A Rogue in Lady's Clothing

On Kairn, at least in the places Amelia knows of and has been to, there are few traditions regarding death. There are prayers to be said when someone passes on, gatherings that have become culturally accepted by most, and a few practices that are considered tradition. But how one honors the dead once all of that is over is left to each person or family to decide.

In Amelia’s family, the tradition regarding death was set down generations ago. The body was prepared as soon as possible and a ceremony held for those outside the family to pay their respects and offer condolences to family members left behind. The following day, the family took the deceased a half day’s ride from Masarra to a specific site on the beach south of the city. There, the body was burned in silence, with each person giving their thoughts and prayers to the one who had moved on to the Eternal Dream. When the fire died out, the family took a meal together, gathered the cooled ashes, scattered them into the Inner Sea, and rode home.

For the following six days, the family laughed and smiled together under a single roof as they recalled their fondest memories of the one they had lost. They held each other and encouraged tears, happy and sad, to get them through the worst of the heartache. It was a celebration of life, for there was always time to mourn when all had dispersed back to their own homes. All grieved for the loss they shared, but by the end of their week together, what few tears remained were never of the gut wrenching pain that always followed the death of someone so close to you.

And then they parted, never speaking the name of the fallen again, willing them with their silent protest to rest easy in the Eternal Dream.

( Then time passed, and things changed. )

Of all the things Amelia had done in her life, all the good and terrible things alike, this was always the one that kept resurfacing. She told herself over and over that she’d made her family noble because they deserved it, that they​ needed it. Without making them noble, they would have struggled in that space between nobility and peasantry, in that space where things they should have been allowed were out of their reach or denied them in favor of those less fortunate. Her sister would have suffered needlessly without access to the proper healers and her youngest brother would have been forced to travel far from the city he grew up in to become a scholar.

She didn’t want that for them. They were better than that and she knew it. All she had to do was make the rest of Masarra see it, too.

In the process she stained herself, made herself unfit to take the title she earned her family or even stand among them. But that didn’t matter to her. They had what they needed to survive and would be well off for generations to come. It was all worth it to the rogue, and that was enough.

Still, she could never deny the truth of the matter. When it came down to it, there was only one true reason for drowning herself in sins to make her family noble.

“Because I wanted to.”

And for the rogue? That would always be enough.