Burying the Past
by Breande Drindina

Breande sat under a tree, her head leaning against the trunk, lost in thought. Two years. It had been two years today since Issika had died, the last of her children. The last of her own reasons for living. There were days when that early spring day seemed ages past, and there were days when it seemed as freshly painful a memory as though it were yesterday. Two years. Much had happened in two years' time. he had started a new life in that time, and most days she made it through well enough, though not a day went by when something did not remind Breande of her children, or her husband. Something always reminded her of her past.

She moved her braid, black and thick, over her shoulder, and her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight, glimmering with unshed tears. She had cried until she thought she had no tears left to cry, then she had cried more, and when those had run out she had cried yet again. She had stopped crying now, for the most part, but today she had reason for the sheen of moisture covering her eyes. She had her reasons for everything she did, but today she had a special reason for her actions. The last few months had made quite an impression on Breande Dindrina.

Her hands, once red and chapped from dishwater and now tanned and calloused from chores, trembled as she reached behind her neck and unclasped the sheath which held her marriage dagger. Women of Ebou Dar often remembered their mothers buying them such a sheath and displaying it proudly, her sign that she was looking for a man to marry. Breande's mother had not bought hers. It had been her husband, nearly six months after they were married when they finally had the money for a dagger and sheath. Breande had been younger then than many of the girls who trained in the White Tower. At sixteen, she had been a wife and expectant mother, and her whole life ahead of her. A whole lifetime to convince her own family she had made the right choice when she married for love. They had insisted she did not know what love was.

At sixteen, though, Breande had known everything. Such a shame she had forgotten most of it in the last ten years. Her fingertips ran lightly over the white sheath in her hands, the chain slipping through her fingers. She was lost in thought, and in the past, allowing herself one last journey to it before she buried it forever. A shadow on the ground was her first clue that she was not alone under the tree, and she looked up slowly, almost afraid to find out who had cast it.

As it turned out, the person joining her was not nearly so bad as she had been anticipating. Tall and muscular, and she supposed he would have been handsome had she been younger, or he older, or perhaps she more inclined to think such things of any man. His coat in one hand and shirt hanging open, he looked down at her.

When he spoke, he spoke softly, "You look as if you could use a friend. Would you like some company?"

She did not know the man well, which was to say she had seen him about the yards but had never spoken to him and did not know his name. She did not even know his rank for certain, but she assumed he was Ashanderai since she was pretty sure she knew all the Siswai and Manshima. His words were kind enough, and Light knew she could probably use the company, whether she really wanted it or not. Truth was she didn't not want the company. She really was too numb to care one way or the other. She was tired. Light, she was tired, and that was absurd. There was no reason for her to be as tired as she was.

Her eyes drifted up and down the young man, taking him from boots to hair. Her gaze skipped over the scar he was fingering on his stomach, then came back to linger for a moment. It was a nasty scar, and she wondered idly how one so young had gotten such an injury. Perhaps he was not just Ashendarie, but gaidin. A Warder would likely come across such scars at times. Her eyes drifted farther up and paused for a moment, her dark blue eyes locking onto his golden, and for a moment she considered where she had seen such a gaze before, but she could not place it, and did not worry about it overly much.

She sighed softly and with a wave of her hand she indicated the ground beneath the spreading canopy of new spring leaves. "I was just lost in thought, I suppose," she said, absently fingering the lone red glass stone in her dagger, a stone set in black for the daughter she had lost. She mourned her daughter no more and no less than she mourned her three sons, or the husband she had lost to that plague. Measuring mourning was something akin to trying to count the tears it would take to fill an ocean. She pulled herself back to the present. "Thought is a dangerous place to be lost."

He smiled slightly and nodded, "Yes they can be." Setting his sword down on the ground he buttoned his shirt then pulled his coat back on but didn't bother to close it. "By the way, my name is Tane Ravenril. I have been here for just over six years."

He took a seat on the ground and looked at her with a gaze that made her think he knew things about her that she did not want to admit. "I came here to hide from certain things that were happening to me at the time. I guess I was running from my problem, even if I didn't realize it then." He paused for a moment, his attention seeming to turn inward, then he continued. "You seem rather sad. Is it anything you'd like to talk about?"

Breande's mind raced. If he had been here six years, that meant he was about her age most likely. She studied him for a minute, and suddenly decided it didn't matter in the least. She had far too much on her mind for once to be worrying about the tender age at which these children were trained to kill. Gingerly, she placed the dagger on the ground, and the four glass stones caught the sunlight, glinting and glittering. She folded her hands on top of her knees and leaned her chin on them, staring at her dagger.

Was it something she wanted to talk about? Not particularly. Was it something she did not want to talk about? No, not particularly that either. Sad? She nearly snorted at the description. Might as well say that fire was warm, that water was damp, that steel was stiff. "I suppose I am sad," she replied softly, her eyes still on her dagger. "It has been two years today since my daughter died." Idly, she touched the red stone, her fingertip tracing around the smooth, round edge of it. "She was the last of my children to die. And then I came here."

She felt as though she ought to be crying, but she did not feel so much as the prick of tears at the back of her eyes. Issika had been her wildflower, the blossom in her family full of young men. She had been everything a woman could want of a daughter, with so much promise, and Breande had looked forward to bringing her up properly. Not the way she had been brought up herself. She would have been a much better mother than her mother had been, had she been given half the chance. "Breakbone fever," she said softly, answering the question not spoken. Some people were afraid to ask, but almost everyone did eventually. "An enemy I could not have fought, and one on which I can seek no revenge."

