Excerpt: Capercaillie

The world was warm and calm again. Somewhere out there, beyond wooden walls, there were people talking and milling around. There was the smell of dirt and cooking and animals. It was all so far away. To Rhanyse Syn Tahern, the world contained nothing but herself and Inocha. They lay in a half asleep daze together, quiet and still, for now. The aches felt good, and for the moment, reality couldn't break in and destroy everything.

Inocha, though, let out a small "mmm.." of contentment, and then pulled away. "Rhanyse," she said, "we really should be up."

"Wha' for?"

"Dinner," Inocha said, as she got up and started to hunt for clothes.

"Wha' we havin'?" The world was still too pink and fluffy for Tahern, but she pushed herself upright anyway.

"Khyren, I think."

Reality broke in. Tahern remembered the previous night, the darkness and the noise, and that damn Thorra bastard Hakkin dragging her off. Of course, deep down, she knew that Khyren was dead... but as long as nobody ever explicitely said so, there was always that possibility that he wasn't. So now he was dead, and, like so many others before him, thanks to the inability to do anything right, he was also dinner.

And that wasn't right either, she thought to herself as she got up. It was only the desire of a few people to give the dead the closest they could to a proper send off, but someone like Khyren deserved things doing properly. He deserved to be burnt, he deserved his ashes spreading over the plants, he deserved those plants to be eaten. By his own family, if preferable. He didn't deserve to go back to into the living the rushed way, with just a tiny bit of flesh burnt, the ashes to be sealed up with a few small but significant bones to be sent home.

"They'll eat us all eventually," said Inocha, half to herself. "They'll feed us all to someone else, and that person to another person, and that person to another person, and so on, and... hm. Pineapples. I wonder if they'll serve pinapples with me."

"You haven't seen a pineapple in years."

"Neither have you. Yes, I can see that." There was a precious little shard of mirror propped up by the table. Inocha peered into it, and flicked a few strands of dark hair from her face. "Let us all have silence for Inocha Syn Trellys of North Chyseylu, who's going to go down lovely tonight with a slice of pineapple."