More Marno fic; it popped into my head while browsing for some prompts. The key prompt was "incense and tobacco". Enjoy!
Smoke Trail
Marno's life, it seemed, was a smoke trail. When he was very little, his father had used to smoke a pipe. Marno never understood the point of smoking a pipe, even as he grew older, but when he'd been a very small child it seemed to him that the purpose was to look important – and his father was important – but his father later explained to him that the pipe-smoking was for enjoyment, because the tobacco, especially when flavored with fire moss, tasted good and the smoke smelled nice. Marno was mostly indifferent to the thick and musky smell, and the one time his father had let him take a puff from the pipe he'd choked and coughed, and his mother had gotten angry and upset. Marno remembered her saying to his father in terse, angry tones that pipe smoke wasn't healthy for little boys, especially little boys like Marno.
His mother liked to light incense. The smell of the incense was markedly different from the smell of the pipe smoke – it was sharp and sweet and varied, a little bit warm and a little bit cool. Unlike his father's smoke, which came from the thick pipe made of caplin horn, his mother's incense smoke burned away from a tiny little stick with a glowing orange end. Once, when he'd been very small, Marno had tried to touch the glowing end, but his mother had gently slapped his hand away. She'd told him that the incense was a call to the gods for peace. Marno didn't know why she didn't just send them a letter.
When they died, the smoke went away – but only for a little while. One morning, seven days after the air in their home had been clear for the first time in his memory, little Marno crept into the room to find Seph and Pieda lighting up one of their mother's incense sticks. He asks them if they're sending smoke letters to the gods, too, but Pieda shakes her head solemnly and Seph tells him that they're sending the smoke to their mother and father, instead, now that they rest with the gods. It is a prayer, he says, a prayer for their peace.
Marno once caught Thoran trying to smoke their father's pipe, but the fire moss flavored smoke caught in his eyes and caused great floods of tears, and Thoran choked and coughed just like Marno had those years ago. Marno never told anyone, and neither did Thoran, and Marno never saw him with the smoke pipe again.
Marno inhales the smoke of the burning battlegrounds of Atria. It is bitter and pungent, unlike the smoke of both his mother and his father. It sticks unpleasantly in the back of his throat, the last smoke he will ever taste. His smoke trail ends here.