They hadn't brought a shovel with them, neither of the three. So, as a quick measure, Karelos and Nopuozhr dug A'cci's grave with their bare hands.
Nopuozhr was a canine Hir-Soger, a natural at digging holes, Karelos on the other hand, was struggling a little. Hyde was throwing dirt straight between his legs into a clean pile. Karelos was picking up clumps and setting them into a messy pile on the side.
As Karelos worked, his pile overflowed and the dirt fell back into the hole. He let out a groan of frustration as he facepalmed. Xena giggled in the background.
"Hey. You gotta break down the soil before picking it up."
Hyde stepped closer to Karelos, guiding him on how to dig a hole in the most efficient way. Since Karelos didn't have claws, he had to gently punch the soil, just enough for it to not spread around in all direction but enough for it to break down.
After that, Karelos would scoop it up with his hands and set it to the side, a little farther this time, so if the pile did overflow, it would only spread on the grass.
"You're a natural at this." Karelos stated the obvious as he scooped back up all the dirt that had previously fallen into the hole.
"Pure humans will never get how cool it is to have animalistic features." Hyde diligently evened out his side of the hole.
By now the hole was about the 4th of a meter deep, mostly due to Karelos's initial ineptitude at digging, although he was getting gradually better at it.
"This is my first time digging a hole with my hands." He admitted, giving a small laugh.
"I can see it. In my town, we got shovels, but they're made of flimsy wood, a wrong move and they break down into splinters."
Xena watched from the distance, her hands uncovered, she had given her gloves to Karelos. Although digging a hole would've not been too hard for her, she would've made the process slower.
"Should we make her a gravestone?" She suggested, glancing at a boulder in the distance, which had sparked up the idea in her mind.
"Won't that take a long time?" Karelos asked, his digging stopped as he focused on Xena, standing a couple meters away.
"I got an idea..."
Xena walked into the depths of the forest, Karelos hesitated before trying to stop her from getting herself into danger, but Hyde grabbed him by the wrist, staring into his eyes with his mismatched ones that said nothing but everything at once.
Her gaze lingered on a half-buried slab of stone near the roots of a fallen tree. An edge was jagged and its surface was uneven, but it was good enough.
One hand wouldn't be enough to carry that around, but she gave it a try, giving up before she pulled a muscle too hard. She tried dead-lifting it, the slab raised from the ground slowly.
Xena carefully set the slab onto her back, the weight imbalance almost made her trip, the momentary panic made the slab fall back onto the floor.
"Well that won't work..." She muttered below her breath.
She slid one hand then another below the slab, setting it onto her forearms, lightly pressed against her chest.
Keeping it close to her chest reduced the strain, and keeping the elbows slightly tucked in increased her stability.
With slow, careful steps she set on her path back to the grave-site. With every step she took, her pace and confidence increased, by the halfway mark, she was walking at her natural pace as if the slab wasn't there at all.
When she reached the grave, she set down the slab. "Found our gravestone."
In the meantime, Karelos and Hyde had dug out most of the meter, only a couple centimeters remained.
Karelos's jaw fell as he saw his sister carrying around a large stone slab like it was nothing. Hyde rolled his eyes when Karelos stopped his digging for a second.
"I got a new problem, It wouldn't look good if we left it blank."
"I agree with her." Hyde spoke out as he continued his digging.
"But we don't have anything to carve with."
Xena scanned the ground and surroundings, looking for any shapes and edges. She picked up a rock before quickly discarding it.
Ones were too dull, others too brittle. Until she found the perfect rock. A smaller one with a narrow end. Not the sharp you'd expect out of something such as a blade, but it served a purpose.
"This will do." She said, looking back at the digging duo.
"But its just a rock."
Xena reached out for a second stone, a larger, denser one. She held both up briefly. "Chisel and hammer."
Hyde gave a small nod, Karelos didn't argue again.
Once the grave was all dug out, Hyde gently cradled A'cci into his arms before aligning himself and throwing A'cci to the bottom of the grave.
