#not for orins sake. but for dirges. those are nice years

[majorasnightmare]

actually cuz its on my mind

dirge grieving habits lets goooo

funeral practices dont come easily for him. he wasnt made to mourn. every death should be celebrated, after all. at the end of all things, thered be nothing left to mourn and no one worth mourning for. but dirge loves, and he grieves, and thus, he mourns.

it is an awkward, bumbling thing. funerals are for the living, after all. there is no body to bury, and he cannot even ask orin if she would want him to mourn her. cant ask how shed want to be remembered. if she wants him to remember her. the entire ordeal is nothing but his own ego, his own desires, his own projections. more guilt on top of it all. but he cant do nothing. cant let her go unremembered

so he theres a lone grave marker, overlooking the chionthar. the river always helped him find peace. its less a resting place and more a place to remember her (dirge knows where she is. there is no rest where shes gone)

i think that a month before his birthday/her death anniversary, dirge picks an art medium at random and spends that month trying to make something in it, and then takes the end product to her marker. leaves it there to show her his progress. and i think he spends the morning just talking. about how his life is going, what hes doing, what hes been thinking about. if hes remembered anything new. explains how he came out. talks about his regrets, his apologies, how much he wishes things could have turned out differently, how much he wishes bhaal didnt steal their lives from both of them. guilt and grief and shame and self indulgence and guilt all over again. doesnt know if shed be happy to be remembered when there was no one left for her, or if shed think it was just one more self serving gradiose gesture. he kind of suspects the latter, but he cant bring himself to stop.

its a private affair. goes by himself in the early morning. he wont ask anyone to mourn a monster. he wont deny thats what she was. but they were monsters together. he didnt deserve the second life he got but he has it anyways. orin may not deserve to be grieved but he loved her anyways. he doesnt ask minthara to come, or to help. wont ask her to remember her torturer. minthara lets him grieve a past he'll never recover, because at the end of it all, he chose her over himself. sacrificed everything, his life, his past, his sister, his power, just to keep her from being victimized at his hands. so if he wants to mourn a monster, she wont stop him. as she well knows, hes made a habit of loving them anyways.