Cylus 1st Arc 721
Neither the earth nor the wind wanted to help out with the clean-up, and the fire –who’d created this mess in the first place—simply sat on its bed of ashes and twigs amidst a circle of stones, belching burps of smoke. Rokas coughed and pinched his nose with one hand, waving away the stench of burned hair and skin and flesh and clothes. It didn’t quite work. Despite his efforts, and despite the fact he wasn’t breathing through his nose, Rokas could still smell the remnants of fire’s meal.
He could still see them too. Seven charred silhouettes frozen in the midst of throes of anguish and despair, one foot locked within a petrified heap of earth. Most had lost their features during fire’s feeding, becoming lumps of coal with a vaguely humanoid shape. A few managed to preserve their expressions though, empty sockets and screaming mouth wide open. Rokas still heard their cries echo through his campsite, stubbornly refusing to fade out and die like echoes should. He wasn’t quite sure if it was the wind mimicking voices, or if it was all in his head. In the end, it didn’t bother him enough to continue dwelling on.
The stink did though. The combination of charred wood with smoke and burnt flesh and hair proved too strong to shut out, and too pungent to get used to. More importantly, it would creep into his clothes, clinging to it for days and days. Until either the wind plucked the smells out of the fibers, or until water washed them away. One rejected Rokas’s requests for help –preferring to play with the ashes instead, tossing them into the air and catching them, or simply scattering them all over the campsite—and the other wasn’t around. Its voice reached from afar, weak and thin, more of a puddle than an ocean, a placid stream rather than a rushing river.
Lastly, the earth was a little different. Like its siblings, it did not help out, despite the fact that burying the smoldering corpses definitely would get rid of the smell. Or at least stop more of it from being generated. However, it denied Rokas’s requests to alter its shape, unwilling to change. Not out of spite or because it found Rokas had already asked enough of it. Not at all. If anything, the earth would gladly roll over and part, swallowing all seven corpses into its cavernous belly. However, it enjoyed the new form Rokas had given it, indulging in the new shape. For a little while longer, the earth would delight in it before once more shifting to accommodate Rokas’s wishes. And as such, it was as much a lost cause as the other elements.
A ‘little while’ for the ancient crust of stone and rock and gravel and soil –ever constant, ever present, barely affected by the flow of time-- just so happened to be an eternity for a transient being such as Rokas himself. For all intends and purposes, if in a hundred years the earth did bury the corpses, it’d be rushing itself.
So he broke up camp, packing up the large canvas tent, rolling it around the poles and pegs, tying it together with leather belts and the cords used for pitching. Gathering the single large pan for boiling water, as well as the survival knives, trowel, hammer and other gear, fitting them all back into his pack on top of his folded-up blanket. Then he pulled on his boots, kicked a several handfuls of sand into fire’s face, telling it to go to sleep for a little while. It sputtered and hissed, then dimmed and shrunk and disappeared.
As Rokas headed off, he still heard its whines coming from between the embers.
