Zeynab sat on the bench looking out over the cemetery. His ears twitched when he heard footsteps coming back his way. He turned to see Sous who sat down next to him, quiet st first.
The fifty three year old was handsome, with longer hair, wider wings but one was chopped partially off. Her body partially black by so many seals upon her body.
Sous's fingers tapped rhythmically against the wooden bench, the sound barely audible over the sound of cicadas. Their shared silence wasn't empty.
Zeynab's ears twitched occasionally, brushing against Sous's thigh in accidental contact that neither acknowledged nor corrected. They were school friends after all.
"I'm surprised you gave up your role so quickly," he said to the Alpha. Sous had been Alpha of Canas for almost a decade. The government was one entity with a parliament that consisted of numerous species. Thr ghettos were torn down, the communities put together again.
"My dream came true," Sous laughed, the sun beginning to set. "I had to be away from my kids for even longer but for Pamoen. Our relationship never got better but I'm glad I was able to have her take the role. She's an amazing leader. An Omega, tsk," she chuckled. "It sucks getting older because every adult who was older than you starts to leave," she said.
Shadow passed away about eight years after the war. She missed him everyday. Her mother, grandfather also passed.
Zeynab rubbed Sous on the back of her back.
The cicadas buzzed louder as the shadows stretched long across the graves, the golden hour painting the weathered headstones in hues of amber and rust. A warm breeze carried the smell of dry grass and something sweet, wildflowers clinging stubbornly to life between the plots.
Sous's damaged wing twitched, the severed primaries catching the light like jagged shards of obsidian.
She didn't flinch when Zeynab's fingers lingered, tracing the ridge of scar tissue where the first seal had been burned into her shoulder blade decades ago after eating Zhiliary.
"I'm sorry about Xeno," Sous said.
"He was a handsome young man. I loved him dearly," he paused looking at Sous. "Thank you and Faye, Tany, and Alana for bringing his body back to Nadia. That was nice of Abigal...was that her name? Abigal to allow me to speak with his spirit. I'm sorry for not having you meet him sooner but I gave him up to a new family."
"I really wanted a relationship with him but...it maybe would have ended up like Pamoen," she said.
The last sliver of sun dipped below the horizon, plunging the cemetery into velvety darkness punctuated only by the occasional flicker of fireflies. Sous's remaining wing stretched unconsciously toward the fading warmth, the membranes straining against atrophied muscles before settling again with a soft rustle against the bench.
Somewhere in the tall grass, a cricket took up the night shift from the cicadas, its chirps syncopated with the music of Nadia's glowstone streetlamps flickering to life beyond the cemetery gates.
"How do you want to be buried?" Zeynab asked.
Sous got a choke in her throat. "I want my ashes spread near the tracks in Red Woods...I want to go home..."