Rainblade-Ryalors Open Barracks/Imperial Condos In Memoriam

[Marianna Furotazzi]

Marianna knelt and set the flowers down on the grave, replacing the dessicated husks that had mostly been overtaken by grass and weeds. She carefully brushed away the detritus that had gathered on the face of the tombstone, using her claw to clean out the engraved letters.

Dr. Julia Freedom
Thermidor 19, 1710 ~ Frimary 9, 1735
Beloved healer, wife, and mother​

A little cigar ash drifted down onto the top of the tombstone, and Marianna wrinkled her snout in disgust before wiping it away. "Could you not?" she shot at her brother, who shifted from footpaw to footpaw as he idled near the grave. "Have some respect for the dead."

Falun shrugged, taking another draw on his cigar and sticking his free paw into his coat pocket to keep it warm in the bitter Dismembre wind. "Don' see wha' differ'nce it makes. Th' dead don' know, an' sure don' care." He kept shifting as his gaze swept the tombstones and monuments of the Imperial Cemetery, scanning with almost a paranoid eye. Marianna knew from previous trips that her brother disclaimed any belief in ghosts or even an afterlife as pure superstition. His discomfort stemmed from something more primal: an unease with such a tangible reminder of mortality and the fleeting nature of life. Even Falun couldn't punch his way out of death, though he'd drunkenly sworn a few times that he'd deck any skeletal stoat that tried to collect his soul.

Marianna sighed, settling back on her heels as she knelt at their mother's grave. She stared at the letters, wondering on whose order they had been carved, and what they had intended by it. A beast she could barely remember, her entire life reduced to five words, only three of which were nouns. Had that been her father's work? Had he so little to say about the vixen who, if the biographies had been accurate, he had eloped with at only sixteen, throwing away both of their futures for a chance at love? The vixen who had stood by him through his rise and fall, only separating when his obsession overtook his reason? Or had the headstone been the work of a well-meaning friend, one struggling to define her through their own grief?

Falun tapped his cigar against the edge of the tombstone, the ash drifting down the back of the stone. "Won'er if dear ol' Da e'er visited," Falun mused idly. "Ei'er a' them, I mean - 'Nithias, or Vito. 'Ey, ya think 'ere was any truth t' th' stories 'at Vito an' Mum were grindin' th' corn t'gether?"

Marianna snapped, getting to her footpaws as she exclaimed, "Great Kitsune, Falun, what in the Hellgates is wrong with you?! That's our mother you're talking about."

Falun shrugged, turning and walking away. "Ain' our mother. Jus' a buncha bones, same as any. Yer th' one 'oo keeps draggin' 'er memory outta th' grave."

