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The Blooming Grove is so much louder these days, Cadeuces thinks to himself.
Not that he minds terribly. The laughter of generations of Clays echoes through the trees and across the silent stones; vibrant life grows on even among the dead. There are even a few Stones who have come to stay. A small contingent of Dusts arrived a few centuries ago as well and were quickly absorbed into their sprawling ecosystem. Another sprinkle of seeds in the Wildmother’s ever growing garden, budding and blooming into a mess of wild growth where you cannot tell one root system from another.
He rises from the plot he’s been tending with a groan and several pops. The cold ground does his joints no favors, but he gives a satisfied nod at the collection of colorful flora he has coaxed from the ground across the headstone.
Clarabelle Clay
The name is highlighted with an array of soft mosses and Clara’s favorite flowers. She’d approve, Cadeuces knows, though she’d never admit it. He taps the stone gently and stoops to collect a few of the heartier looking mushrooms. “Join me for tea, sis?” A warm wind passes through the grove and soothes his cracked hands and aching knees. Cadeuces takes that as a yes.
—————
He’s halfway through steeping the earthy blend when there’s a small tug on his sleeve. One of the smallest of the Clay clan, little Caramine, peers up at him with big brown eyes and dark pink freckles. She must be quite quiet to catch him unawares or else his hearing has gotten worse than he realized.
“Uncle Cad,” she whispers softly as she tugs again. He’s not truly her uncle, but more than five greats is just too many to bother keeping track. “Uncle Cad there’s a funny man at the temple for you.”
Cadeuces smiles down at her. She’d make quite the rogue some day, he thinks fondly. He knows there’s a certain goblin-halfling who would have agreed with him “Well, no sense keeping him waiting. I take all kinds, strange or not.” He tweaks her nose and she scurries off.
While she’s gone Cadeuces fetches another cup and saucer. No two match. He’s slowly collected individual pieces of character instead of tidy sets.
The man Cara leads in by the hand is not so strange after all, although drow are still uncommon in these parts. The floating, too, perhaps seems odd to those unfamiliar, but Cadeuces smiles at his new guest.
“Ah, Essek. It’s been too long, friend.”
Essek Thelyss smiles back. The crows feet Cadeuces knows are there do not present themselves the same way on the drow’s midnight skin, though small creases can still be spotted here and there if one knows where to look. It is even more difficult still to discern whether drow experience any color loss in their moon white hair, but it is clear Essek’s customary shorter style is now more from necessity than choice. Long gone is the elaborate mantle from his youth. Traded instead for soft flowing velvet blue robes. The former shadowhand never did manage to stifle his habit of folding his elegant hands into the wide sleeves.
“Cadeuces. My apologies for dropping in unannounced.” Ever polite Essek.
“Don’t be silly. You are always welcome. Tea? Please, sit.”
Cadeuces digs a small biscuit from a weathered floral tin and offers it to Cara before sending her on her way. Tea now almost perfectly timed, he pours two cups, nudges a slightly chipped silver lined saucer with a clashing polka dot cup to the dark elf opposite him and sinks back into his armchair with a satisfied groan. Essek, no longer gently floating, echoes the same motion and a groan of his own. Cadeuces wonders how much of the levitating is done out of necessity now.
What a pair they make, Cadeuces muses. A couple of old men with silence and history hanging between them as they gingerly sip from contrasting cups.
Cadeuces lets Essek be the first to breach that silence in his own time. “Is this, ah, one of your ‘dead people’ teas?”
“It is. I like to think of it as a gift from my sister.”
Essek freezes with the cup resting awkwardly on his lower lip. “Oh.” It’s another beat before he seems to make up his mind and finish the tea anyways. “I’m sorry to hear that. My thanks to her, I suppose?”
Cadeuces chuckles. “I’m sure she’d appreciate the sentiment. Tell me, how is that school of yours?”
Here is where Essek truly blooms. Years melt off his bones when he speaks of his students, the Blumenthal Academy’s growing reach. His smiles for his pride and joy banish any faint wrinkles from his face. It has been many years since the drow retired from his duties as headmaster, but that place is in his blood, Cadeuces can tell. Essek’s “retirement” is almost certainly in name only.
“That’s just wonderful,” the firbolg rumbles. “He’d be proud of you, you know.”
Essek’s smile turns abruptly small and sad. “I hope so,” he whispers. His hands, so emotive a moment ago, disappear beneath his velvety robes once more.
And there it is, Cadeuces nods to himself. Now we get to the root of the matter. “How long has it been? Since you visited, that is.” A tight shake of the head from right to left and back again. “Too long. I understand. Come on then.” Cadeuces sets his empty cup down--a teal outside stained deep navy blue on the inside and a bright green patterned saucer. “Let’s take a walk.”
