The weekly dinners with her family had once been a high point of her week, Kiara thought tiredly, working around her sister in their mother's kitchen to get tea and sweetbread ready for everyone. Ma was arguing with Nana again, as they seemed to always be arguing nowadays, and she wished she'd never brought up the matter.

It had seemed so simple, when she'd heard that her first-mate's little cousin had come visiting from the priesthood, no longer forbidden to keep in touch with his family and returning to the Sunlord's service with his family's willing consent. They could even write letters.

It had seemed so right, when she'd heard another family a few towns over got a handwritten death notice in response to their own inquiries, full of apologies and explanations on how their child had met her end. They even received a purse.

The letters, the explanations, were what had gotten her attention; but as she'd never known her brother she didn't feel it was right for her to just send an inquiry off. Not when her grandmother held vigil every year with a bottle of prodka, not when the half-finished knotwork Sun in Glory hanging above the family shrine grew a little more tattered around the edges every moon.

So she had mentioned it, near a moon ago, an idle sort of comment over the vegetables and conversation had simply stopped.

"What's the point? What's the point Irma? He is dead dead and gone and no condolence purse is going to change that!" Ma was shouting again, voice spiraling into a roar meant to be heard over waves and howling winds.

Not to be bested, Nana snarled back with a tone that sent pirates fleeing, "The point is to know what happened! To be able to offer proper prayers, to be able to end the story with something besides, 'and he was stolen from us!' They can keep the blasted purse, I just want to know what happened to my grandson!"

"Why doesn't ma want to know?" Kiara finally asked Elisia while they waited for water to heat. "Wouldn't – wouldn't it be better? To know?"

"I can't see how it would," Elisia said sadly, the only one of the three siblings to have children of her own. "It's been – Sunlord it's been twenty-three years, Kiara. Dead within the week he was taken or dead a few years later – ma's mourned him for decades. Mourned and moved on. Digging up old wounds – no, I cannot blame her for avoiding it."

Perhaps that was a difference between her and her sister, her and her ma, Kiara thought, brow furrowed as she busied herself with the mugs. She would always prefer to know.

Ma and Nana let the argument rest when tea and sweetbread came out, treating the other as if they weren't even there. Kiara sat beside Lukas and wanted to apologize for ever bringing the issue up, couldn't they just forget about it? Or at the very least stop screaming and come to a decision already?

"You don't even have to read the cursed response," Nana finally said, Kiara barely restraining a groan and not quite managing, judging by Lukas' amused glance. Her oldest brother – her only living brother, she firmly reminded herself – had managed to avoid most of these arguments, the lucky ass.

Before Ma could open her mouth to snap back, Lukas spoke up, resting his crippled arm on the table. "I wouldn't mind knowing just what happened to him," Lukas said mildly, Ma's eyes resting on his gnarled and stiff-moving hand before looking up at him, gaze intent.

Something passed between them there, and she knocked back the last of her tea before standing and storming out the the room, tossing over her shoulder, "Fine. On your heads and hearts be it, don't come weeping to me when you hear the story of his burning!"

Elisia stood to leave too, saying quietly, "That was cruel, Lukas. I will not be a part of this."

"We have the right to answers, Elisia. His being mother's son takes away none of our own family obligation," Lukas replied, the oldest of the siblings shaking her head and leaving.

"Well then," Nana sighed, a small smile growing on her weathered face, "It's about blasted time we got to write that letter. Kiara? You have the best hand of us."

Kiara fetched supplies while Lukas and Nana started to argue about just what they were going to write. This argument, at least, wasn't going to end in screaming. That could wait until they got a response back.

(The letter went out the next day, asking carefully about their grandson and brother's demise, making clear all they wanted were details, no money, no compensation. Just the truth.

The truth: their grandson and brother was far from dead, needed no compensation, and wore robes that still featured in his family's nightmares.)

To Whom it May Concern,

We of the Dinesh family are writing in regards to our kinsman, Kir Dinesh, taken from home some twenty-three years ago in service to the Sunlord. We would appreciate an accounting of his demise, and desire only the truth of his death, seeking no compensation.

By my hand,

Kiara Dinesh, Captain of the Sundancer