He was quiet for several spans of time, which might have been seconds or millennia for all Breande knew. Looking out onto the training yards he spoke softly, "I won't sit here and say I can understand what its like to lose a child since I have never had any myself. I do sympathize with you, but unfortunately I have no answers." He continued to look across the yards without appearing to be looking at anything specific. "I can tell you that this is a good place to hide from your problems or feelings, but sooner or later you will have to deal with them. And take it from someone who knows, it is better to deal with it now then later." He took a deep breath and continued. "One day you have to say I want to move on from here. I don't want to do this anymore. I have to live my life. When that day comes things will begin to get better. I think you just need to decide when they day will be. You cannot change what has happened to you. You can only learn to live with it and move on. Then you will find some peace with yourself." Sighing softly he added, "Maybe I'm not the best person to give advice."

Breand nodded thoughtfully. The young man... Tane? He spoke sensibly. How very unfortunate that her heart would not listen to such sense, no matter how she tried to make it. And try she had. Light knew that she had tried talking to her heart sensibly, tried to make it see the logical side of the situation. The past was in the past, and no amount of wishing or mourning, no regrets, nothing could ever change what the Wheel had already woven into the pattern. She hadn't even the right to wish the Wheel had woven differently. Her fingertip traced a slow line along the length of the blade on the ground before her.

"I know," she said softly. "I know what you say is true. It isn't the first time I've heard it, and it's nothing I've not told myself. And Light knows if I were in your shoes, talking to someone like me, I'd say much the same thing." She picked up a handful of fine soil, sifting it through her fingers into a small pile, then smashing the pile flat with her palm before repeating the process. "Some days I even think I'm strong enough to do that. And then something reminds me. Something always reminds me. And I start to think, and then I start to question. Can I leave the past in the past, without leaving my children behind?"

She scooped up a second handful of the soft soil and added it to the mound she was making, not precisely unconsciously, but without thought to what she was doing or why. "I would have done anything for them, you know. I would have walked into the Pit of Doom and bargained my soul to the Dark One to save them. I would have faced an army, I would have faced death and pain... I would have done anything to keep them from harm, and if they were alive, captive somewhere, I would not rest until they were safe again." She spoke softly, her voice leaden with the tone of one who was seeking an answer to a question she did not know.

She turned her head to study the young man sitting with her. "I'm sorry," she said, forcing a soft laugh as she dusted her hand on her trousers. "I'm Breande Dindrina, a siswai." Her smile faded a bit as she folded her arms around her legs. "I know you don't have answers for me," she said softly. "I don't think anyone has an answer. At least, not one I want to hear." Without thinking, she reached out to her dagger again, running her fingertips over the white sheath. The sheath of a widow, and one who had no desire to remarry. "People always avoid painful subjects, you know? They don't want to talk about it, they don't want you to cry in front of them, they don't want to make you cry. But sometimes it helps to talk. Helps in the long run, even if it's painful at first."

"You know it's not a bad thing to move past their deaths and to get on with your life. You don't dishonor their memories. You will carry them with you, in your heart, for the rest of your life." His gaze wandered for a minute, then returned to her. "I know all about people running from painful subjects and talking about it does help. Sometimes it's hard to get people to start talking. But if you need someone to listen, well...I'm good at listening."

Breande nodded thoughtfully, her fingertips still caressing the sheath of the dagger. "My husband, Kavan, he used to say that the past was just something the Creator gave us to laugh about. He said that once something was in the past, it could no longer hurt." She looked at Tane and laughed a brief, bitter laugh. "He didn't know what he was talking about half the time, but I suppose that was to be expected. He was no older than most of these boys here are. And I was a good deal younger still. Too young, I'll admit that now, but I never regretted it. Not for one second, and I still don't. But we were far too young to be married, and too old for our parents to turn us over the fence and whip some sense into us. But then, I don't suppose sense has anything to do with love, does it?"

With deliberate slowness, Breande drew the dagger from its sheath and held it in her palms, her fingers wrapping around the hilt, the blade pointed towards her heart. "I don't know if you know anything of the marriage knife, but that's what this is. He gave it to me when we were wed. Asked that I used it to kill him shold he ever displease me." She turned the knife, dagger, weapon though she had never thought of it as such, over in her hand, then crossed her legs and lay the dagger on the ground before her. "I never would have done such a thing. I wouldn't have killed anyone for any reason, least of all Kavan. The only time he ever truly displeased me was the day he died." She traced a slow circle in the dirt with her fingertip. "That was five years ago, not long before the Feast of Lights. I had four children, and I didn't know how I was going to keep them alive, keep food in their mouths, when I hadn't even the money for rent. So we moved to the Rahad."

Her eyes glazed slightly as she spoke, and for a moment she wasn't even aware there was anyone else around. "I found work in a tavern, serving the sailors their ale and their stew, and whatever else they wanted." She was not particularly proud of that part of her past, but she could no more change it than she could bring her children back to life. "We lived in a building with a dozen other families. Two rooms for the five of us. Ratty, run-down place, infested with rats and roaches, dirty and dingy, in a dangerous part of town, but I thought that if we could just make it through a few years, I could keep saving money, and we would be able to make a place for ourselves somewhere else." She blinked a few times, then stared at Tane for a minute as though wondering where he had come from. "You know, I don't think I mourned my husband's death. I didn't have time. I had to be strong, I had to take care of the children. I didn't have a choice. Nights were difficult, and they still are sometimes, but I did not mourn his death the way I should have. I should have been despondent, but I didn't have time to be anything but tired."