—————
The two of them venture together across the densely packed cemetery. Essek’s footing is uneasy across the uneven ground, he squints in the bright sun. He does not make it more than a few yards before he must lean heavily on Cadeuces for support, but he does not return to his gentle float. Cadeuces buys both of them time to catch their breath by stopping periodically to tidy up a particularly unruly plot or brush climbing ivy away from names and dates.
Slow as their steps may be, in due time they approach the shade of a great oak, almost a perfect match to another grand tree across the continent. Though this particular plant soaks in plenty of sunlight on it’s own it is still strung up with its own enchanted globules of light. Over the many centuries the tree has grown to gargantuan size. It’s trunk is wider than Cadeuces is tall at least three times over. Each major branch system could be a tree on its own. Cadeuces places a hand on a knot at about chest height and gives his old friend a warm, “Hey.”
Essek’s attention, however, is captured by the polished stones wrapped lovingly in the massive roots, six in total. Like the tree they are all centuries old now, but care and attention and just a little bit of magic has kept them almost pristine.
He stops at the two newest headstones first:
Yasha Nydoorin
Veth Brenatto
The only two without bodies underneath them, Cadeuces explains. “Yasha walked off into the arms of the Storm Lord. And Veth is with her family in Felderwin. But they’re here. I hear them in the leaves sometimes.” Their stones are surrounded almost entirely by little yellow and white wildflowers.
The oldest stone next, beside a crystal clear spring of water quietly bubbling up from the roots. Cadeuces is most proud of this addition. It’s not the same as the ocean, but Cadeuces hopes it instills a similar sense of peace.
Fjord. No last name. Fjord had insisted.
In another gap in the roots close by: Beauregard Lionett
They’d had to fight for her, in the end. The Lionett estate had notions about where family ought to be buried. The Cobalt Soul had their own traditions. It took every favor on Dairon’s list to bring her home, truly home.
Jester Lavorre
The magnificent marble headstone Jester had designed herself was elegantly embellished with carved filigree and lillies at first glance. It didn’t take long to notice, however, the suspiciously shaped stems and oddly phallic designs. Jester had told Cadeceuses that she’d hidden nine dicks in all, but Cadeuces thought that might have been her last little joke; he could only ever find eight.
At each grave, Cadeuces watches Essek approach and trail his fingers lightly over the carved names, tap the top of the stone once, and smile sadly. As he spies a dick shaped petal Essek gives a huff of laughter, a small and sad thing barely more than a breath.
Moving even slower than he had before, Essek makes his way to the sixth headstone. Cadeuces has to offer him a hand to climb over the twisting roots, but he does not follow Essek right away. Sometimes grief needs more privacy than intimacy, Cadeuces knows.
He doesn’t have to approach to picture the last carved name in his mind: Caleb Widogast. A simple stone. A simple epitaph. “A better man.” Bright orange poppies coaxed from ash kissed soil.
Essek sinks down onto a section of exposed root. Cadeuces can hear him whisper, “Hello, ta’ecelle. I have missed you.”
Cadeuces politely tunes out the rest and sets about tending each plot in his familiar routine, as he has done for centuries, humming softly all the while.
—————
It’s hours before Cadeuces finishes his rounds. He’s collected a lovely assortment of mushrooms from the damp soil around Fjord, a small bundle of rose hips from Jester. By the time he makes his way back around the trunk to the patch of lavender between Beau and Caleb, Essek has stopped speaking. Though Cadeuces cannot make out the twin tracks of tears on Essek’s shadowed face, the drow’s pale eyes are quite obviously glistening and rimmed with red.
Cadeuces sits down beside him on the improvised root bench. “Feel better now?”
“Much.” Essek’s voice is dry like sand, crackling like old parchment. “You were right, as always, I’ve been away too long.” When Cadeuces offers, Essek gratefully accepts a sip from his water skin. “I told myself it didn’t matter. A body, a grave, isn’t a person. I didn’t need to visit, he would be with me. Always. And yet…”
Cadeuces finished the thought for him, “If you don’t set aside the time to come, it’s easy to excuse the time on your own. Neglect it. Easy to lie to yourself. Pretend you don’t need it.”
“Yes. Precisely.”
When Essek does not explain further Cadeuces figures they’re not getting any younger, no sense dancing around it. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here, Essek? You’ve come a long way and something tells me it wasn’t just for tea and a cry, although both of those things are good I will say.”
Essek gives a small chuckle. “You always did see right through us all, didn’t you?” He sighs. “The truth is I am tired, Cadeuces.” And in that moment he truly looks it. There by the trunk of an ancient tree nearly two centuries younger than he is, Essek Thelyss sits wizened and bowed. Cadeuces realizes that at some point during his gardening his companion had summoned himself a smoothly polished ebony staff that looks to be the only thing keeping him upright at the moment. “I am tired and I would like to rest.”
