Those who Doubt 1- The Ghoul and the Ghost

Watching a grave is never easy.  We don't really have a choice though.  The fates have decreed this is our point of view.  Our place in this tale.  We can't do much more than sit and wait.  There's a candle on a carved plinth.  There's a name that's not a name on it.  A name we already know: Flamesson Henkersbeil.  There's the remains of his corpse scavenged helmet, the burnt and shattered hole in a breastplate, the shattered remains of a weapon.  Memories that rust will eat.  Remnants that time will consume.

Just watch though.  It was getting cold when the three left here.  Snow stalks into the cleared field and the solitary monument's vigil.  At the pace we're moving people are flickers.  Brief flashes of movement leaving more memories behind.  Another grave in the winter.  Some other Flamesson's name on a plinth sprouts from the ground like mushrooms over a white log.  A wall out of scavenged stones built along the treeline to the north with snow drifts leaning against it peaks out suddenly, exposed bones under the flesh of frost.  People are coming.  People have heard about a place to take the dead from a country that won't have them back.  A place to take corpses away from the wolf of winter.

The spring is supposed to be a time of new life.  But more graves appear as the leaves of the forest turn green and grass creeps over the sparse few stone markers and wooden spears planted into ash-filled soil.  Cremated sparks of fire gestating in the ground.  Baking as the sun overhead pulls to a Summer zenith.  The wall grows along the north.  People who visit add to it stone by stone.  Some come to see.  Some come to believe.  Some come because they want to remember.  Some come because it's a hope that they won't be forgotten once the fire burns out of their own brief lives.

Fall's long shadow casts a path through the graves that have grown over the speed of years here.  Leaves cluster around the graves.  Scatter as mortal briefness visit some, and cluster again in hunched piles near the graves.  The wall grows.  The stones pile high on cairns that are expanded with each visit.  Henk's memorial stays simple.  A candle.  Armor rotting under the exposed sky.  Whoever visits scrapes the wax off after the candle burns out.  Places a new one each year.  A cycle of cinders repeating through the flickering years.

The cycle stops.  The howl of winter wind pulls through the impact of our return to normality.  Nips and bites at a lone giant standing over Henk's simple grave, knife in hand, scraping away the wax from last year's candle.  Waiting for two others.  It's the same War Dog from before.  Too large.  Clad in leathers and reds and burnished flashes of brass.  Two ruby-red eyes looking over the new gravestones and the others that have come as the last few years have shoveled more of his kind into the beyond.

The eyes stop moving though.  The growling voice pours out from a mouth who's sound and fury are starting to pull apart the voice within.  Fraying the edges.  Singing the surface of the ear as it spoke. "Yez always wiz a lousy sneak Minn."

"I always get here before you.  Always more graves to document.  New names to send home to family they might of had.  Who do you think started telling people about this place?"  Minn's fur-lined hood peeked up from behind a tall memorial cairn.

"I mighta mentioned it as I marched last few years.  Lihta probly did as well, knowin her gift o'gab when she's nae pushin someone's teeth down their throat."  The giant grunted, sheathing the knife, brushing powdered wax off of the plinth, placing a fresh candle onto it.

"You two been doing a lot of talkin then?  Every new grave here's another Flame's son or Daughter."  A rustle of pages, a thump of leather bindings.  Minn shoulders her book and moves over towards Henk's standing stone, eyeing the simple remnants of life.

"Even monsters get worried 'bout what comes next Minn.  Even the worst get itchy thinkin no one will give a shit or see the dent they left on life after they're gone.  S'why yez got oath circles like ours around."  Hammersmith chuckles, pale breath misting into the air between the two.

"Thought we did this so there'd always be someone you respected around to kill you when you lost that last straw in your head instead of needing to rely on strangers who won't care who you were."  Minn twitches a brow up in question.  Not believing a word out of the giant satyr's mouth.

"Aye.  That too.  That too."  The war dog nodded sagely, still grinning like a crescent moon hung in the winter sky.

"Well I got bad news :  Found out Lihta isn't likely to show. You aren't going to like the reasons."  Minn sighs, her own ghostly breath twisting into a knot as the emotion in it coils and squirms.

"Which means we're gonna have t'ae find 'er.  Fuckin fantastic."  The giant's large hands pull over his face, fingers tracing heavy lines that were just now beginning to etch into the smooth features of youth.

"We might get lucky.  We might just have to find her."  Mutters Minn as the two turn to leave the growing graveyard of Copper Grove.

But they both have their trepidation.

They both have their doubts.  

They'll have even more soon enough.