"Oh, go sod yourself right in the tailhole!" Marianna swore, vehemently making a rude gesture at his back. Falun casually returned it without glancing back at her, still puffing on his cigar as he meandered among the graves of mayors, ministers, and captains, leaving Marianna to grieve alone.

~~~

Aran Mateu stood alone at the grave, his ears twitching as he heard the distant sound of two foxes arguing elsewhere in the graveyard. There was a slightly tinny sound to it, the noise echoing off the field of carved stones between them. There were much nicer graves throughout this lot, even a few mausoleums and monuments that put the war memorials in the city to shame. The grave he stood at, though, was far more modest, a single stone set into the ground. This stone was faded, the letters nearly illegible from the elements wearing away at its surface. No one had come by to clean it or to trim away the grass; it seemed as if the groundskeepers themselves had forgotten about it.

Aran Mateu stood in his civilian clothes, the Miklarian-style coat and trousers his parents had crafted for him, and stared down at the nearly-blank stone. Then he reached down and carefully unbuttoned the straps around his crotch. It took a moment for the stream to start, the yellow liquid steaming in the air as it rained down upon the grave, spattering the tombstone and slowly revealing the letters carved upon it:

Colonel Whitaker Johas Khan
108th Battalion
First and Second Alkamarian War
Valles Mensa War​

Aran Mateu let the stream run until only dribbles bounced off the stone, then spat on it for good measure.

"Vai ranr runem, ques freiw danl."

"Rot in hell, you murdering bastard."

 

[Ivo Suresight]

Ivo did know that Marianna went today to one of the many graves that lied upon the largest graveyard in the Harbour. It wasn't a secret after all to him who her mother was and that Marianna did care for her, even if she didn't get to know her much. Imperial Cemetery was a place where most beasts who at one point or another were somebeast who mattered for the city, Imperium or were in general known. Being right between the Market and the hill with castle of Ministry of War, it was a massive area which Ivo knew to the dot. Not just because he was a city planner, but also because he went through it dozens of times, seeking any clue upon who his own parents were.

Using all that, it wasn't hard to find Marianna at all. She was in deep stage of grieving and Ivo couldn't stand idly and watch it from a distance.

He slowly walked forward, not bothering with stealth as he normally would. Soon he just stood next to her and put his paw around her, looking at the grave with respect and quiet reverence.

 

[Marianna Furotazzi]

As Ivo came up beside her, Marianna glanced over her shoulder, relief and vulnerability washing over the raw tension of her nerves. She leaned into his sidelong embrace, resting her head on his shoulder. "Thank you," she breathed, letting her tears fall onto his coat before they could crystallize on her fur. She felt an odd sense of premonition in standing here at her mother's grave, and she rested her paw on her own stomach, still flat as a board. She couldn't help but wonder if one day it would be her kit standing before her grave laying flowers. She prayed to the Kitsune and anyone else who would listen that it wouldn't come to pass. She trusted Ivo completely, and dangerous as their work might be, she was determined to see their kit, and any who might follow after, grow up happy.

Falun glanced up from where he was sitting at the base of Nuori Sken Freemont's massive obelisk tombstone, having extinguished one cigar on the granite and was currently lighting another. Marianna sighed as she murmured to Ivo, conscientious of how sound carried in the winter air, "I haven't told him yet. I don't think he'll give you grief for it, if only because he knows better than to involve himself in my relationships after the tail-kicking I gave him last time he tried to break us up."

 

[Ivo Suresight]

Holding Marianna in his arm, fortunately left his other, still wounded after Opera one, immobilised by his body. Fortunately because Ivo felt a strong pang to see if he could snipe the cigar with those shurikens from those few dozen feet away. He had no hate for Falun himself, he would share his indifference for the dead too, were it not the fact it was disrespectful to those who cared. In this case, Marianna. And he would not have any of it. Instead he just looked daggers at him, only breaking doing so when Marianna spoke, instead focusing on her.

Ivo nodded at her information and even grinned smugly at her remark, stifling however the chuckle to match the mood of the place.

"Well, I jus' hope he ain't gonna cause problems no more. Hard to believe sometimes ye and he had same parents."

At that he turned to the tombstone and looked at it more seriously.

"Speakin' of... Ma'am, my name's Ivo Suresight. Am yer's daughter toddfriend. Pleasure t'meet ye and I hope am gonna be everythin' t' 'er ye ever wished for ye daughter."

---

Kaii didn't have anybeast close that have died in Dismembre. The months he greived at most were Smarch and Merry. Especially the latter, with the festival of Sorrows, was exceptionally hard for him.

But on all other months he typically could just venerate his ancestors instead of feeling pain of losing them all... at least, that is how it always was.

The further away from being emotionally detached Kaii was, the more apparent and overwhelming his loneliness was. Without having somebeast around him, be it Mina, any of his Foskateer friends or even beasts who he simply considered pleasant to talk with, Kaii more and more often felt a burden of being the last one with the blood of Nashirou's, of losing his whole family and his twin sister.

Hence why, even if it was not a time for remembrence, Kaii felt an urge to spend time at his crypt not using it as his home, but instead visiting it for the true purpouse of it. To meet with the dead, feel the ancestors and their will upon his being.

And to avoid breaking down like he did so during the festival of Sorrows, he asked Mina to join him, wishing to also introduce her to his family, even if all of it was dead.

 

[Marianna Furotazzi]

The grave was, as always, characteristically silent save for the low moan of the wind blowing between the stones around them. Marianna moved her paw from her stomach to rest atop Ivo's, pawfingers interlacing. "I don't know what she'd approve or disapprove of," she said softly, "but I like to think that she would be glad that you make me happy. I remember her as being soft and kind, with a warm voice. I think she was the kind of mother who would be happy for her kits, even if their lives weren't what she would choose for herself." She squeezed Ivo's hand as she added, "I hope I can be that kind of mother, though that may take some effort." She smiled up at him before kissing his cheek. "You might very well be the calm and approachable parent."

~~~

Mina Rose didn't have a lot of spare coin, but she'd scraped together what she could to get a bouquet from a local florist. The marten had steered her to a beautiful blue five-petal flower with yellow centers, which he'd named as forget-me-nots. The sentiment struck Mina Rose as especially appropriate. She'd parted with her fifteen gilders and left the shop, cradling the bouquet against her chest to shield it from the wind as she hurried to meet Kaii.

When she arrived, she gave him a careful, sympathetic hug, trying not to crush the flowers between them. "Thank ya fer lettin' me come wiv' ya," she murmured, stepping back and putting her paw in her long caramel coat, a recent acquisition from her day out with Ronan. She presented the flowers, remarking, "I hope 'ese are alrigh'. Ain' had much practice in how ta mourn proper-like." Her recent string of losses were still too fresh for her to develop her own rites of remembrance for her dead, both the ones she'd known and the ones she'd never know.

 

[Jeshal the Ironclaw]

This was not the first time Tanya had been here, but it was the first time Jeshal had accompanied her. The walk to the cemetery was one of mixed feelings. There was amusement at the fact he was going to see his own grave. It was only for the fact he had been a minister on his demise that he would have a marked monument at all. If there had been a body, he wouldn't have been surprised to be told he'd been dug up and moved by his enemies. Had they buried his old gauntlet? Or was that sitting in a cabinet in the rebuilt Commerce somewhere? He wouldn't even have expected to be buried next to his wife, only the joke was that they'd got accidentally married before they "died" and, legally, there was a real possibility that it had been considered as much as his station.

