Tears fell as raindrops on the lapping shore and Nate tried to laugh through hitched inhales. Thanks, buddy. Crippled words, weak enough you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a dying man.

For a while that was the best Nate could manage. He watched his companion chase frogs and rubbed, over and over again, at the itch of tears between haphazard breaths. Everything hurt.

Ko-Ga, the only one who knew her, the only one who stayed knowing what it really meant to choose, offered solidity to lean on. By slow and halting sighs Nate exhausted himself into some kind of stalemate.

Moonlight on the water looked starker, now. There was only the barest hint of green to the horizon. He exhaled.

And when the first notes of a memorial chant welled up in his throat, they were halting and uncertain. Eduda taught him how as a child, and Nate had tucked it into his heart to hide there, certain it could never be repeated by someone like himself. Only held onto, white-knuckled, like the redbird in the stories.

Now it rose higher, louder, rippling off the lake to reach out towards that great Tree on the distant shore, and the mountains beyond it, and light began to stretch into the sky —

He didn't know if he sang for Eleanore or himself, if it was dirge or desperate pleading. But though tears fresh stained the fur of his cheeks, it was a song.

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