Work Text:
Stitch by stitch, the needle found its way through skin and flesh, reuniting what belonged together: feet to legs, legs to hips and fingers to hands -Arkay grant him strength! Such tiny hands!- Hands so tiny should not belong on his dissecting bench, but yet, there they lay, stiff and cold.
His eyes were burning like the candles lending their dim light to his macabre workshop. For hours he had been working, trying his best to fix this shattered vessel of cracked bones and torn tissue, to restore some semblance of life to the little girl.
Some semblance, for what it was worth.
He had run outside when he heard the screams, had seen the carnage the farmhand, the werewolf -that brute beast!- had left behind. Barely recognisable, but still, he had to try - for her parents' sake.
Forever he would remember the anguish in their faces. Mathies and Indara Caerellia. Those poor folks robbed of their little sunshine, their pride and joy - their future. He had come to know them well through their grief. The sorrow in their hearts, profound and unimaginable, had become his own, a grim spectre that had joined countless gruesome memories of horror and death.
How many futures had he himself stolen away? How many pasts erased?
Those questions would haunt him until the end, but for now, he pushed them to the back of his mind, chaining them. His task needed focus.
They would inevitably break free again.
From a shelf beside him, he took a piece of cloth, dipped it in a bowl of warm, scented water and proceeded to wash away the remaining blood until her tiny body was as speckless as the pristinely white sheets wrapped around it soon after.
Withered but kind fingers gently combed the last clots of blood from her hair. Their owner was mumbling a prayer, Arkay's blessing. In life, a soothing gesture. A solemn one, in death.
Almost finished.
Almost.
At last, he picked up a skillfully woven wreath of blue mountain flowers and white lilies -handpicked from around lake Ilinata early on this mournful morning-, and carefully placed it on the little girl's head. A funeral procedure he dreaded more than any other - one for a dead child.
A child. Now she looked the part again - if still too pale. Too pale. Oh, so awfully, awfully pale. He opened his cabinet and produced from it a jar of red snowberry paste. Then, with utmost care, he applied a thin layer to her cheeks, a faint rosy blush to finally complete the illusion of life.
An illusion but solace nevertheless. Now, Mathies and Indara could see her like they did when they said good night. This time, for all eternity.
Runil closed his tired eyes and sighed.
"Goodbye, Lavinia."
The work of a priest of Arkay was not easy.
Repentance never was.