He had never heard a more heart-wrenching sound in his existence.
The explosion had come first. Then the reports. Then the wail. He didn't know that an entire group of people could share such an intense sadness. But there he stood, listening the the Nora, sobs wracking the bodies of all of them.
It had been a trap, the "Proving". Someone had been watching, waiting for the next generation of Nora to fight for their futures, and then they had struck, cutting down all of the braves who had decided to fight for their recognition. No one had survived, they said. Not even the girl with hair like a sunrise. He felt his breath catch in his lungs, suddenly aware of a distant ache in his chest. For a moment, his eyes burned.
"She wasn't yours to mourn", he whispered under his breath. He shook his head, reprimanding himself. Maybe he was just sharing in the sadness of a generation cut down before its prime. Why was she the only one who came to his mind? He had been at the prayer ceremony, seen them all send their lanterns into the sky. But hers was the only face he could recall, the only voice he could remember hearing as he had wandered through Mother's Heart, waiting for the Sun-Priest to deliver his letter. He tried to convince himself that he only thought of her because she was the only Nora he had spoken to. It wasn't the way that she looked at him when he suggested that she visit Meridian, the cool tones of her voice as she told him that she had been alone all of her life, an outcast banished at birth. He tried to tell himself that she deserved to mourned by him, because no one else would do it. He stopped at the gate on the way out of the Embrace, by a patch of plants he knew to be healing herbs, with flowers nearly the same color as the Nora girl's hair. He quickly made a small circle of stones in the middle of the plants, and placed a blue bead he had picked up in town the night of the ceremony. A fitting memorial to her, he hoped. He convinced himself he did this because the wild would be the best place to remember her; she never belonged to people who now claimed the sadness that came with her passing.
It wasn't because he could have loved her.