He strolled down the street. The sun was warm as it neared the horizon, not a cloud in the late day sky. Selric stopped at the florist’s and picked up a bouquet of twenty violets and from there he walked to the mausoleum. This was not where the common dead were buried, but the nobility. Selric had arranged for Cinder to be put there, at least until, and if, her mother or father came to take her. He knew Cinder would ultimately want to rest in a soft, warm meadow somewhere, but in the dead of winter, they had no choice.
Selric went in the door just as the sun set, and he turned and walked slowly down the shining halls, his footsteps echoing throughout the virtual catacomb. He rounded the last corner and approached her tomb, where he knelt and prayed to any god who would listen, to be kind to her and watch over her wherever she was. Selric rose to put the flowers in the holder when he noticed that the single, delicate violet Alanna had placed there a week earlier was still as fresh, soft, and sweet as if it were growing in the earth. He looked around, but this was no power of the crypt, for other flowers sat withering in their cups. No, it was something else. There was some other meaning to it, something about the life in that flower, that cup. Selric Arnesson Stormweather, second son of Andric Stormweather, smiled that broad ear-to-ear smile, turned and headed home.
The End
By Moonlight Wrought (Bt Moonlight Wrought) Page 47