She fell in an almost perfect position, her arms neatly folded over her chest, her legs straight, her face as if she was just deep in slumber.
I'll be forever grateful with yesterday's me for puncturing a hole in her heart. A quick death that couldn't be noticed if you didn't remove her clothes.
Hyde threw his large pile of dirt on A'cci's grave, Karelos followed, he took a longer moment since his was more spread out.
Karelos and Xena used the flatness of their boots' soles to even out the grave's soil. Now it was time for the gravestone.
Karelos picked the stone slab up, setting it down at the head of the grave, landing with a dull thud.
Hyde stepped up to the slab and positioned the pointed stone against its surface. He hesitated for a moment. If he wrote in Kortarian, he wouldn't be paying his defunct A'cci the respect she deserves.
But writing in Geortarian was a death sentence.
Only the elites, the rich, the royalty, only they know how to write and read efficiently. He would be selling himself out the moment the chisel touched the slab.
Hyde set the point against the stone. I'll settle with Geortarian, however. Hyde only did the bare minimum for the strokes to count as such.
They were more akin to dots and marks. If you overlaid the correct writing for A'cci's name, the beggining of each stroke would perfectly match up.
He matched the bare bones of the writing. Geortarian writing was so complex because it didn't match up with the actual phonetic language.
Overlapping strokes, squares and angles that didn't match to anything in the actual word, but they hid a conceptual meaning.
If I do the long line like 3 points... It preserved the meaning of 'blessed', but it couldn't be transcribed to anything.
"It doesn't look like Kortarian..." Xena muttered under her breath, just enough for Karelos, who was standing beside her to listen.
"Does it look like anything else?" He curiously asked.
Xena remained silent, she had studied several language in her years, this vaguely reminded her of an indigenous Galyscian language that developed its own writing system. But it couldn't be it, they were so far away.
Hyde finished up the name, the numbers were simple as all countries adopted the same counting glyphs hundreds of years ago.
1320 - 1352
- - -
The three stood at the edge of what had been done, the freshly turned earth was darker than the grass and moss around it. They prayed at the same time without anyone suggesting it. Their heads were lowered, their eyes closed and hands loosely clasped.
Karelos and Xena prayed for the fact of A'cci since they hadn't personally known her, when they opened their eyes, Nopuozhr was still praying. They didn't say anything, they understood that the person that was now a meter below them had once been Nopuozhr's best friend.
- - -
Karelos and Nopuozhr were dusting their palms against each other in clean strokes. Xena brushed some remaining moss off her knees.
"So, about the thing, that you've never seen the beach before..."
Nopuozhr looked at Karelos.
"I said we'd go after all this was done. The offer still stands, we can take you to the capital, the Kortarian gulf has some of the nicest waters in the continent, y'know?"
Nopuozhr reflected on the offer for a moment. He looked down at the grave before looking back at Karelos. "I appreciate the offer. But I can't. I need to be back in Xuarron before it gets too late. They'll be wondering where I am."
"Ah, I see... Well, the beach will always be there."
"Another time." Xena suggested, noticing the expression in Karelos's face that indicated he was about to keep on pushing.
Karelos agreed. Nopuozhr turned to Karelos and extended his hand. Karelos took it, giving a firm handshake.
"I need to thank you both for making this burial much more memorable." Hyde admitted. He turned to Xena and she shook his hand before he'd fully offered it.
"Its no problem, really. We wish you safe travels on your way to Xuarron."
Hyde gave a small, genuine smile as he turned toward the tree line. He took three steps when Xena spoke out.
"Nopuozhr."
He stopped, not turning around immediately.
"Do you know anything..." she shaid, keeping her voice even. Hyde turned to face her. "Do you know anything about the Geortarian massacre?"
The triangle that had formed between the three was extremely quiet now. Only the faint breeze could be heard as the wind rivers moved around them.
Hyde's cloak gently swayed along with the breeze. Xena's hair locks flowed slowly like if they followed a river. Karelos stood still, focused on Hyde.
This was once a nice afternoon.