This Hard Earth by feanorusrex

Chapter 1

Another grave, a child this time.

Emeldir hates them, the dead. Their dying is a massive inconvenience. Did they not think, before gasping their last breath, of how much work they are causing? How hard it is to dig even a small grave?

They must be wrapped in blankets and so those were wasted. Emeldir would have stripped them naked, for the living have more need of clothes. But their loved ones would never allow that. “It is an affront to their dignity!” What dignity? They are dead already.

And when someone dies the group must stop, wasting precious time, and dig. Shovels are scarce. Farm implements are not something a person thinks to grab when fleeing their home. Although everyone among them has money, it is worthless now.

Instead they use swords, or sharpened sticks or hands to dig. Emeldir would not even bury the bodies if she had her way, but to refuse would cause a mutiny. This is foolish! She wants yell while plunging her sword into the earth. If they should be attacked again, their blunted weapons would not be much use. She tries to sharpen them or ordinary rocks, when she has time or energy, both of which are in short supply. At least she has a knife. 

After a sizable hole is made, the corpse is lowered in, then the wife, husband, child, mother, father, daughter, son, or friend of the deceased either wails, or looks on silently, broken. She feels no grief anymore. She feels hunger and exhaustion, only base emotions now. All she wants is to be safe and fed, and safety is not here, and food is barely either.   

“Anyone else?” Emeldir wants to say every time before they fill a grave in. “We could fit two more bodies, at least, in here. Who else wants to die today?” The dying do not usually take her up on the offer. They do not want to share their deaths, their graves, and they string themselves along, dying one by one.

Then it is time to refill the grave and this is the part most often done with hands, not a symbolic toss of one clot; she is on her knees sweeping her arms out, embracing the dirt, pushing it back into the hole from whence it came. They place rocks over the grave, to protect it from animals. Emeldir helps with all of the graves- there are so many of them- because she is one of the stronger of the group, and her hands blister and bleed, the brown mixing with red. 

Her people die, too many of them, from hunger, disease, wounds, and despair. Emeldir’s hands are dirty too often. The weak are dying off. Nature weeding out the unnecessary. Nature is impartial, not listening to pleading. She will not die, neither will her son. She has a son. What will she feel if it was her boy in that grave? Nothing, she knows. Her feelings are frozen. They will only thaw when she has time for sentimentality, and then the tons of sorrow will crash over her. Something for her to look forward too, upon reaching Brethil. 

Strange, that the life giving earth is brown, the color of dead plants. The earth should be vibrant green colored, not just the grass, but what is underneath too. She should eat something. She has not eaten in far too long. Her bones just out, the tent frames against the collapsing canopy of her skin. She feels light, and empty, like her head is floating.

She is prepared to eat the fallen, but it has not come to that yet. It astonishes her, that she is capable of such horrible thoughts, and she wonders if this is what lurks under the humanity of every person, the fanged animal instinct to survive. Do those walking behind her think the same thing? 

Emeldir has lost everything, and now she only cares about her people’s safety and her own. If pressed, she did not know which she would put first, theirs or hers.  These ragged people would say theirs, of course, they love her, but she did not know. Altruism is a luxury, a human thing. The hunger is not so bad if she does not think about it. 

Emeldir walks at the front of the group, always, for she is their leader; her husband is dead. Emeldir, 'the Manhearted,’ someone adds after her name, trying to raise the spirits of their group. What a stupid name, she thinks. I am dragging the last of my people across the mountains, because my husband died and we were defeated, so there is not much else I can do. And this makes me like a man? Because I have one measure of courage to wave a sword about and to keep moving forward? Why should men, whom she has seen falter, die and desert along the way, be the ultimate standard for courage? She would much rather be Emeldir the Stronghearted, but people cannot ask for their titles. She walks on, wondering if she would still be called such if her starved mind leads her off a cliff and she dies. 

She longs for oblivion, the final peace that she sees on the faces of the dead before they are wrapped in their blanket shrouds. She hates that they get to give up and she does not. If she dies she does not want her people to bury her. It would waste time, and effort, and they must go on. She wants to be left on the road. But they would insist on burying her anyway, and perhaps cutting an epitaph: Here lies Emeldir the Manhearted. Burial is foolish here. The living will abandon the graves, and the dead spirits’ do not remain there either.

Emeldir wants this journey to end, but she will not it give up unless she dies; she would welcome death if finds her. 

On and on and on, and her hands are dirty.