Recently on the Cohorts' board we challenged ourselves to write short scenes that depicted an encounter between Crais and his father. I wrote four: Beloved, Harvest, What Goes Around and When Life Gives You Zucca. Each story is posted here as an individual chapter. Thanks for reading! I appreciate your feedback on the different scenarios.



Beloved

The smell of heliotrope and the distant red cliffs were all that remained of his recollection of this place. The rectangular parcels of dirt that his father and the other men turned with their wooden harrows had long since yielded to endless waves of sweet grass speckled with flocks of graylag.

It was a thousand cycles ago, and it was only yesterday. Words would make absolutely no difference now; still, he had waited a lifetime to say them and he would not be denied. Since his arrival a weeken ago he anticipated this moment, prepared himself for it. Staring in the general direction of where his ancestral home once stood, he began to speak, surprised by the casual tenor of his voice.

"Did you think you would continue your life as though nothing had happened?"

He glanced over his shoulder and quickly forward again, a slight shake of his head in commentary. "Did you honestly believe that a man could have his very heart ripped from his chest and still live?"

"Well...did you?" he shouted.

He clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists and squeezed them to his eyes as though that alone could block the image of that day from revealing itself. At length, the anger spent, his arms dropped limply to his side. He turned with ragged breath to admonish him.

"You should have fought for us. It was your duty. Your responsibility."

Grief had proven itself an unpredictable animal, not always content to lie hidden in the dark recesses of a man's soul as the cycles passed, gnawing at his guts until the pain drove him mad. No. Some men it swallowed whole.

Bialar Crais approached the grey stone monolith and retrieved his waistcoat from atop it. His fingertips followed each line of the name etched into the chipped, discolored granite as he regarded the simple inscription below.

Beloved Husband and Father.