Rebuilding amidst the burnt landscape was far more difficult than any of them had expected. Beng Shan had known it wouldn't be easy, but she hadn't guessed at how hard it would be. Half her forces were manning the outposts along the eastern border with Song and Snow.
Beng Shan pitted anyone from that land stupid enough to show their faces any time in the rest of this lifetime. The anger was still bright and hot and would be for a long time, and it had taken Beng Shan weeks to convince the elders that charging across the border to pillage and burn every town they could find was not the answer.
There'd been enough death and destruction already. They didn't need to add to it. Song and Snow had been soundly defeated, and if they had any sense, they wouldn't try again any time soon.
If ever.
Beng Shan had nightmares every night of the wall of flame that had crawled across the world and burned everything they knew. She'd never seen anything like it. Had anyone? Even those from the stone fortress had been horrified, terrified even. Beng Shan had spent her life at her brother's side. Beng Shai had always said it would take something great or terrible to unite them with the people in the stone fortress, but he'd always insisted it would be something great.
A small, sad part of her was glad he hadn't lived to see that it had been something terrible instead.
She thought he'd be touched that Lord Ye had insisted on burying his sword with him. She, and most of the tribe, didn't understand the attachment the people of the stone city had to their belongings, but Beng Shai had always been an idealist. His burial mound had survived the fire, though it was coated in black ash. Beng Shan tried to visit every morning as they worked to make shelters for everyone while they waited for the prairie to regrow. They'd managed with tents and wood hardened in the fire, but more than a few of them were still sleeping under the stars. It wouldn't be sustainable for much longer; the chill that had crept in with the season was staying longer and longer.
She was going to have to ask Lord Ye for supplies, as the nearby tribes were all in the same situation. She'd already started drafting the letter and would send it out with a rider in a day or two. Despite the way things had changed, it still irked her pride to have to ask him for help, but she was too practical not to. She knew he would send whatever she asked for; his guilt over Beng Shai's death was still so obvious. Even the tribal elders couldn't deny it, and it had gone a long way to keeping things moving smoothly.
The unfortunate fact that every tribe was too decimated to even think about starting a fight with anyone also helped.
As she walked the length of the new camp, she kept her eyes peeled for any trouble. A group of screaming children ran past her, waving wooden toys, smeared with black ash now instead of dirt. Beng Shai's younger children were among them, and they waved at her as they passed.
His oldest was on the cusp of adulthood now, fifteen going on becoming an elder, and he stopped playing with his siblings as much. Beng Shai had been trying to convince him to relax and still have fun, but that had gone out the window with Beng Shai's death.
Beng Shan wasn't sure how to approach him now or how to connect with the moody almost-man. She was only a little surprised to find him at Beng Shai's burial mound. m
He didn't look like either of them, with bright golden eyes and a head of curly red hair. He looked like his mother, the cold, sad woman Beng Shai had loved so desperately, and her first husband, dead so long now no one remembered his name. Beng Shan had warned her younger brother against pursuing Kai Aba, but he'd been unable to stay away, and while the entire mess had ended with their marriage, Beng Shan didn't think anyone would have called them happy. She and her siblings had done their best to protect the children, to welcome their mother, but the woman had been inconsolable over her first husband's death, and nothing could move her from her grief.
Thankfully, even the oldest only seemed to remember bits and pieces of his mother and none of his first father. They seemed like they'd grown up happy enough, but Beng Shai had never stopped worrying about them. It had only gotten worse after Kai Aba's death, and now Beng Shan found herself doing the same thing.
Ran Orlo still carried his first name, because Beng Shai had not wanted to upset his wife by changing it. He and his siblings were the only ones who carried the name anymore, which was sad in its own way, but that was life. Bloodlines and tribes died out in time, and new ones rose.
The rock was ever-changing, no matter what the creatures on it wanted.
They stood in silence at Beng Shai's tomb, mourning a man they'd both loved in different ways and listening to the wind. It no longer carried the rustle of waist-high wheat, but the birdsong was starting to come back as weak green shoots pushed their way through the burned ground.
Fire, as terrifying as it was, was good when it came to growth. It reset the earth and often resulted in an abundance of growth you couldn't get otherwise.
There was a song on the wind, the gentle hum of something not from nature, but still beautiful.
Beng Shan wondered where it was from.
~ tbc