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Hammer met chisel. Over and over again, chipping at cold, round stone.

Atzi was functionally illiterate, but even she knew her letters. Knew them enough that she could copy them out from the scripts that Achel had written for her. Chains of letters to form names, names to remind one of those that had perished. Her shoulders heaved, tense, sweat beading upon her forehead even within the silent, damp catacombs. Hammer met chisel once more, and her fingers brushed the indentations in the stone, then reached to rub the corners of her eye.

A breath caught her throat and she swallowed hard. The physical labour was easy. The emotional toil was hard. But wasn’t it always?

Over four hundred dead, and a quarter of them didn’t even leave a trace behind, devoured by the Elder Beast’s kindred. Marked graves with nothing buried beneath. A lifetime of memories, reduced to the feces expelled by the sons and daughters of a natural disaster. The woman turned her face to the right, scarlet iris catching a glimpse of Achel. The Chiralta was knelt before yet another corpse that the village men have brought. Blackened flesh, hardened by hoarfrost, reduced a familiar face to a ghoulish mimicry, but Atzi recognized them too well. Dorovi, a young widow who had, just a couple months back, began looking as if she was moving on from the loss of her husband. Now, dead, and not even afforded the dignity to be buried at sea with him.

Tragedies continued, an avalanche that wiped away all thoughts of the future and suffocated one with the past. Achel had kept up her duties as Grave Keeper, had kept at the same pace as Atzi herself, even when she was so much weaker. The tears in her dress were evident, were ignored.

Above, the church’s bells rang and Atzi rose.

[b]“The meeting,”[/b] she said, dumbly. [b]“We should go.”[/b]

But Achel continued her work.

…

Enli’s speech was a speech. He spoke too much. It didn’t matter what he said. It didn’t matter who he blamed. The words continued on, echoing against the church’s walls. Maddening. Atzi sat on a pew at the back, eye burning a hole into the ground, hands clasped in a violent mockery of prayer. So many problems, so many concerns, so much scarcity. So much to do, that it was nothing more than a blessing that so many [i]strangers[/i] arrived at Dawn. A blessing, but one that could only talk on and on and on and on.

Her body burned. Her memories replayed. Summer days, halcyon days. The dead still living, the village still intact. The sea filled with fish, the Kyrnith understanding. And then the scream of the storm, the blizzard battering homes and coating the world in deathly white, one that could not be removed no matter how industriously she wielded a shovel, then a plank of wood, then her bare hands.

She needed action. She needed to act. Move and go.

Partway through Gideon’s dissertation, Atzi stood up, abruptly. Her eye caught Akando’s, one bloodshot eye to match two measured ones. Her first words were a jumbled, incomprehensible mess. She swallowed hard, tried again. Knew what she was getting herself into, but knew that she’d have to do it anyways. Her voice thundered, strong even when hoarse from those nights where she could only scream in rage, wail in grief. There would be more to come.

Emotional labour.

[b]“I’m looking for Maira. I know where she’d usually be.”[/b]

A pause. A nod, to herself more than anything else.

[b]“And before that, I’m feeding Achel. Something hot.”[/b]

The Moon Goddess dozed in the corner of her eye upon a floating piece of translucent parchment. She ignored its scribbles, even as it expanded to greater and greater lengths. After all, Atzi could not read.