About two weeks after the Undead War...
Free time? What was that? Over the last two weeks Verial had little of this so called "free time" to himself. This was expected though as he was recently appointed Protector Regent. Verial picked possibly the worst time to accept position of "king". The capital city was destroyed and hanging on by a thread and the treasury vaults had been ransacked. He was followed everywhere by guards whenever he went to meetings or to help plan reconstruction for the city. Then there was Jade City and its abandonment to aid that he had to worry about.
That being said, to truly get some time alone Verial had to sneak out in the wee hours of the morning like an unruly teenager. Of course, there were guards outside his bedroom door and stationed all over the place in the castle, but thankfully he had a window in his room and was born with wings. Like some caged bird that had been freed, Verial spread raven feathered wings and flew away from Grand City's castle and towards the shoreline southeast from the city.
The plot of land Verial eventually made it too was utterly empty. It was a place where long blades of swaying grass met a shoreline of fine, nearly untouched sand. There were no other sounds to be heard except the gentle rocking of the ocean waves rolling rhythmically across the sand. Illuminated by the light of the moon among the grass was a lone grave which Verial walked towards. This grave had a single letter "D" on it and was the final resting place of Deanna DiCorvino.
This situation, Verial felt, was kind of strange. He knew from the location that the plots of land Deanna had bought were relatively close to his own land. Verial wondered if Deanna had known that before she died - before she bought the land. And did Deanna really buy this land to be buried on? That fact seemed kind of grim to Verial and brought a momentary half frown to his face. It's a sad thing to think about when you're buying plots of land for your own burial as if you're just expecting to die. If it was up to him, Verial would have seen that Deanna had been cremated, burned in fire, the element that related to her passionate and strong nature. To know she was in a grave now deep in the ground was just a sad image.
In truth, Verial hadn't been able to think about Deanna's death too much. Or mostly he didn't want to because he had seen Quinn carrying around her dead body during Layla's meeting. Such memories were difficult to get out of one's head and he didn't want to remember Deanna wrapped up in a stained sheet. So, he took a few weeks to mull over other things before he went to visit Deanna's grave.
Now that he was here, he felt sort of embarrassed for some reason. Verial even laughed to himself all alone on the beach. A light smile crossed his features and he knew that if Deanna could see him now, she'd probably punch him in the jaw for even being here. But Verial was smarter than that; he knew Deanna was dead and that was that. There was no bringing her back (in most cases this was true). He was just stealing a moment to say good-bye.
"Hey, Deanna, sorry for being late." Verial said and at the same time, moved his hands to lace his fingers together front of him. "I know you probably don't want me here, but I guess there's not much you can do about it, unless you feel the need to come back to haunt me, which isn't a far fetched idea. You know, we didn't really know each other that long - eight months maybe? Despite time though, you still felt the need to follow me to Tezzra's Gorge and set me straight and make sure I didn't die. I'm still curious why you cared so much underneath that tough exterior of yours. I wanted to thank you for that, because I'm not sure I ever did."
Verial paused for a minute and breathed in the salty breeze that came from the ocean. It was a little known fact that Verial liked being by the ocean and just listening to the sound of the waves. It was a small comfort that reminded him of Oneiro. In a way, he always imagined that any ocean he visited was somehow connected to the one back on Oneiro. After all, oceans were vast and stretched on for miles and miles.
"There's been many people who have died in my lifetime - siblings, loved ones, friends. Many who I've never gotten the chance to say a proper good-bye to. So now that I do have a moment, I just want to say farewell, Deanna, my friend. Though you won't be here physically, know that from time to time you'll be in my memories."
Verial shifted out his raven feathered wings for a moment and then knelt next to Deanna's grave. He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled something out. The object was a jagged looking circle, a little bit bigger than a quarter, and was a sleek obsidian color, almost reflective. It was a piece of one of Verial's dragon scales and he placed it by Deanna's grave, embedded slightly in the earth. Often times, dragons and their scales were seen as signs of protection.
Once done placing the scale by Deanna's grave, Verial took one last lingering look at Deanna's grave and then turned on his feet and headed back towards Grand City. Only this time, he took off his boots and walked barefoot along the sand until the sun replaced the moon and morning was once more shedding light onto Eiler.