A gentle breeze whispered through the trees, catching them in the act of straightening and bending them across the starlit sky. Leaves rustled, breaking loose from their moorings and drifting down across the open spaces. They settled to the ground in patterns of red and gold, their brilliant colors darker under the incandescence of twin moons.
He turned his face up, listening to the sounds of the night, to the mournful howl of the atmosphere as it struggled for possession of the sky. It seemed appropriate that the darkness should come alive. Nothing quiet here; no silent elegy, no passing on into the night unseen. There were things he would have shouted, if he had the voice. Nothing could crowd past the tears; so many things, left unsaid.
The cloak hung heavy on his shoulders, drawing him inexorably toward the ground. He shrugged it off, taking time to feel its roughness against his hands, to remember how it felt to be caught inside its folds and held there against the strength beneath. With infinite care, he folded the garment, pressing it to his face for a moment.
There had not been enough time, and the universe was unfair. But it was the way of all things, and he was not supposed to mourn.
He set the dark brown cloth aside and knelt on the cool dirt, digging his hands into the earth, fingers clenched around fists full of grit and stone. One handful at a time, he made a place for the sum of all he'd loved, a hole to match the emptiness in his heart. Deep, but never deep enough; shallow still, where the sun could still bring warmth and brilliance.
Of all the things he could not bear, the absence of light was the hardest to comprehend.
His hands shook as he took up the box, small and nondescript, all that was left of something never meant to last. Impermanent, his teachers would have said. It echoed in his mind, a remnant of the past. *Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.* Reduced to a pile of nothingness, devoured by flame, captured in this small space. Only a box; there was nothing of consequence inside.
Still, he pressed it to his chest, touching it reverently. Remembering.
Perfect fit, in that place so close to the others he had called family. His mother, gone from the moment of his birth. His father, who never knew him. And now the last person he would bury, and the only one for whom he would grieve. He tucked the box neatly into its hiding place, shoving the dirt back into the nooks and crannies on every side, patting it gently into place, barely able to see.
In the distance, a nightbird cried for its mate, a lonely sound of longing. He turned his face toward the music of reunion, standing as the call was answered. They were lucky to find one another. So rare, that in all the galaxy, those two creatures should be drawn together.
He laid the robe carefully across the naked earth, where it would provide shelter and solace for what lay underneath, and tilted his face up to the night sky, welcoming its shadows. Too late for solace, too early for penance. Nothing to do but bide his time, and draw nearer the moment when regrets would be washed away in the cleansing fall of tears. Time stood still within his heart; the end of his struggle was not so far away.
The wind quieted; the trees were still against the sky. He stood, gazing at the starlit specks as they faded in the morning light, wondering how many would still be burning bright when he returned for the last time.
Even an eternity could be made finite when love stood waiting on the other side. It could be borne.
It would have to be.
End
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