enough time with the horses that even Blossom started to like them better than me, which gave me no small amount of annoyance.

I tried to play Mama's harmonica a bit while I didn't have much else to do, but I couldn't for very long without breaking down in tears. With Corvus gone, I missed her and Ma more than usual too. I couldn't play her harp without feeling all alone.

Osada asked me to help out with chores as long as I was staying. I scoffed at first, then one day found myself cleaning up the main room out of sheer boredom. There weren't a whole lot I could do without straining my shoulder, but I could easily wipe down a table or do some light sweeping.

I couldn't find my revolver. I combed the entire monastery top to bottom and found nothing. I eventually asked Osada about it but all he said was, "You don't need it anymore." I didn't know what in the hell that was supposed to mean, and I was pissed as all hell about it. Seemed like he’d thrown out my good jacket, too. It was made of fine leather with fringe and embroidered flowers, and it was one of my favorite things I ever owned. He said it’d been ruined, soaked in blood, but I wouldn’t of cared. I’d gladly spend the time to fix it up and clean it. Shit that thing was expensive. I mean, I’d stolen it, but still. Weren’t no way I was gonna be able to get another one like it. At least I still had Ma’s hat and Mama’s harmonica. I got back my saddle bag, too. It was stripped of weapons but otherwise untouched. Even my coin purse didn't have a single copper missing.

Osada didn't dip into my finances himself, but he did ask me to cover the cost of keeping me fed. At first I refused, thinking of Wiley and his souped-up prices. I insisted I'd figure it out myself. I lived off the rations from my saddle bag for about a week until they ran out. Then I got hungrier and hungrier, and there was no way I'd be going to any kind of market or out hunting anytime soon. Hell, I still couldn't carry anything much heavier than a broom with my left arm. So I gave in and handed over whatever money Osada asked for. Turned out to be a fraction of what Wiley charged, which was good cause Corvus' bag was the one with most of the money. I asked him if he might could get me cigarettes while he was out cause I was running outta the ones in my bag, but he refused. Shopkeep knew him better than that, he said. Might raise suspicion.

I had a lot of downtime resting and recovering from my injury, and I spent what felt like most of it crying. Every day I made plans to leave the next morning, and every morning I thought, What's the point? What would I even do?

I had no idea. Corvus was gone.

Alone, unarmed, and weakened, I knew crossing the warzone would be impossible. I couldn't go back to highway robbery by myself neither. Was I doomed to stay hidden in this monastery for the rest of my life? Over and over I'd toss around my options and turn to Corvus to talk it through, then the waterworks would start back up and I'd kick myself for being so stupid. Every day the pit in my stomach grew deeper with grief and anxiety and, most of all, horrible twisting guilt.

If only I'd been watching that room better.

If only I'd said yes, we should bail.

If only I'd taken his fumble when he caught the stone as the sign of bad luck that it was.

If only I hadn't come up with the whole damned plan to begin with.

If only I'd sucked it up and made us stay at that fucking orphanage eight years ago.

I knew that no matter how I looked at it, it was my fault my little brother was dead. It was my job to protect him and I’d failed. I could hardly sleep. The nightmares I had most nights were worse than ever before, if only cause I could actually remember them when I woke. Over and over, I watched Corvus die in a million different ways, always my finger on the trigger, my hand holding the blade. How was I supposed to live with myself? I near wished Kori would turn me in. More than once I thought about doing it myself.

"You're mighty lucky to be alive. Don't waste it."

Osada kept on fucking saying that. He kept on trying to get me to talk about grief and my past and my feelings. The second he started asking me questions I'd simply leave the room. One day soon after I ran outta cigarettes, I snapped and shouted at him to fuck off and leave me be. He backed off for a bit after that, but I guess he thought he was getting through to me or something once I started doing chores and he doubled his efforts. He seemed dead set on the idea that I was some delinquent kid whose life he could turn around just by getting me to open up. It really pissed me off.

The days became weeks and I was itching for some solitude and a smoke. I knew I had to get outta there. I just didn't know how.

About three weeks after I first arrived to the monastery, Viola Drosdov showed up. A Goliath, she stood over seven and a half feet tall. I figured she must of had some other ancestry too cause unlike most Goliaths, she had a thick, curly crown of hair that brought her easily over eight feet. Her skin was real dark gray, which made her bright blue eyes almost look like they glowed. Five or so of the clay beads on the braid behind her left ear were the color of dull rust, the rest of them painted white like regular. There was about 15 or so total, so I figured she must of been close to that many years older than me. Instead of the regular all-white of a Gravekeeper, only her shirt and broad-brimmed hat were white, while her pants, jacket, and shoes were various shades of brown. Slung over her shoulder she carried a massive shotgun.

