Daily15 Miera
Mar. 7th, 2007 03:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dethoratsPrompt: Eulogy
Word Count: 366
“…forever and into eternity.”
Why, Meira wondered as she stared at her feet in their sturdy leather boots, did they always end with ‘forever and into eternity’? It was a question she’d had the audacity to ask only once as a child and it had earned her two nights of copying and no horseback lessons for her temerity. And her protests about it violating grammatical sense had fallen for once on deaf ears. But really, didn’t forever and eternity mean more or less the same thing? So how could something last both forever and into eternity? It was a pointless repetition. Then again, it sounded pretty and had a nice ring of finality to it and, whenever religion of any sort was involved, it was the show that was nearly as important as the beliefs themselves.
At least the eulogy had been nice. Wry and witty and she hadn’t felt the least bit self-conscious when she chuckled at one or two choice memories. And now Elfric was in the ground, or his body was at least. Cyrinian beliefs included an afterlife for the spirit and she supposed he was now wherever spirits went when they weren’t busy scaring people or bothering shamans and priests. It was hard, standing there in the snow with friends and strangers alike, to believe he was really gone. And yet there were two gold coins in her hand, hot in her palm even though her fingers were chilled. Those would go to the priest, now that his intoning and droning was finished, and the small carved bone amulet of a crow she had tucked into her pocket, something Elfric had given to her years ago, would rejoin him before the hard earth was thrown down to cover his body and take it slowly into decay. The line of mourners moved slowly and Meira shuffled her feet and kept her head down; deference for Elfric and because the wind was sharp and bitter.
Later, with her fellow fighters in the pub, she would drink a toast to him with the hair swept back and off her face, her eyes bright with tears not brought on by the stinging lash of the air.
Word Count: 366
“…forever and into eternity.”
Why, Meira wondered as she stared at her feet in their sturdy leather boots, did they always end with ‘forever and into eternity’? It was a question she’d had the audacity to ask only once as a child and it had earned her two nights of copying and no horseback lessons for her temerity. And her protests about it violating grammatical sense had fallen for once on deaf ears. But really, didn’t forever and eternity mean more or less the same thing? So how could something last both forever and into eternity? It was a pointless repetition. Then again, it sounded pretty and had a nice ring of finality to it and, whenever religion of any sort was involved, it was the show that was nearly as important as the beliefs themselves.
At least the eulogy had been nice. Wry and witty and she hadn’t felt the least bit self-conscious when she chuckled at one or two choice memories. And now Elfric was in the ground, or his body was at least. Cyrinian beliefs included an afterlife for the spirit and she supposed he was now wherever spirits went when they weren’t busy scaring people or bothering shamans and priests. It was hard, standing there in the snow with friends and strangers alike, to believe he was really gone. And yet there were two gold coins in her hand, hot in her palm even though her fingers were chilled. Those would go to the priest, now that his intoning and droning was finished, and the small carved bone amulet of a crow she had tucked into her pocket, something Elfric had given to her years ago, would rejoin him before the hard earth was thrown down to cover his body and take it slowly into decay. The line of mourners moved slowly and Meira shuffled her feet and kept her head down; deference for Elfric and because the wind was sharp and bitter.
Later, with her fellow fighters in the pub, she would drink a toast to him with the hair swept back and off her face, her eyes bright with tears not brought on by the stinging lash of the air.
