Dragonsoul

Chapter 2

Leonie and Nald helped prepare for the feast, for the celebration of all the summers that their father was blessed enough to spend with them while Amitola made the arrangements for the body to be transferred from the Hunting Grounds to their own little piece of land by the lake.

It was a time of upheaval not only for Rimodar's offspring and beloved wife but for all who knew and respected the Great Hunter.

Once brother and sister reached their own little house, they were met with a buzz of life, of people going to-and-fro. They were completely lost in the sea of strangers offering their help, their shoulders to cry on.

They came from a long line of Hunters. Tears were not shed by their eyes. Shoulders of strangers were not the ones they wanted to cry upon.

There were many things to be done to set Rimodar off with all honors to the next stage of his journey and in a small village, such as theirs everyone tried to help out as much as they could.

Food was brought in large quantities and varieties, words of support and encouragement were offered.

Seeing the pale, lifeless body of their father was the greatest challenge in the children's short lives, but they bore it with dignity and poise as suited their stature in the village.

They did not waver. They were proud. After all, they were fighters and that was what was respected the most in the village whose livelihood depended on the hunt.

"He passed on doing what Fates weaved into the tapestry of his life." They said.

"It was an honorable death." Others claimed.

Leonie couldn't understand how any of that mattered.

He was never to be seen again and all those words uttered by people she didn't even know meant nothing.

Death was. It didn't have a reason. No one was spared by it and at that moment Leonie hated Death more than she thought possible to hate anything.

It was always there. Watching. Lurking. Taking with it those who were most needed in the world of flesh.

Even though the little girl understood that the Great Hunt needed new hunters every few moons, she was too angry to try to understand the path that was unfolding in front of her.

A path that might have never unfurled before her if the misfortune hadn't fallen on their home if she hadn't lost the one person who meant to her more than words could ever describe.

For at that moment she was just a hurt little girl wanting nothing more than to hide like a wounded animal and lick her wounds which the river of people that kept pouring on failed to allow her to do.

"It is time." The village Mage said.

"Time to wish our friend a pleasant journey on the trip that we all must follow one day. We wish him to reach the Great Forest and join the Hunt the moment his ashes embrace the wind and travel with it to the place where we cannot yet follow." He went on to say.

"Let us say our final farewell, to the great man that was Rimodar." Toras, the Mage, said.

That was when Leonie could tame her feelings no more. Those people didn't even know her father.

The essence of who he truly was, was lost on them.
All they saw was a hunter. They couldn't see that there were many rivers making up the sea of who he was.

Yes, he was a hunter, but he was also a gentle father, a loving husband, and a cheerful playmate.

How could they stand there and pretend to know all the beautiful colors that made up who her father was?

Before her emotions could be trapped, like a wild animal subdued by a clever trap, she let it run free, let it overpower her brain and course through her veins.

Taking her brother's small hand in her own, once again she did what she did best, she ran away taking her brother along with her, not wanting his innocent eyes to see what was about to happen. It felt to her as if his big blue eyes would be tarnished by the sight they beheld, and she couldn't allow for that to happen.

Saying goodbye to her father was an impossibility. Her father wasn't even there anymore. All that was left of him was an empty shell. He had shed his fleshly existence, and yet she couldn't face the remnants of what her father was burning up in the dragon's fire.

Facing it would be accepting it as something that was set in stone, and she refused to do that.

Besides, she didn't want the last image of her father to be the one of him lying lifeless on the pyre. She didn't want the flames slowly licking up his body to be the image engraved in her mind for eternity.

It was much better for both her and the little ball of energy that was her brother to remember their father as they last saw him, strong and powerful leaving the house for yet another successful hunt.

They should see him like that, without a care in the world, kissing his wife goodbye, ruffling his son's hair and tightly hugging Leonie with a promise of a swift return.

He never did.

Still, that image of power and certainty was the one she wanted her and her brother to carry with them through life. She needed both of them to keep that image, to give them the strength to survive what the world threw at them.

"He looks like he is sleeping." One of her cousins had said before she ran away with her brother, him hurrying after her with his short legs having to do much more work to catch up.

One thing was clear as The Lake of Secrets that she had a view of from her bedroom's window, her father did not and would never again look as if he was in deep slumber.

After they had gone further away from the people who were being too friendly and trying to measure their own pain to the ones of the poor children who were now without their father Leonie slowed down. Then they stopped.

Her brother was pulling on her hand and as she looked down at his round little face she hugged him tightly, and they started crying in each other's embrace, away from the world which didn't understand what it meant to lose one's father.

They were finally free to show the depth of their pain with each other, and they did so in abundance until much later on when their hug was joined by another warm embrace.

From the scent of lilacs and the gentleness of the hands, it was easy to guess that it was the warm embrace of their mother.
Small as it was now, their family had to stick together and brave the storm the best it could.

Soon enough, the family filled with sorrow was left alone in their lake cottage since the ones who came to show their respect left them to grieve in the privacy of their own home.

As they settled in for sleep Leonie realized that she couldn't close her eyes because of the nightmares.

Whenever she tried, dread would claw its way into the darkness behind her eyelids and start spreading to clutch at her poor wounded heart.

Instead of sleeping, she decided that a walk in the crisp evening air would do her a lot of good.

Slowly sneaking out of the house not wanting to awaken her mother to the cruelty that was the waking life, hoping they find some comfort in their dreams, she tiptoed out of the house and in the direction of the woods.

It felt to her like maybe she could find the missing connection in the worldly presentation of what awaited them once they emerged in their spirit forms, hoping to be closer to her father.

She went deeper into the woods than she ever did at nighttime and for some reason, the vast darkness of the forest, and the sounds of nightlife didn't scare her. They were comforting to her. 

Going on into the heart of darkness, guided like a bee by the sun, she was led by the bright light in the distance to a place she had never visited before, a place that would forever change her life.