Viola was stopping by to rest and pay Osada a visit. They seemed to of known each other a long time. She'd just crossed the warzone from the Confederacy, performing death rites for both sides of the war as she went. In a week, she'd be starting her return.

My heart skipped a beat. Viola was my perfect ticket to freedom. From what I could gather at the time, Gravekeepers were respected by both sides and generally allowed to pass through unaccosted. If I could get her to take me with her across the warzone to the Confederacy, I'd be set. The second day she was there, I asked her if she would.

"Why?" she said.

"'Cause I need to get outta here," I said like it was obvious.

"No, I mean why should I take you on as a liability as I cross the most dangerous part of the world?"

"I'll pay you," I offered. "And I c-can fight. I can be like… I don't know, a bodyguard or somethin'." I knew it was downright stupid as I was saying it.

Viola looked down her nose at me, snorted a laugh to herself, and walked away.

I felt a flash of white-hot rage, the urge to make her hurt for laughing at me like that, but I didn’t do nothing. She scared me, and I still had an injured shoulder.

Osada caught wind that I was trying to leave with Viola. I'd never seen him look so thrilled and it set my stomach all sour. He looked like he'd been fixing to make this suggestion for a long time, waiting for the perfect moment.

"Chrysanta should go with you and train as an apprentice," he said to Viola.

He'd suggested this here plan to me before bringing it to Viola. I brushed him off like usual when he started spouting his ‘second chance’ bullshit, but then I caught Kori's glare and remembered just how miserable I was here. I'd do just about anything if it meant getting out of this place, preferably alive. If that meant promising to be a Gravekeeper, well then hell, so be it. It wasn't like I'd have to follow through. As soon as we got past the warzone, I could give Viola the slip. If I got my hands on a weapon, I might could even get rid of her entirely. Well, maybe. I thought about the fact I hardly came up to her massive bicep and decided booking it in the dead of night would be less risky.

Osada's suggestion hung in the air. Viola looked at him first for a minute, her eyes unreadable as stone. Then she stared at me a long time, sizing me up. I tried my hardest to look sincere.

"Alright, Rosetti," she said. "Let's do it."

I blinked. I'd expected her to need a lot more convincing. Or really, any convincing at all.

Osada was over the moon. Quick as a whip, he ran to fetch books and scrolls, wanting to get me started right away. As he showed me the proper way to thread a white bead on my braided hair, I felt Viola's and Kori's scornful eyes on the back of my head, and I knew they weren't fooled.

There wasn't much to be learnt in the short time before Viola and I took off. Even if there’d been any dead to deal with right then, I couldn’t oughtta have done much if I was to stay hidden inside the monastery. Without much else to do, Osada insisted on starting my tattoos right away, since there wouldn't be much opportunity to get them done while crossing the warzone. That way, he said, I'd at least be able to start learning the flow of Breath. I near told him to fuck right off, don't come near me with that needle and ink, but Viola was watching and I didn't want to give myself away. By this point I was afraid she only agreed to bring me with cause she planned to snap my neck the moment we got out of town, so I was trying extra hard to make it look like I was serious about the Gravekeeper thing. I grinned and bore it, pretending to read a book about the flow of Breath as Osada and Viola stabbed hot ink into my arms and back til I was numb.

Chapter III

Viola and I left the monastery at around three in the morning, saddled up Blossom and Sky—Viola’s horse—and made it to the edge of the warzone well before sunrise. Even in the dark, the change in landscape was drastic. I traveled cross Teikoku and back once as a child. The memories weren’t exactly vivid, but I knew that this area once was lush, green prairie and farmland. Now, the grasses stopped in a harsh line, turning into red rocky desert that stretched far as I could see.

“People are calling it ‘The Empty,’” Viola said as we crossed the line.

Once the sun began to rise, I noticed the mountains. Rather, I noticed they was gone. Somehow, in just ten years, they’d got worn down to barely look like hills. I wanted to ask what happened, what could possibly do a thing like this, but I was too scared to ask Viola anything.

We rode two days not coming cross a single other living soul. Barely a word passed ‘tween the two of us. Eventually we began to hear the occasional BOOM out yonder. It would make the ground shake, each one stronger and stronger as we rode west. Viola all of a sudden stopped her horse and dismounted.

