[Wk35] The Elven Unification, Final Part
Katalyi’s clan buried hir beneath the tree where ze had lived.
Their communal aura was riftless, just like its individual members’, but the brilliant tapestry of color that represented each of the elves that helped create it lacked a thread; while it had no tears, it would never be seamless. Katalyi’s clan would nourish its heart shy the valve that had given it life. It joined with other elven communities to complete the woven unity their movement had demanded, but Katalyi’s clan joined its kin with a slight but unmistakable tremble.
Elves typically pass when their auras expand to meet the world; their energy leaves their bodies and the migration of that power disintegrates what is left of their corporeal shell. They don’t have graveyards because there are no remains. They let go of their loved ones with a quiet ease that is born in the comfort and acceptance of near immortality.
Katalyi’s death was different. Ze left suddenly, hir eternity shattered with hir ravaged aura in the reach for something better. The shell ze left behind was a petrified likeness of hir, smooth and stilled, colorless but for the garment clinging to hir reluctant limbs; empty. There was talk of putting hir in a glass casket in the center of the community as an homage to hir movement. One of the elders mentioned that it might be useful to study hir remains. Tarakyi suggested waiting to see if Katalyi decomposed. But months passed, and ze remained a limp, rotless, reminder of the rifts. No one had specific needs around it, and Katalyi’s were forever gone.
They finally decided to bury hir beneath hir home.
“It seems fitting that ze should stay near hir home,” they agreed.
Katalyi’s body was laid to rest between the two biggest roots of hir family tree. Tarakyi covered the soil with moss and lavender. The clan welcomed the burial spot into their community with joined hands and blended auras, some singing as the need struck them. They parted, lacking the bit of Katalyi that would have transferred to them had ze died the way elves do. They traipsed back to their homes, resuming their eternities with that lack struck from their souls, a stubborn dent in an otherwise unblemished sphere of growth.
The elves realized they could not maintain their riftless perch without continual work. Many elves believed that if they had been able to save Katalyi, their riftless futures would have been invulnerable, and they would be free of the ceaseless and often demanding work needed to keep their auras clear. They thought that their riftless status was held in precarious balance by every single elf being committed to it, that the loss of even one was enough to sour the deal. Other elves insisted that Katalyi had been committed; that ze was the reason anyone was committed to the movement in the first place. Hir commitment to the movement caused hir death, and thusly, hir loss was not the reason continual maintenance was required. They insisted that the work needed to keep their auras whole was merely honoring the basic nature of their auras. They credited Katalyi with discovering a way to embrace their characters at every step, and in so thoroughly doing, uplift their families and communities. They attributed their now global connection, their unified pulse, to Katalyi’s vision of a riftless world.
The elders refused to weigh in on the issue, having learned, recently, that weighing in on certain issues often leads to missteps that are harder to undo.
Tarakyi lived in relative solace after ze lost Katalyi. Ze missed hir sibling, and kept their tree covered in lavender at all times. Ze continued hir work with auraic health, and began a series of training classes that incorporated the methods utilized by clans across the globe. Ze traveled for many hundreds of years and became quite well known. Lordun had taken penance for hir treatment of Tarakyi and was even allowed to celebrate in Tarakyi’s Inner Circle during the birth of hir child many years later.
The baby was born just after the sun rose, in the house where Tarakyi was raised with Katalyi. The Inner Circle around Tarakyi matched the dawn in zeal and exuberance as the baby made hir way into being. Ze emerged, squalling at the vague light of a fresh season, hir head covered in translucent curls and a soft lavender aura that kissed hir forehead like renewal and rain.
