The Scrolls of Eterna

This extract broke Kurt:

While the 20th floor is bright, with white marble tiles, and cream wallpapers, and candles, the 21st floor is noticeably darker, bordering on gloomy. Candles light up the way here and there, and the walls are dark red, with a carpet on the floors, whose colouring seems to be an even darker red. I click my fingers once more, as I have so many times this last month, and the flames in my palm cast a crackling light across the corridor. Turning left, I follow past the portrait of King Arubeth on the wall, past the Bastian family crest, to the third door on the right. I stop outside, and by the light of the fire, I examine the glass cabinet that contains an urn. With recognition sparking in my memory, I realise whose ashes are contained, and pause for a moment, giving silent respects to my mother.

“Are you gonna say hello, or are you just gonna stare at that thing all night?”

With a start, I hear my father’s voice right behind me, and turn to face him. His tone was slightly joking, playful, perhaps, and I could have sworn I saw a flicker of a smile across his face, but that could have just been the firelight playing tricks on me. He looks as solemn as ever.

You could hardly tell that this was the same man who once made fireworks dance across the sky, spelling out “Happy Birthday Gregory!” That had been for my sixth birthday. My mother’s death a few months later had changed all that, though. She had been on a business trip. As one of the main researchers of the day, she frequently made trips to the Library at the Kaarn Monument, sometimes staying in the Scholar’s Village for days on end. She would never stay away more than a week and a half on end, though. She loved us too much to be away for longer.

Then an illness, this... epidemic swept through the land. On her way back from the trip, a raider’s arrow grazed her arm. The infection spread quickly, and she only just managed to return to us for the last time. She practically fell off her horse, in fact she may well have. I vaguely remember my father carrying her to her bed... And then she said goodnight to us for what would be her final words to any living thing on this world.

“I’m feeling a bit tired, you don’t mind if I rest a bit, do you?”

Cremation is fairly uncommon, but there were a lot of pyres lighting up the sky that year. Far too many. No one wanted to take the risk of leaving bodies around, and not many people could afford immediate burial. My father and I set up the pyre, and then... Well, it’s a pyre. What did you expect to happen?

The urn was commissioned by my father, and depicts scenes of a couple together, who I have noticed resemble my parents when, I would guess, they had just met. There’s one scene where they’re sitting down, holding hands, one standing together and pointing at the moon, and another of the woman at a desk, reading, while the man sits opposite her, writing. Looking up at my father now, I realise how much he’s truly been affected, and wonder if he was like this before he met her, and if she brought him to life, or if he’s only become so serious because of her passing.

Mrs Eliza Bastian, wife to Peter Bastian, mother to Gregory. Rest In Peace, 19th of Je, 458.