“Why're we stoppin'?” I asked, following suit.

“Lunch,” she answered simply.

“We only ate a couple hours ago,” I said.

Viola closed the distance ‘tween us at breakneck speed. I didn’t have time to do nothing before she was holding me in the air by my shirt.

“Listen here, you murderous shitstain,” she spat. “I know what you are, I know what your game is. I know you’ve done nothing but lie through your teeth for the past week because that’s all scum like yourself know how to do.”

“No, I–” She slapped me cross the face good and hard.

“Shut up.”

I lifted a hand to where my face stung and my eye had started watering, but I didn’t say shit. I wasn’t fixing to get smacked again.

Viola continued, “The only reason I agreed to bring you along was out of respect for the old man. I’ve known him over half my life. I trust him more than I trust myself. If he’s so convinced you can change, then sure, I’ll give you a chance against my better judgment.”

“Thank you k-ki-kindly, ma’am, but might could we have this co-conversation with my feet on solid g–AH!”

I got my wish—Viola quite literally threw me on the ground. A jolt of pain went through my bad shoulder and I saw stars as my horns slammed on the hard rock below. Blinking the stars out of my eyes, I came face to face with the end of her shotgun and yelped as she stepped on my tail.

“Is that comfortable enough for you?” Viola asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. “I’d like nothing more than to be proven wrong,” she said. “And I want to make sure you know that if you fail to prove me wrong–” she dug in her heel on my tail and I winced “–I will, without hesitation, send you to answer to your ancestors. Am I clear?”

“Yes, m-ma’am.” I tried to keep my stutter under control, but it only seemed to make it worse. “If I ma-may, I don’t much see w-wha-what this has to do with lunch.”

Mercifully, she lowered her gun and stepped off my tail, but I didn’t dare move a muscle.

“We’re about to walk through an active warzone,” she said. “We’ll be taking our time getting through it, too. If you want to live, you'll do as I fucking say, and you won't ask questions about it. If we wait to have lunch right now, we’ll end up dining in the middle of a battlefield. If I say we’re stopping for lunch, we’re stopping for our goddamn lunch.”

I nodded. She reached out her hand to help me to my feet, and I took it. We ate our rations in dead quiet.

This wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d hoped.

When we was done eating, we mounted our horses again and got closer to the noise out yonder. We skirted round the battlefield making all the ruckus, close enough that we could just barely see it on the horizon and I could smell the smoke and iron. I was glad not to be any closer—I didn’t wanna know what some of those fires looked like up close.

“Settle in for now, but be ready to move,” Viola told me. I knew better than to ask questions.

Hours we waited, til it was well after dark. Then the sounds subsided but the smell remained. We each took a watch shift overnight, and when the battle didn’t resume in the morning, we made our way over to the battlefield.

The rocky flatland was strewn with debris to what felt like the horizon. Most of the bodies left behind wore the uniforms of the Confederacy. The Empire had took this battle and collected the bodies of their own soldiers to be buried at home, though there was surely some left behind, lost under the debris. We wouldn’t move on from this place until every single body left here was buried. It would be a long time before I made it to the Confederacy.

Viola double checked to make sure I had sweetgrass in my braid. After that, she had me get to digging a grave while I watched her work. She started off by pouring a little water in a dead soldier's mouth. Then, she searched the body. He had a gun in his hand and I watched Viola pull a few cartridges and knives out of his pockets and toss them aside. I thought about picking them up. I still didn’t have any weapons of my own. Maybe later, when Viola wasn’t looking. I didn’t reckon she’d be keen to let me have any. After the weapons, she found a pack of cigarettes, and tossed them aside, too. Those I did pick up.

“Put those down,” she barked, and I dropped them with a start.

“W-wh–” I started to ask, then bit my tongue, remembering what happened last time I challenged her.

"Dependencies like that interfere with our work," she said, and didn't volunteer any more than that.

Viola finally found what she was looking for in the soldier’s breast pocket. It looked to be a letter. She wrote something down in a little notebook from her own pocket, then she took a bundle of sweet herbs and set it smoking. She waved it over the body for a long time. It looked to me like she was feeling around for something in the air above the body while she did it. Once that was done, she took some rice and set it down right near the body. She said a little blessing over it. Then she picked up the other shovel we'd brought and helped me dig.

