Dead Character!

The little things laid out on their big, beautiful bed hurt Aemiera. The soft curve of his daggers, the little thread cutter she'd made him, the fine things he'd given her... All of it was imbued with his memory. His smell permeated the bedsheets, even though he'd been gone for months. She could still feel his arms around her, the brush of his skin against hers. He was still there, in some way. Without him, she wasn't the woman she'd been before. Not even halfway.

She was a shadow. A shell. To remember Aemiera was to remember a distant person. There was a reason she did not use her former name. Caltiaa was dead. A memory just like she was now. One of Dernuu's blankets was on the bed. It had the sweet smell of baby on it. This smell always brought up an overwhelming maternal warmth in Aemiera.

She felt love for her son, yes, but the warmth that came was barely a whisper. There was no passion, no fire. He didn't deserve a mother like that. He deserved a mother who would feel a fire in her heart for him. He had that sort of mother, where he was now. No, she couldn't take care of him. The woman capable of feeling that sort of passion wasn't with her anymore.

Therus had begged her to live, in her dream. He'd told her to not abandon her son. To not make him wonder why she'd not lived for him. But wasn't it worse if she did live? For him to wonder why his mother could take him but did not? No... Dernuu would never doubt that his mother loved him. She found some paper on the table next to the bed, and scrawled on it, in Darnassian. "I did it for Dernuu."

She slipped on the dress she'd been married in, and it fitted poorly over her sunken body. She wasn't the woman he'd married... not anymore.

There were three options. She couldn't raise her son. She couldn't live nearby with him being raised by others.

The leather rope was soft. It'd been one of her favourite leather ties. The beam was right above the bed, and she tied it with one of the knots she'd seen Therus use a thousand times. She fashioned the noose carefully, gently. It went easily around her neck.

In front of her, a spirit appeared. Ghostly. Her Therus. "Are you sure?"

She nodded, tightening the noose. He held out his arms for her, and she walked into them. Into peace.

Peace in her husband's arms and embrace. Into the world he was in now.


Her hooves dangled next to her bed. The bed she'd shared with her husband. Her eyes glazed over, and she swayed back and forth, the dress picking up the breeze.



Dernuu would know that his mother and father had loved him.