As he stood there, a log from the kitchen’s fire burning in his hand, he was struck with two thoughts. “Can’t we bring his body with us?”
Kitalia shook her head and her hair danced around her face. “Bringing his body would only slow us down. Plus, anyone we meet will easily remember two people hauling a coffin while they might just forget a young couple traveling alone together.”
Kre nodded. It made sense and it even gave his stomach a flutter when she had referenced them as a young couple. A second thought occurred to him and the words came out of his lips without his even realizing it. “I want to say a few words. I haven’t had that chance yet.”
She regarded him for a moment, briefly wondering if this was some sort of power play, a defiance of her directive of what they needed to do. She discarded that thought almost immediately. She realized that the Tehynshin boy had little ability to mask his emotions and his eyes told the story of how much he cared for the dead knight. She gave a curt nod and stepped back from the hastily made pyre.
Now faced with the sudden realization that he was actually on the hook to say something and that something needed to be deep or, at least, not pathetically sappy.
He cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and made an odd little sound that was something close to a gurgle mixed with a cough. He glanced at Kitalia briefly, to see if she noticed, but if she did, she was showing no signs of it. As he started to turn his eyes back to the pyre, he thought he caught a glimpse of a white clothed figure just beyond the tree line.
He snapped his eyes back up and scanned the forest once more but could not spot the figure again. He closed his eyes, feeling a strange sense of calm given the odd circumstances he had just now found himself in. With that newfound serenity, Kre cleared his throat a second time and took in a deep breath.
“Ser Terync Sandiscoot was a friend first and foremost. A better friend to me than I to him. Had I been a better friend, perhaps he would not be lying there now. Had I asked him about his life, had I shown more concern for his well-being, had I been anything to him except a recipient of his generosity and kindness, we might never be here in this dark place.
“It is indeed dark. The world has lost a bright soul and we are forever to suffer for it. Our journey is now harder, and we will surely stumble without the light of his wisdom to be there alongside of us. But we shall continue on down this dark road. We shall continue on because that’s what he would have done.
“As a Dragon Knight, a protector of the realm and all her people, he would have strode bravely and without falter down the darkest road. We can do no less in his name.
“So, now, though the light of his soul has faded from our world, we light this fire to remind us that his light can continue to shine in our hearts as long as we remember him.” With that, Kre bowed his head for a brief moment of silence, the only sounds being the soft whisper of the wind through the trees, the crackle of the fire from the flaming brand in his hand, and the barest hint of a stifled cry from somewhere distant. Touching torch to wood, Kre lit the pyre and let a tear fall from his eye for his lost friend.