26 Mourning
All that Brightise could remember about the aftermath of Syd's death, was that it rained for six days straight. It was a hard, punishing kind of rain that beat against their skin like whip lashes. It was the kind of rain that could have saved Syd, had it only started a few hours earlier.
Fire Demon fire was the most destructive kind of fire in the Land of Oasis, but maybe that was a small mercy. The only thing left on the space the tree Syd had climbed on had occupied was a small pile of luminous gray ashes. Syd's remains combined with burned leaves and branches.
"Would you like to...?" Brightise had asked Rayvad tentatively after the Fire Demon had departed and she had finally let him go.
He had only shot a quick expressionless look at the ashes before he had turned away from her and disappeared into the forest.
Brightise was left alone with Clober and the three horses. Her sister was just as quiet as Rayvad, which made her worry that this recent trauma had perhaps helped her connect the dots about Morral's fate. Or perhaps a part of it.
She and Clober stayed in that damned, tragedy-stricken clearing, waiting for Rayvad to return. Brightise didn't think he would just walk off and leave his horse and his brother's horse, possibly the only thing he had left that belonged to him, behind.
She was right. Rayvad returned a few hours later and sat down next to them without a word. His expression was a mixture of suppressed sadness and justified anger.
"I'm sorry..." Brightise murmured before falling silent herself.
She didn't know what else to say. She couldn't offer him any consolation, because she was a disgusting liar. She couldn't understand how he felt. She had told him and Syd that Morral had died during the Fire Demon raid, but she had not. Her sister was still alive somewhere. She could not understand what Rayvad was going through right now, nor did she ever want to. That was the whole point of this doomed adventure. Saving her sister from becoming the kind of monster that had killed Syd.
As Rayvad lay down on the ground and turned his back to her, Brightise tried once again to justify her actions to her own conscience.
She could have tried to intervene and save Syd. She knew she could have, but not without betraying her and Clober's secret. Even if she had managed to outpower a demon of this caliber, which she highly doubted, she couldn't have killed it. She wasn't a warrior. That demon would have eventually traveled back home and told everyone about their existence, resulting in a whole troop of Fire Demons combing the Land of Oasis in search of them.
So, Brightise had stayed quiet and watched Syd die in order to protect their secret. A life in exchange for a secret.
She would have to live with that choice her entire life. She only hoped that it would turn out to be worth it.
"Brightise?" she heard Clober's weak voice say close to her ear.
When she turned, she saw that her little sister's eyes were filled with tears.
Brightise cast a furtive look at Rayvad's back and signaled for Clober to be quiet. Then she stood up, picked up her sister in her arms and started walking.
She didn't think it would be fair for them to start crying before Rayvad, when he was not. This was not their loss, so they had no right to break down while he was trying to be strong.
When Brightise was sure that he could not hear them anymore- because she knew that he was only pretending to be asleep- she stopped behind a tree, squeezed Clober to her chest and burst into tears.