Then there were other graves, ones that sat uncomfortably in his gut. Stark confirmations of the deaths of beasts that had been breathing when he left these shores. Ones he had taken for granted, mistreated, cared not enough for in his youth. How much he had changed, how many buried secrets this place dredged up. These old ghosts would not even recognise the creature here to visit them. A part of Jeshal did not want to face this. He had to console himself that deaths could be faked. They were living proof. Maybe, just maybe, some of these dead would not remain so.

What did one even do in a graveyard? All he had known were burials at sea or worse. And yet, because of that, these lonely markers felt wrong to him. He did not want to be confined in soil, unable to be free. What was the point in this garden of misery? Tanya would have to be his guide.

On their approach, he fancied he spied a familiar golden todd among a few others.

"Seems the dead have a bigger audience today," Jeshal murmured wryly to Tox.​

 

[Talinn Ryalor]

At at the edge of the cemetery, a small group of foxes was making it towards the graves of Nuori Sken and Julia Freemont in the cooler and drab weather that in his experience foreshadowed the onset of snow in a few days-an older todd dressed in a military uniform and black cloak walking with a pronounced limp, tricorn hat with red fringes, a black cane with a blue aquamarine pommel, and the traditional Fyadoran daisho sheathed wakizashi and sword, and about four other foxes dressed in strange cloaks of and leather armor with distinctive gray and black shading with the more standard assortment of Imperial weapons with crossbows, longswords, and daggers. One of them was walking beside the more elderly todd, with a concerned look on his face, while the former simply shook his head and continued to make his way towards the two graves.

“Sir, I must again protest, it is still not safe for you, Reston and his gang of supremacists have still not been caught, and there are rumors of even more who have it out for you. While I know our Mistcloaks are skilled, we should have pulled a full squad for this, or even the formal household guard. And...well...sir, after fighting that beast…” the younger fox hesitated and seemed at a loss for words.

The Duke of Westisle waved his spare paw dismissively as he quietly replied to the younger todd.

“I know you mean well, Matas, but I have to be able to walk through the city, to get a sense of the local beasts, and I cannot pretend to govern if I cannot travel freely. Our enemies, if they are watching, are lying low for now, and if I stayed entirely within the estate and only came out with such force, they would think me weak and invite more attacks against us. Besides, if I know the Lady Dusk, we likely have more than a few other allies lurking in the shadows somewhere around here.”

He shook his head and smiled wryly.

“And it is fine to say it, my young Captain, it is no use to dismiss the truth. I do not think I will ever again be as skilled as a personal fighter as I was before I faced down that beast from the depths of ‘Gates, and even if I had not suffered such serious wounds by him, age would have slowed me eventually."

He glanced down at Duty’s Burden and his wakizashi and sighed lightly.

“Perhaps it is time to give Alwyn this steel, for he will eventually make far better use of it than I…”

Talinn was going to say more, but as they arrived closer, he was able to make out more details about the three foxes standing around the grave of the deceased doctor and Minister of War, and noted that particular shade of golden fur on the todd lounging on the resting place of Nuori Sken, on his face returning to a more stoic expression as he internally blanched.

Of course I would run into them so soon, the Kitsune is a harsh mistress it seems. But on the other paw, I deserve that fully. Still...there’s another todd with those two. Is he the mysterious third that Vito mentioned? Doesn’t have the shade that the male Freedoms seems to have, but that does not mean he cannot be him...then again, I never got clarification whether the third was male either.

He also caught the sight, approaching from the opposite direction as him and his men, two other foxes, these he especially recognized, and his normally hard stomach began to feel a bit queasy. It was Tanya, and that had to be Jeshal. He had never actually yet met the former before, although he had seen him in passing at the events at the Opera House, or, at least thought he had, for there were not too many beasts who had such a distinctive and high quality metal paw. He actually stopped for a moment, and the rest of his procession did as well.

“Sir, is something wrong?” Matas asked, concerned.

Yes, Matas, there is.

His pale blue eyes flicked to each group as thoughts wracked his head, but he knew that, in the open like this, they would have seen him around the same time he saw them as well. He had three options-retreat, wait, or advance. If he did the first option, he suspected he would never live it down in Tanya’s eyes, if he did the second, he remained completely passive in the situation, which he hated and which went against every fiber of his being. So, much like in battle, if one had any doubts, the best option was to advance.

“No, Matas, everything is fine, we can proceed. Just some other visitors that I was not expecting to see…”

He continued moving forward, because that is the only thing he could do, both literally, and in many other ways.

@Ivo Suresight @Marianna Furotazzi @Tanya Keltoi @Jeshal the Ironclaw