I kept on having to stop on account of my shoulder, but I would only rest and stretch it for a minute and then keep on digging. I wasn't fixing to get shot on account of laziness.

We finished digging the grave and moved the body into it. From a small satchel on her belt, Viola took a bamboo leaf. She tore a slit in either end and bent the leaf in half. She used the slits to fix the leaf into a little cup shape. From the same satchel she took a pearl and put it in the little basket she just made. She set that on top of the fellow in the grave, and then she sang.

Viola don't have a specially beautiful voice. But while she sang I all of a sudden felt like crying. As I stood over the grave, after a few minutes, I felt something in the air there, just faintly. It was like a presence, like the air was almost a little denser. It made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

"What is that?" I asked.

Viola looked at me strange.

"What's what?" she asked between bars of her wordless song.

I felt around til I found the strange spot. The air felt kinda more dense than what was around it. I waved my hands around it to show what I was talking about. "This here."

She smacked my hands away, still looking at me weird. "Don't just stick your hands into him like that. That's rude."

"Sorry," I said, and meant it. I stayed mesmerized as the strange spot in the air settled over the body, centered on the pearl.

Viola trailed off on her song. "Peter," she whispered. I realized she must of found the name from that letter he was carrying on him. Viola continued, "Here your body now lies. Rest here and gather strength for your journey to your ancestors. May your travels be easy and may you find peace. Remember this place. Remember your loved ones, as they remember you.”

I remembered a different Gravekeeper whispering that same blessing over my Uncle Terrence near eight years ago. Corvus and I, aged ten and twelve back then, were the only ones there besides the Gravekeeper doing the rites.

I thought of my parents, somewhere out here in the Empty, soldiers whose bodies were never recovered. As far as I knew, this had never been done for them.

I thought of Corvus, who I left behind when I ran away. Had anyone done this for him? Or was he left to burn along with that tavern?

I realized I had tears coming down my face in a downright torrent as I found myself on my knees beside the grave.

Something nudged my arm. I looked up, and Viola was holding a shovel out to me. "Time to cover him up," she said.

I stood up quickly, drying my face on my jacket sleeve.

"Didn't peg you as the type to get emotional about all this," Viola said as we filled in the grave.

I didn't say nothing. I didn't know what to say. I didn't peg myself as that type either.

When we were done, I stopped a minute to stretch my shoulder some more. It was really giving me grief.

Viola whapped the handle of my shovel into my gut to hand it back to me. “Work isn’t done, Rosetti. Back to digging.”

“Why can’t we cremate ‘em?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be faster?”

Viola shook her head. “We don’t have a way to keep a fire hot enough. Even if we could, we’d still only be able to do a couple at a time, and each one takes hours. You have to pay attention to collecting all the ash, which is a lot harder in an open environment like this. And after all that, we’d have to bury the ashes anyway.”

I huffed. “If I do much more diggin’ my shoulder’s gonna give out.”

Viola didn’t even look at me while she answered, “Then you’ll be one step closer to making up for your sorry excuse for a life. And you’ll keep digging with one arm.”

I scowled. Maybe it would be worth trying to cross the Empty on my own after all. I’d think about it. Right now, I was too tired to put up a fight. I pulled my kerchief over my face to block out the growing stench of death as we moved to the next body.

We spent a good three weeks at that battlefield. My left arm felt like it was going to fall off by the end. I expected to get bored, but quite the contrary, I found it oddly comforting. I got mighty sick of digging, sure, but I felt some deep sense of relief with every soul that was put to rest. Something was gnawing at the back of my head, though.

One of our last nights at that battlefield, I took first watch. I usually did, on account of I always had trouble getting to sleep. I shivered and pulled my blankets tight around my shoulders. Viola had assured me that even in summer, the desert was bitter cold at night, and it was now the end of October. We couldn’t light a fire. It was too much of a risk. People usually wouldn’t attack us as Gravekeepers, but from far away it might could be hard for them to tell, so it was safest to avoid attention. It was no good for me, though. I got cold a lot quicker than most folks. Corvus always did too. I figured it was something to do with being a Tiefling.

In between wishful thoughts of a nice warm fire and a cigarette, I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents’ remains out here somewhere in the desert. Corvus too, back in the Empire. What had become of them if no one had given them their death rites?

“Viola?” I whispered, not wanting to wake her up if she was asleep already.

“Hm?”

"If I m-may ask, what happens if no one does all this for someone when they die?"