Cadeuces pauses. A moment of understanding. “We’re a long way from a beacon, Essek.”
A sad smile, “You have discovered my plot, then.”
----------
Death, Cadeuces thinks, is best discussed over dinner. A steaming bowl of something to stare into does wonders to take one’s mind off of the more morbid aspects. So he and Essek make their way back to his humble abode. This time Essek gives in to his need to levitate above the rough path. Cadeuces has the makings for a simple root stew in his cupboards and he sets about dicing the tubers and measuring out the dried spices. He shoos Essek away from the kitchen; his hands are not so far gone that he needs a mage hand to handle a knife.
He sets the pot simmering over the fire and goes about cleaning as slowly as he can manage, buying time really. Essek sits completely still by the fire, thoughts lost somewhere among the embers. He’ll talk when he’s ready. Indeed, it’s not until Cadeuces presses a crock of the soup into Essek’s hands that his gaze becomes focused once more. He thanks Cadeuces with a nod and sips the broth gingerly.
“I have been thinking,” Essek sighs more than says, “for a long time, now, about what another life might mean. In a practical sense, for my theoretical future self, and a more abstract one. The purpose of another life. Another chance.”
“Heavy thoughts.” The soup provides them both an excuse not to look at each other.
Essek continues, “Indeed. And perhaps I am a fool for thinking that centuries of wisdom can compare to the eons experienced by the ‘perfect souls’ of the Dynasty, but if there’s anything I’ve learned in this life it’s that I’m not so sure perfection is such a worthy pursuit.” He pauses to bite into a piece of vegetable.
Cadeuces remembers the bread he still has in the cupboard and offers a hunk to Essek to better chew as he mulls over his next words.
“This life that I’ve lived...it is far from perfection, but to turn around and say that somehow makes it less worthy feels—”
“Cheap?” Cadeuces offers when Essek trails off.
“In a sense. Like an insult. That this life I’ve shared with Caleb, with you, my friends, my students, is somehow not…enough.” Essek has dropped a small piece of the bread in the stew and does not immediately fish it out, just lets it float there slowly taking on water and sinking deeper into his bowl. “It was enough for me.” He adds softly. “More than enough. And if it’s about second chances, well,” a heavy swallow, “I think we both know I was already granted my second chance, on the deck of that ship so long ago.”
Cadeuces stews with his own stew awhile. He thoughtfully hums with each spoonful. And Essek evidently knows better than to rush his response which does not come until he’s scraped the last dregs from the bowl with the crust of his bread. “You know, there’s very little perfection in nature. That’s kind of what makes it perfect.” Cadeuces can feel Essek’s silver stare. “I’m no great philosopher, but I’m a great believer in finding happiness with what you have.” He glances up to see the tears he already knew were trickling down from the corners of Essek’s eyes. “Can you promise me that is what this is about?”
Cadeuces receives a nod and a shaky, “Yes.”
He feels nothing but truth.
“I was always happiest with all of them.”
“You and me both.”
“I’ve lived centuries without them. Please. No more. If there is any chance at all I can see them again…” the words seem to become too thick for Essek to continue, his eyes shutter closed.
For just a moment Cadeuces let’s himself grieve, not for his friend, but for himself. Must I truly bury them all? Why must I be the last? Please, he prays to the Wildmother, let there be someone to show me the care I have given to them.
“I’m not really in the soul business,” he says at last. “But I can certainly make arrangements.”
In all his many long years, Cadeuces thinks, there has never been a man more relieved to plan his own funeral.
—————
The details are remarkably simple. Essek has long had all his affairs in order. The school has already been informed that he has no intention of returning. Whether the headmistress was able to discern that his departure would soon be equivalent with his death is unclear. He has no elaborate requests only that he too be laid beneath the glittering oak with all his truest friends, beside his husband. A dark headstone with a single pearl and his name alone.
When all is decided Cadeuces brews them both a cup from the collections he made today: a true Mighty Nein sampling.
“I’m sure Veth would offer you a shot of whiskey to go with it but I’m afraid we’ll have to make do with honey and milk.”
Both of them smile the kind of smile with tears on the edges.
“Been a long time since I had one of Beauregard’s cocktails.”
Gone is the talk of death, replaced instead by the ramblings and remembrances of two old friends. Neither can remember the last time they laughed so hard. For a moment Cadeuces can feel like the friends that the rest of the world is slowly forgetting are only a yesterday away instead of a lifetime. In memories they are immortal.
But reality is a different story.
Not quite a fortnight on and Cadeuces and Essek make their way to their friends as has become their routine. This time when Essek sinks onto the root beside Caleb’s grave he does not get up again. Cadeuces returns from his rounds to find him in a final sleep. The warmth in his body already fleeing.
Cadeuces kisses the top of his head. “I will see you again someday my friend.” He looks to the rest of the nein. “I will see you all again.”