BORDER

Written on October 31, 2024 (♏︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 31: Asking for Help (Making Amends).

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Ramza had not expected to see Igros again, and he had expected less to see it so unchanged. Hollowed of its ruler and its scions, the towers and people of the city still stood. The empty castle was in no way altered, even if they dared not draw close. As they rode through the streets, cloaked and quiet, it did not seem so different from the homecomings of a few years prior.

An empty castle and empty tombs... Ramza realized, riding away from the churchyard, that none of the last four Beoulves had a true grave, even if it was only his that had been formally denied. He thought that–perhaps–it was proper to mourn with such monuments. That it was easier to say his farewells to nothing, given what his brothers had been.

It was easier too, he supposed, to forgive when there were only emptinesses left him.

He spoke little on the approach and was silent as they departed. Alma, who had carried with her a fistful of wildflowers and had no chance to leave them on any grave, let them drop and scatter as they pushed east, and Ramza watched only briefly as the wind scattered them backwards.

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