Sieglinde had always thought she would know, because she's said comforting words to those who had lost people before. In Chantes, she had apologized to the natives after the chimera attacks, those who lost family she couldn't save. The same, in Nalawi, after the storm and floods, and in Perdition's Rest, after the fracking incident... but they were things that came automatically in the moment, things with vague words and sympathies over the bodies she did not know.
But this bone in her hand is someone she knew. It's Patroclus'. She knows if she studied it properly, she would be able to prove it. Prove that the size of the rib fit a man of his description, that the wear would fit a man of his physical proclivities, that the make would fit a man who had grown up in the region he had, eating the things he had...
That science didn't seem to matter so much any longer, and with a small tremble she deposits the bone in the urn.
Then another, and another. Molar. Cracked tibia. Phalanges. Femur. Jaw. All pieces carefully plucked from the ash and brushed clean, to be placed reverently.
Until her small hands sort through the ashes and begin to come up empty, come up with only the grey dust that used to be a person.]
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Sieglinde had always thought she would know, because she's said comforting words to those who had lost people before. In Chantes, she had apologized to the natives after the chimera attacks, those who lost family she couldn't save. The same, in Nalawi, after the storm and floods, and in Perdition's Rest, after the fracking incident... but they were things that came automatically in the moment, things with vague words and sympathies over the bodies she did not know.
But this bone in her hand is someone she knew. It's Patroclus'. She knows if she studied it properly, she would be able to prove it. Prove that the size of the rib fit a man of his description, that the wear would fit a man of his physical proclivities, that the make would fit a man who had grown up in the region he had, eating the things he had...
That science didn't seem to matter so much any longer, and with a small tremble she deposits the bone in the urn.
Then another, and another. Molar. Cracked tibia. Phalanges. Femur. Jaw. All pieces carefully plucked from the ash and brushed clean, to be placed reverently.
Until her small hands sort through the ashes and begin to come up empty, come up with only the grey dust that used to be a person.]