Highlander: I Will Remember You

Present day - Paris:

Alyssa hadn't slept. The past two days had gone by in a blur. It was supposed to be hard losing parent, you expect them to go on forever, but in Gabrielle's case it should have been true.

Born four hundred years ago Gabrielle Lemieux had watched the world grow and change around her only to be brought down by a mortal. At least that's what they were saying; the people who arrived after her death to take the body away. The woman who had told Alyssa that her mother was dead had been Gabrielle's Watcher, Maria. A couple of years earlier they hadn't known that Watchers existed and now it seemed they were everywhere they turned. Watchers; is that what they were doing while her mother was dying, watching? The thought hadn't left Alyssa since it had happened. Everything her mother was, everything she could have been, it was all gone…lost. It was that more than anything that tore at Alyssa now.

It shouldn't be like this her thoughts were shattered by the sound of drums. At first a low and distant thud that a moment later had grown into the distinctive rattle of a death drum as the funeral procession appeared over the lip of the terrace in a stream of white heading towards the small family burial plot where the mourners had gathered.

Flashback, Tibet 2003

The snow had only just stopped falling leaving Gabrielle's hair peppered with tiny flakes of ice that glistened like jewels in her short blonde hair. She looked like a warrior even when she was at peace. Alyssa had been watching her mother meditate for the past ten minutes, unmoving, serene, and sitting cross legged in the snow. She looked almost as part of the scenery as Mount Everest that dominated the horizon behind her; a great monolith reaching out toward the heavens. Alyssa was certain she hadn't seen her mother take a breath for at least a minute.

"Close your eyes and focus" Gabrielle breathed without batting so much as an eye lid. Easy for you to say you won't freeze to death out here Alyssa thought pulling a face at her mother as she reset her frozen limbs into the lotus position. "I know what you're doing" her mother quipped still unmoved from her statuesque position.

How the hell does she do that? Alyssa mused closing her eyes, trying to focus, but it was no use. The cold was biting at her and a wind had whipped up slapping her dark curls across her face "It's freezing!" she shivered jumping to her feet. Alyssa had been sat in the same position for what seemed like hours and her limbs felt numb in the frozen climate. It was time to give up. "I'm going inside"

"Wait!" Looking up to where Alyssa stood, Gabrielle smiled "Luckily for you I know the perfect way to warm up" reaching out with her right hand her mother pulled two bokkens from where they were covered by freshly fallen snow.

"I was thinking more along the lines of a mug of hot chocolate" Alyssa smirked sarcastically "with those cute little marshmallow things."

"Oh come on.. it'll be fun" Holding out one of the bokkens to Alyssa she waited until her daughter took the wooden sword before maneuvering into the neko ashi dachi 'cat stance'.

Gabrielle had a way of talking someone into anything. She only had to smile and people were putty in her hands. Alyssa had been no different, never being able to say no to her "This time keep up… you're not as young as you used to be" she joked taking the bokken from her mother's hand.

Present day, Paris:

Alyssa had grown up a lot in the five years since that day in Tibet. She had seen things that would have left most people running for the hills, but the site of Gabrielle's body draped in white in front of her made her legs buckle. It took all of her strength to remain standing as the monk who had been leading the procession put down the white prayer flag he was holding and handed her an unlit torch still chanting passages of the Abhidharma as they placed the body on a brick pyre.

The burial plot had been dressed with bright flowers and fruits until the place looked more like a little patch of Asia than the outer environs of Paris. The whole place was awash with colour. Everything was exactly how Gabrielle had wanted; she would have been happy.

Taking the torch from the monk, who had made the long journey from Tibet to preside over Gabrielle's funeral, Alyssa walked to where fragrant woods burned inside an oversized incense burner and set the torch alight. The scent of sandalwood, cedar and incense making her head swim.

It was a few moments before she could bring herself to light the wood beneath her mother's body. She half expected Gabrielle to sit up and tell her this was all part of some elaborate plan, some big joke, anything but this. "I'll miss you." Twenty two years together had come down to three little words. Everything they had done, everything they had been through lost forever in a sea of memories that would haunt her until the day she died.

She didn't expect the fire to take so quickly, but the moment the flame touched the dried fragrant wood it began to crackle the signal for other mourners to add their own torches and wood to the pile. The flames quickly lapped up at Gabrielle's sides burning away the white silk sheath that had covered her, enveloping the body in a bright orange flame that reached high into the sky, all the while the sound of the drum growing and swelling with the flame as though announcing to the heavens her mother's arrival.