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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Patriarchy" data-source="post: 71672" data-attributes="member: 162">Aerel Feillendril“Lorrimor was a man with a fierce intellect and a heart of gold. I owe him my life.” I steady my voice, though the words choke me. It’s no empty piety to praise the fallen— it’s necessity when he’s the only reason I still  draw breath. “ Petros Lorrimor lifted others from the pit,” I repeat, for his corpse, not the farmers or the crows.I briefly recall that midnight at the ruined observatory—blood, fire, and me broken on the floor. He risked his name and his safety to haul a ruined elf to safety and nurse me back. They may have expected elven stoicism; I offered gratitude instead: “There are fates far worse than death, and it was Professor Lorrimor who taught me to outpace them.”I pause. The crowd shifts—farmers wipe tears, avert their eyes; Kendra’s knuckles blanch on the coffin, her composure cracked by reddened lids. Skender nods in silent salute; Rafael stands alert, troubled by conflicting duties; Chestnutthiel cycles through expressions before settling on polite blankness. The crows clack their beaks, impatient. I bow my head and step back.Chestnutthielsmaller than everyone, but my posture is what he was raised with back straight, chin level, elven trained. My voice is quieter than usual."Professor Lorrimor never treated me like I was strange."I pauses, frowning slightly.... as if I'm working through something I doesn't fully understand. My face scrunchies up as if a sharp headache washed over me. And I spoke..."Everyone else does. Even when they're kind, I can feel it... the way they look at me. Like I'm a puzzle they're trying to solve. But the Professor just... talked to me. About history. About translation. About whether the Elven death poets were actually mournful or just dramatic."A small, genuine smile rises and fades from my face."He said they were dramatic. I disagreed. We argued for three hours. He bought me tea halfway through."I look at the coffin, and for a moment my composure flickers, a wet dark sadness bubbles up for a moment as if I lost the only friend I had ever made."He once called me 'the most interesting halfling' he'd ever met. I didn't know what to do with that being a halfling wasn't something anyone had ever just... named before. Like it was normal. Like it didn't matter. Like I was just a person who happened to be one."My voice drops."I don't know why that mattered so much. I just know that when he said it, the noise in my head went quiet. Just for a second. Just long enough to breathe..."I touches my collar, then my bell, but doesn't ring it..."I'll miss the quiet."Skender tells his story but it comes off dry and impersonalRafael VolanteI clear my throat when the silence stretches too thin."I met him on the road to Lepidstadt," I say, my voice too loud for funerals. "Two cultists had him in a ditch. Cart overturned. Horse dead. He'd cracked one's jaw with a lantern, but he was losing."The coffin is easier to address than the mourners."I killed the first with my mace. Ran down the second. The professor, bleeding into the mud, asked me not to finish the survivor until he'd questioned him."A sound ripples through the crowd—not laughter, but recognition."That was Lorrimor. Half-dead and still curious. Thanked me before I'd even bandaged him. I liked him,” I finish, which is the plainest truth I have.Then the business of grief gives way to the business of earth. Ropes creak. The coffin descends. Damp soil patters on oak with that small, final sound no prayer has ever managed to soften.</blockquote>

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