Complications

I woke to myself again half way back to the caves. I had no memory of starting back. My face was streaked with the salty remains of many, many tears. I had no idea how long we had sung to the dead. It was late, though. The moons had traveled most of the way across the sky, and the clan members around me were quiet and subdued.

It took me a moment to realize that Kohric was on my left, his hand gently resting on the back of my elbow as we walked. Nandi was on my right, walking heavily on all fours and staring blankly at the ground. Kohric was murmuring to me, something about how the way one dies has a different ritual. The logical part of my brain latched on to this and compared tonight to the funeral for the dead hunter at the old clan site. The rest of me wished I never had to see another funeral of any sort ever again.

I must have lost myself again, because the next thing I remember is waking up the next morning. My eyes were gummy, my lips felt dry and cracked, and I wanted a drink of water more than anything in the world. I sat up and found that I had somehow wedged myself against Nandi in the night. I’d been using his flank as a pillow, which explained why I could barely turn my head straight. His feet were in my lap, and his tail had flopped across my shins. He was still sleeping, snoring gently with his head resting on his arms.

I slowly slid out from under his feet, careful not to wake him, and stepped outside in search of a drink. I felt numb, detached. Your brain has a way of distancing you from grief after a while. You can’t feel that kind of intense pain constantly for a long period of time or you’ll lose your mind. So it comes in bursts until you can handle it. I welcomed the numbness. It meant I could function without feeling like a vice had been clamped around my chest.

The clan was very quiet this morning. It was almost noon, actually, and only about a third of the clan was awake. Those that were up were subdued, and performed only the most immediately necessary chores. No one had even begun trying to piece together all the broken equipment, lost objects, deadfall, and other remains of the tornado’s destruction. The entire clan was reeling from yesterday’s disaster, and they hadn’t gotten up the strength to start picking up the pieces just yet.

Kohric was awake at the community fire, half-heartedly eating a strip of dried meat. He stared absently into the flames, the meat flapping against his cheek as he chewed. He looked like a cow. It would have been funny under better circumstances.

I found a drinking bowl and filled it at the spring at the back of the fire cave. I sat down next to Kohric and sipped at my drink, staring at the fire and thinking how odd it was that it was the same element that had wreaked such havoc on the clan just the day before.

Kohric began murmuring again, he was explaining something about how the clan had to find a new tsurandi-Kan, and they could not be from D’Keda. This was nothing like his normal lessons. He was simply reciting information, staring unseeingly into the flames. It took me a while to understand; this was Kohric’s anchor, his way of trying to find normalcy again after all that had happened. I leaned my head against his shoulder and listened absently as he went on and on.

He eventually stopped and we sat in companionable silence, taking comfort in each other’s presence. The clan slowly began to come to life. People came to eat or drink, or simply warm themselves by the fire. Others began slowly clearing the smaller bits of debris and wreckage away.

Kohric slowly turned and looked over his shoulder, seeming to finally register what was going on around us. I shifted away from him as he moved to stand, and joined him on my feet. He looked up at me and gave a small, tired gape grin.

I was about to ask him, “What should we do now?” when I heard my name called. Nandi came trotting up to us, his eye ridges furrowed and his mouth a small, thin line with worry. In his hands was my pack.

Rather, the remains of my pack. One strap was gone, and the other battered until the padding had begun to show through the cuts in the fabric. The bag portion was torn open, and an ominous dark stain at the bottom suggested that several of the bag’s contents had ruptured. My brain slowly put two and two together, and I reached for my bag with a growing cold feeling spreading through my stomach. The only liquid items I had with me were the chlorine antidotes I need to survive on Minerva. There wasn’t a single one still intact.

“Oh shit.”