Dragon Haven Book 1

Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Sunset over a broken heart. I promise we'll meet again.

Kaiser had made us an airship on Master Windfall's request, and he had found Lady Luck and Keita and we retrieved them but even the new ship and reuniting with our friends didn't ease the sorrow we all felt. We had taken the ship back to Mangrove City, the entire flight was silent, no one said a word the entire time, I sat in the control deck with Elijah, Dmitri, and Glacia. None of us spoke until we got back to the city. "So what do we do now?" Dmitri was the first to speak as we docked the ship and left.

"What else... We hold a funeral..." Elijah said and held his head low.

"I've never seen guild member funeral... How do they work?" I asked and Elijah sighed.

"There's a reason the tree's in Mangrove City grow taller than any other tree's... We cremate the body and put the ashes in an urn, then we go to the Remembrance Cliff, the tallest peak of the city, then the deceased most loved gives a eulogy and scatters the ashes over the city, and finally a tag is tried to the tree at the cliff with their name on it." He sighed and shook his head, "Right let's get ready for it... You don't have to wear anything special... Just mentally prepare yourself and meet us at the cliff at sunset." He said and he walked away.

I was in Eliza's room and I was staring at a mirror, "Three months with no trim really does a number on your hair..." Eliza said and brushed out my hair.

"It's not my fault I was in a coma... I wonder what happened to the elven city anyway..." I sighed and after a few minutes my hair was cleaned up again.

"Done. That only took, two hours..." Eliza said and looked outside. "It's almost time, are you ready?" She asked and I lowered my head, "Guess not... I'd offer to go with you but Elijah insisted that it was only you four... Five if Khalia was here..." She said and rubbed my head.

"You held a funeral for Sasha, didn't you?" I asked and she sighed.

"Yeah... Yeah we did, it was the first one ever held like this. Sasha was the Earth Dragon slayer, she said she wanted to help the earth flourish, and after that we held funerals like that all the time... This was... Nine years ago. A bit before you three joined, at first it's awful, later... It's still awful and never changes, but it gets better. But if and only if someone supports you, so go, and be there for him, that's all you can do." She said and I looked up at her, her eyes were filled with tears and she shook it off. With a swift nod, I stood up and left.

I headed to the top of the cliff and when I got there no one was there, the wind swayed the tree and the pink petals from it fell to the ground. There were multi colored tags on the tree with names and three other letters, either RIP or MIA. "Sash RIP... Culo MIA... Axel MIA, Aria MIA." I read aloud tags, many them read RIP but what I saw were mostly MIAs.

"Sad, isn't it?" Elijah said and placed a hand on the tree, "I've hung all these up here... My papers never decay or get crumpled... It sucks, having to hang all these tags with the name of all these we've lost..." He sobbed and lowered his hood and shook his head. "The worst of all were these... My father and mother... Aria, Maxwell." He sobbed again and I rubbed my arm. We were all on edge, my brother's partner was dead, Glacia's mate...

"Foxwood..." Glacia said and landed in front of me, "Where's Kyle...?"

"Not here yet... It's just me and Elijah..." I said and we looked around for him.

"He's probably picking out an urn... This is the worst..." Elijah sighed and hugged the tree, "What if... What if he doesn't show up... Then what?" We stopped.