Lay to Rest

On her hands and knees, Dallia raked her fingers in the wet loam of the Hospice gardens, digging a hole one fistful of dirt at a time. Beside her lay a dented, scuffed, and singed leather scroll case.
Every time she’d pared her life down to the essentials it came along. Dallia carried that case for so long the weight ceased to be a burden the way that a traveler became one with their pack. To be apart from it was unsettling, a nagging plague on the mind. Even as recently as yesterday she’d clung to the case, but the weight was wrong now. The papers once held within, notes on gods, celestials, and the search for a being called Allantriel, were gone.
Years went into the writing of those notes. They were the product of her adult life as it was yet lived, ranging from the first angry ramblings of an adolescent girl with powers she didn’t understand to the cold, clinical research of a scorned witch.
An exchange between Walt and Tess filtered in her mind, caught earlier that day in the unavoidable voyeurism of a public conversation. She could still remember the taste of spiced black tea on her tongue as Walt said, “If you don't like somethin', takin' it up with whoever's in charge will get it sorted."
Tess, laughing through her unease, replied, "Ah ain't really sure that's how that's gonna work with somethin' like this... feels like a pretty done deal."
Walt had sat back, deflating. "Sorry. I just don't like someone not feelin' their best."
"Well, it ain't that ah don't feel me best... Ah feel pretty damn great... it's just different and takin' time ta get used ta."
Truer words, Dallia thought, couldn’t be spoken about either of them. Things had changed. The feeling of her life was strange, unfamiliar, but better. It was time to lay the clinging remainder to rest.
Another memory played as her hands went to the case. Those seconds before Skiff, Tess, rejoined the living world were burned into Dallia’s mind. Dallia sat amongst the scroll’s overlapping parchment contents, the fragile inks of her life’s scholarly work marred to illegibility by broad, hasty charcoal strokes. Those lines shaped glyphs that nothing but visceral instinct told Dallia could bring back the dead.
It was but one ingredient of a larger spell. Dallia managed it without the aid of some conceited godling.
The pages hadn’t burned, rather they were unmade to rise as everlasting sparks and pine tree scent and a love once lost now reforged. The death of Skiff was Dallia’s first failure in Vareholm, a life she’d been unable to preserve. Bringing Tess back closed a circle that Dallia only now realized was dangling free.
Dallia breathed, appreciating now the relief that day brought her. It was done and she’d no need to for the arrogant celestial Allantriel as anything but a distant memory. Let him be just a lesson hard learned.
Dallia filled the tattered case with her old wand, a few surviving scraps of research, and a handful of silver piercings she’d once worn in defiance, then surrendered it to the mud. Maybe someday she’d have need of those tools. If so she knew where to find them. If not the soil would reclaim the case in its own ponderous time.