Viola rolled over to face me. "They don't move on to join their ancestors. They're trapped in the world of the living until their body fully decomposes, then their Breath is dissipated and recycled into other things.”

I felt tears pressing on my eyes. “How long might would that take?”

“Depends on the environment. A few years in a bayou, but somewhere dry like this, it could take decades.” She sighed heavy and sat up from her bedroll. “You’re worried about your brother, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said all quiet. “My Ma and Mama, too. They’re out here somewhere.”

She stared at me for a minute, then said, “How many people have you killed on the road?”

“Pardon?”

“You were a highway bandit. How many people did you kill on the road?”

I shifted, all uncomfortable. “I’m not sure w-what you’re gettin’ at.”

Her nostrils flared. “Fine, I’ll spell it out for you. You’re worried about your family? Worried about their souls making it to the next world because there was no one there to bury them? How many people have you left dead on the road to meet the same fate?”

“W-well– well I mean most of ‘em wasn't travelin' alone,” I stammered. “They w-woulda had folks there to take care of ‘em.”

“But not all of them.”

I looked at the ground. My face burned.

“Rosetti. Answer the question.”

“I don’t know,” I barely whispered.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know how many,” I said slower and louder through gritted teeth. The sinking feeling in my gut I’d learned to ignore long ago was returning stronger than it had in years.

"Do you think your mothers would be proud?"

That was one too far. I shook off my guilt in anger. “We only did w-what we had to to get by,” I snapped. “Weren’t no one else who was gonna help us, so I did what I had to to look after my brother. Anyone I k-killed, it was only ‘cause it was us or them.”

“Do you really believe that? Or is that just what you’ve told yourself so you can sleep at night?”

“I– it– we didn’t–” I couldn’t get my words together. “We was just ki-kids all on our own. We did what we had to.” All I could think to do was repeat myself. “You don’t know what it was like.”

She didn’t say nothing to that, just glared at me for a long time. I froze, afraid she might decide I’d gone too far and bring out her shotgun again.

“Do you know why I became a Gravekeeper?” she finally said.

“I don't know w-what business I’d have knowin’ somethin’ like that.”

She chuckled at that, the first she’d ever done to something I’d said. “Fair enough,” she said. “I lost my parents when I was fifteen. My little brother Simon was three.”

I didn’t wanna hear any of this. I was more scared of her than I was angry though, so I kept my mouth shut.

“At fifteen, I was landed with the task of raising my brother and keeping both of us fed and clothed. There was no orphanage in our town, but there was a monastery. And Osada.”

“Ain’t you from the west? I thought Osada was from the east,” I said. He had such a thick accent.

“He is,” she said. “He came out west for a time to be close to his daughter. She was quite sick for a while.”

“Oh.”

“He saw we were on our own and he took us in. The monastery kept us fed and housed for years. I decided to apprentice when I was sixteen. I completed my training under Osada, and then he went back east. A couple years after that, the other monk who ran the monastery died, so I was left to run it on my own at twenty. Then our community took care of us, and we took care of them.”

I curled my tail in closer to my body to warm it up. “W-well ain’t that nice,” I said, trying to keep the barbs in my tone to a minimum so I wouldn’t piss her off. “Did your brother become a Gravekeeper, too?”

“No,” Viola said. “He’s a soldier now.” Her voice was a little softer there, almost sad, but her scolding tone quickly returned. “My point with all this is that you’ll always get further by taking care of people than by taking from them. And you always have a choice.”

I didn’t say nothing as she layed back down. I thought her point was stupid. Her situation was completely different from me and Corvus. I thought better of arguing with her though.

“Do you leave food offerings for them?” Viola asked.

“Who?” I said.

“Your parents and brother.”

“Once in a while. Am I s’posed to do it more?”

“If you can, you should. If they haven’t been put to rest yet it’ll comfort them. Let them know they haven’t been forgotten. It’ll help you practice sensing Breath and souls, too. Though you seem to have a knack for it already.”

I nodded.

After Viola took over the watch later that night, I couldn’t get to sleep for even longer than normal. I twisted one of the stolen rings on my fingers as I stared up at the stars. My shoulder ached like hell in the cold, and guilt like I hadn’t felt in years writhed in my stomach, though I did my best to swallow it. Viola didn’t know what she was talking about. I shouldn’t better let it get to me.

#chrysanta has my whole heart but also so does Viola #chrysanta propaganda #chrysanta #tw death mention #tw dead body mention #tw guns

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