Annemarialana sneaked out of her house early in the morning. The sun was just beginning to crest the horizon, bathing it in glorious, vibrant colors. Any other elf would have stopped, breathless with the beauty of the sight. But not Annemari; she was not any other elf. This day she had a purpose and she did not intend to let anything - not even Turpa's most beautiful sunrise - slow her down.

The grove was barely stirring when she arrived. Lanac gave her a faint nod as she passed his place of eternal vigilance. The other bleary-eyed elves were easy to avoid; few had eyes sharp enough to detect her even when they were fully awake. When Annemari reached the moongates, she didn't bother to glance in the gate before she stepped through and onto Tropica's shores.

During her last trip, Annemari had been careful to mark the path in her mind. A quick incantation brought her quickly to the fields where she had found her son.

The farmers had also risen with the sun and Annemari found them hard at work. She ignored their suspicious glances and hasty gestures to ward off evil and skirted the field, eventually heading towards the center of the village. The elder was there, waiting. He looked as if he had been expecting her.

"I have come to collect the rest of what is mine." Annemari said curtly in the common tongue.

The elderly man nodded slowly. "He has rested long here. It will not please you to do this, my Lady."

"It will please me more than you know. Take me to him." The elderly man led her reluctantly to Aldus's grave.

Exhuming Aldus's body was perhaps one of the most difficult things Annemarialana had done in her young life. Her eyes burned with tears she wouldn't let escape. The smell assaulted her nose: the smell of death and decay. It was a smell she had come to associate with Tropica, but it had never been so strong or so personal before.

The elder had led her to the grave but had refused to remain as she had pulled out her shovel and began digging. He bowed respectfully and shook his head as he walked away. She didn't care. She didn't intend to allow Aldus to remain here. He would want to come home.

By the time she had reached his coffin, the sun was high in the sky and she was sweating freely. She tied her hair back at the nape of her neck but it clung to her back and intensified the heat. The stench was also growing with the heat of the day and Annemari had to pause frequently to keep from being ill.

She climbed out of the pit that had once been his grave and scanned the vegetation around her. She would need wood to build a pyre, but she didn't want to start a forest fire in the process. Upon further study, Annemari determined that the jungle was sufficiently wet that it wouldn't matter. She need not take his body back to the Vallenwoods; his ashes would serve.

Annemari didn't have to go far into the jungle before she found a downed tree. It appeared to have succumbed to a combination of vines and wind. As she hefted a medium-sized hatchet in both hands, Annemari realized grimly how much pain she would be in when this was finished.

Hours later, Annemarialana had managed to gather enough wood for a pyre. After she had built it, she pulled a scroll from one of her pouches and carefully unrolled it. The witch who had sold this to her had promised it would create a magical sheet of some kind, resistant to burning. She was to place it beneath Aldus's body so the ashes would not be lost among those of the wood. She desperately hoped it would work.

Getting Aldus's body out of the pit was the most difficult part of the whole operation. Although it was not heavy, it was difficult to maneuver. By the time Annemari had climbed up on top of the pyre and lain the corpse out on the magical sheet, she was crying freely. She had lost control of herself the moment she opened the coffin and saw his beloved face, decayed and inexpressibly altered.

Annemari scrambled down from the pyre and stood staring at it for a long time. The smell of death no longer troubled her; she had grown accustomed to it hours ago. The sun was slowly setting while Annemari watched the pile of wood. The night creatures of the jungle were beginning to stir. Vaguely and as if from a great distance, Annemari heard them stirring.

The sunset this day was as glorious as the sunrise had been, but the preoccupied elf once again failed to notice it. As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, it painted the sky in shades of blue and purple; there was even a tinge of gold in the sky. Annemari was oblivious to all of it. At this moment, all that she could see and all that she cared about was before her.

As night settled fully over the jungle, Annemari finally gathered enough nerve to finish what she had started. She cupped her hands in front of her and chanted softly. A small flame appeared in her palms and grew, barely contained by her will. Swiftly, she flung it at the pile of wood before the hunger of the fire could turn on her. The flame struck the wood with a sharp crack and all immediately began to burn.

With the flames reaching up to the night sky, Annemarialana knelt stiffly before the funeral pyre. She was no longer crying; she was too tired for that. All she could do was watch the fire consume the last of her beloved and die out. She tried to say a prayer to bless his passing but found herself unable to even call Zandreya's name to her lips. He was long gone; no prayer of hers would change how he had already passed on.

For a brief moment, Annemari thought to throw herself on the pyre and share her fate with Aldus. She couldn't stop herself from smiling, though. Aldus would certainly have had something to say about such an idiotic, romantic act. Laughter bubbled up inside her. Hysterical laughter that she couldn't contain.

The laughter eventually fled and left her in a calmer state of mind. She could not share Aldus's fate. She never could have, even if he had been alive. Hadn't they decided she should return because she could not escape fate? No, she would not let death release her from her duty.

The fire began to die down as it ran out of wood to burn and Annemari's thoughts wandered. She thought of Jairen, sleeping so peacefully this morning when she had left. Some nights she spent hours watching him sleep; it was a constant wonder to her that he was alive and he was hers. How could she have thought of leaving him, even for the tiniest of moments, when she had just found him? What kind of mother would leave her son not once, but twice?

She berated herself silently for a while, until thoughts of other people calling her back to the Vallenwoods intruded. She thought of Kae'la, who had changed so much since Annemari had known her. She saw Saetra's face, so eager and concerned, in her mind's eye. She could not summon anger at the girl; she felt a strange sense of gratitude. Finally, her thoughts turned to Cewyn.. but quickly shied away. No.. She was not quite ready to think about him.

The next morning, Annemarialana roused herself from the ground in front of the smoldering ruins of Aldus's pyre. Every muscle burned with the strain she had placed upon them the day before. She sighed heavily and made her way to the center of the ashes, where she found the magical sheet, just as the witch had promised.

Annemari's eyes began to blur as she looked at the outline the ashes made against the white. With a quick stroke of her hand, she brushed them towards the center of the sheet, ruining the affect. She funneled them into the jar she had brought along for that purpose just as the sun began its climb up the sky, bringing new life to the jungle.

New sounds of the world waking reached Annemari's ears and this time she paused to listen. A small creature rustled in the underbrush nearby, no doubt curious about the stranger in its territory. She heard the calls of Tropica's exotic birds. They were loud and unafraid; their voices as bright as their feathers were likely to be.

Finally, Annemari looked up at the sunrise. The sunlight was just beginning to warm the sky. The dark blue of night was fleeing, leaving behind a trail of lighter blue that eventually gave way to the delicate pink and gold of the morning's light. Annemari's breath caught in her throat as she watched the sun bring new life to the world.

A golden hawk rose up in the sky as Annemari watched, making a dark shadow against the light of the sun. Annemari followed its progress with her eyes and her heart and soul rose up to meet it. She imagined she felt the wind rushing through her hair, just as it was caressing the wings of the hawk. She imagined the wind was singing in her ears, making a playful harmony with the rhythm of her heart.

Annemari closed her eyes and felt at peace for the first time in a very long time.