vor | Fourth Cream Cake: [Action/Voice]

[It has been some time since he did this.

Tonight, Gregor is behind CH7 with two large aluminum bowls. He places them on the ground.

One, he fills with sweet-scented bark and sage leaves. The other, with twigs and dried paper.

His hair has grown too long anyway. Carefully, he snips two locks of raven-black hair from his head. One for each bowl.

He kneels in front of the second bowl, the one filled with ordinary fuel, and tosses a tuft of hair in. Then, he strikes a match and sets fire to the contents. As it burns, he quietly adds a slip of paper with his signature written on it in his best handwriting. His official Imperial signature.

He says nothing as the death offering for his father burns. He's done this many times, at the guidance of Lady Alys. There had been no funeral offering for Prince Serg but the one which had filled the sky of Sergyar.

He returns to the first bowl, tenderly adding the lock of hair, a slip of paper with an invisible kiss, and, of all things, a child's shoe. As the offering burns, tears glisten in his eyes. When he's sure no one is around, he curls to the ground and quietly weeps.

He's aware of the limited privacy, but he'll whisper a few words over each offering. Anyone clever enough to sneak up would have to come very close indeed to hear them.

It is supposed that the burning of these offerings helps to drive away ghosts.

When that's over, he simply sits with his back to the wall and speaks into his journal. It's soft and hesitating--he's certainly not the "inspiring speeches on a dime" sort of ruler back home, but writing in the dark is ill-advised. His voice is somewhat rough.]

On Barrayar, we burn offerings for the dead. People died on the draft, but generally, the usual rites don't apply if they're coming back. It's limbo. What do you do?

Um. Could...someone give me a haircut?

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[She notes the quiet; but it would be like prying to draw attention to it, and she changes the subject slightly instead, to make him hopefully more comfortable.]

Are you planning to do something for the people who fell in those battles yourself, then? If you are, if it's alright, I'd like to help in that.

I'm...not sure. What's appropriate. They're coming back, right? Even the ones from other enclosures. But they still sacrificed something. But...we don't burn offerings for living people.

Maybe it doesn't have to be something like that. Maybe it could be... some sort of memorial, for the battle, with their names engraved somewhere, too.

[A memorial garden... but that might not be possible in the village's current state. A tablet or statue or monument of some sort, maybe?]

Great. Come back to life and visit your own grave.

[He didn't mean it to sound that way, sorry Ami.]</small.

[No, but it did, a little bit, and Ami sounds hesitant as she answers.]

Maybe it wasn't the best choice. But no matter what it is, won't it remind them of their suffering?

[Personally, she would have been - well, embarrassed, but also secretly gratified if someone had remembered her that way when she died. But the embarrassment would have been strong, and maybe some people would hate the reminder.]

...I think people should remember. I just...I'd hate to keep bringing it up to the people who suffered enough already. Maybe an offering isn't a bad idea. Sorry if...if I came across as harsh.

[She thinks, suddenly, of what it must have been like for Minako, who'd died of her illness before the final battles, but who had been revived with the rest of them once Usagi - Sailor Moon - saved their world. To have been dead like that... for them all to have even attended Minako's funeral... then to return and try to make sense of it all.

It's sort of like Luceti. Ami had been lucky when she died here. She'd had people to help her.]

It's alright. [She's quick to reassure him on this point at least:] It's why it's good to discuss things with people. We make sure to think about a lot of different things.

...I'm behind building seven, if you want to do the funeral offering. You're right--they deserve one.

Mm. Let's at least do that much. I can come in just a few minutes.

Give me a little bit. Half an hour or so.

Half an hour, then. It will give me time to gather a few things.

[It won't be a gravesite, but she should still pay respects.]

[By the time she arrives, Clove has come and gone, and Gregor has cleared away a patch of grass and started to build a fire. That's the way these things work. One large fire instead of a little brazier, for the funeral offering. His mother guided his hands to light Emperor Ezar's funeral offering, and Cordelia did the same for his mother's.

He remembers watching the blaze and asking her, "Are they going to kill me, too?" He doesn't remember being afraid. He'd just wanted to know. Cordelia had held him to her side and told him she wouldn't let them.

For all those who died in the battle, it would take more space than he can clear and more dry wood than he can find to build a proper offering. Especially when you consider lives don't add as integers. Cordelia believes souls are immortal. By the time Ami arrives, he has done what he can.]

[Ami arrives just when she said she would, carrying flowers she'd cut just a little while earlier, to lay nearby. She dips into a slight bow as she spots Gregor.]

I didn't know, exactly, what would be appropriate, so I thought... maybe flowers would be alright.

[Burning flowers? He supposes it's been done.] If you think it's appropriate, it usually is. And you have to include something of yourself. A lock of hair, usually.

[Not to burn, not for the flowers. They're just as an offering.]

My hair? [Absently, she fingers a lock of it.] Do you have a knife or scissors?

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