Shard of Memory

For Caeriadne, the world may as well have been ending.

Her baby boy, her deevdru, jacioniv kurjh deevdru, was dying.

The day of the funeral was still blurry in her memory. So many ages had past that even the sharp pains of loss were dulled at the edges and left little more than faint traces of the emotions that had nearly overwhelmed her so long ago. She remembered the procession, how it had taken a hundred soldiers to carry the veiled body of the young gem dragon upon the palanquin across the plain and to the monument. The stairs. Ascending. Past the new marble pillars and into the mountainside sepulcher. How the masonry was still fresh with the smell of mortar, and the newly turned dirt left a pure earthiness throughout. She had turned her head once over her shoulder, wings tucked tightly to her body, and seen the other mourners filing along behind her, keeping a respectful distance from their patron sapphire dragoness that they knew was so overcome with grief. They didn't matter. She turned back to the only thing that did matter, and he was lying ahead of her, unable to walk or fly, barely managing to draw breath. He was weak. Sick. She had known it all this time, but...she never could have been ready for this.

The palanquin went up the final steps, through the arched entrance, and into the hall. The tomb, she thought. It would become a tomb soon.