The last of the voices that haunted him belonged to his aunt, forgotten by the town and replaced with an image of pity.

"Get up, Mr. Lutton - I think they're ready to burn your aunt!" Iyan blinked and coughed, the smell of smoke filling his lungs. Was somebody dying? It smelled of overripe fruit and incense, and a copious amount of fire. Perhaps a house had caught alight.

"Who's being burned?" he asked groggily, not sure where he stood so shakily, or who it was that spoke to him in such strange tones.

"Mr. Lutton, open your eyes!" A gentle smack on his cheek woke him up fully, and he stared into the unfamiliar eyes of a rather pretty young woman. Her own pale-brown irises stared back, half-amused. "Your aunt, they're burning your aunt. You're at a funeral!" She turned her head for a moment, taken with the shouting and exclaiming. Iyan himself did not know if they had allowed a fire to go uncontested, or if they were in good cheer. The expression of the woman when she returned her gaze confirmed the latter. She wore a look of half-interested amusement. It was a confusing look, and gave Iyan pause. Was she used to worse displays of excitability?

To his great surprise, she hit him just a little harder, and smacked some of his memory back in place.

"There you are!" She grinned and bared her strange teeth. They stole Iyan's attention for a hypnotic moment, before Kairie cleared her throat. "Come, poor boy, and let us taste some the food these good people have brought." Stumbling after her, Iyan felt the panic of the funeral nestling into his bones. There were far too many people here, all with their own set of loud sounds and cries. It was impossible to tell if they were being killed or not, so great were the ecstatic cries of the mourners. If he were a ghost, Iyan decided as Kairie pulled him to a table laden with glasses and local fare, he would hate to see the sight that played out in the cemetery of Kenton Abbey.

"They don't even know her," he whispered, not meaning to be heard. Kairie leaned forward and raised a glass of wine in the air.

"Didn't know her. Why do you say so?" Iyan swallowed the lump in his throat at her correction, still terribly unused to the lack of Myra Lutton's life in the world.

"I know so," he replied, taking a sip when Kairie offered the glass to his lips, "because she hardly ever left the house. Who are they? Where were they, in her life?"

"Is this not an apology, then?"

"Apology? If they really were sorry, they should shut up so."

"At least your aunt's having gone and died could provide some warmth and food to these clearly starved people."

"They're only here for the food," remarked Iyan bitterly, and he downed the rest of the wine. "That's all funerals are here, Miss Felling. Drinking in excess, and a fondness for pyromania."

"Isn't there a purpose to your lighting of the dead?"

"It's rather ridiculous, is what it is," he answered with a sardonic laugh. "Would you believe it, that we think the smell of our feasting and burning will convince one of our gods to return to us?"

"I believe that very much," came Kairie's amused reply. She gazed at the roving crowd with impartial eyes. "It is of course, not the most ridiculous thing I've heard of your gods, but I'll admit, it's rather romantic." As they drank more wine, bodies came bustling between them, and Iyan found himself apart from Kairie for a few minutes. Concerned for her safety amongst the wild mourners, he called out to her, but heard nothing in response. Jeering and crooked singing, the bellowing of one too many out-of-tune songs, cups thrown against the surrounding walls of the cemetery - they all filled Iyan with a sense of encroaching dread, as though he was a rat doomed to the trap.

Pushing his way through the crowd, Iyan clutched his empty glass to his chest, taking in any breaths that were kind enough to fill his lungs. The very air felt thick, burdened with the weight of smoke, alcohol, and noise. I'm going to die on the very pyre of Aunt Myra. He swallowed hard and called out for Kairie again.

"Miss Felling? Miss Felling, please, I hope you haven't been trampled underfoot!" He began to ramble, unsure if anybody could hear him anyway. "It would be a shame, I suspect, if you were injured beneath these feet! We should have to throw you on the flame, as well. Your hair is far too pretty, too red; I'm sure somebody would suspect it was already aflame. Miss Felling, please!" Collapsing against a wall, he clutched his heart and squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, how he hated gatherings! How he hated funerals, the dead, the living, all of it!

Kairie appeared before him with a fresh glass of wine, as silently as she had gone.

"Why ever are you crying, Mr. Lutton?" She traded glasses with him and pulled his arm into hers. Pulling him away from the wall, she brought him to the dark doors of Kenton Abbey, and seated him in front of the peeling structures. It was quite impressive, he found himself thinking as he numbly crumpled under Kairie's direction, how such disarray and rot could have come unto a building in so short a time as the abbey had been unoccupied. Had Aunt Myra known the inhabitants, before death swallowed them whole? There was no way of being sure - Myra was gone, crackling in a charred pile some hundred feet away.

"There's so much noise," he whispered in response. He pressed his mouth to the glass and quaffed it all in one swallow. "Selfish, burdensome noise."

"They're here for your gods, Mr. Lutton. How is that selfish?"

"The Silent One will not be persuaded to return to us, not with this cacophony." Iyan gestured angrily ahead. "Would you believe the product of betrayal was worth it at last, if this was how the product behaved?"

"I have never been a god, Mr. Lutton," laughed Kairie, "but I do not think I would be bothered by something so simple as a funeral."

With Kairie back in his company, the rest of the night passed with relative ease, considering the headache of hearing so many people shriek to the sky. As the sun began to crawl back over the horizon, the mourners slowly returned home, leaving behind a mess of broken glasses, lost shoes, and the occasional sleeping person in their wake. A priest wandered around the grave sites (which were used exclusively to mark who had died, and not house any bodies), creaking gently over the garbage as one of his apprentices tended to the fire.

"How do they get it to last so long?" asked Kairie of the flames, which had lasted all throughout the night.

"I'm not sure," said Iyan as he rubbed his eyes. "Perhaps the priests have a bit of magic of their own." They watched the trash gradually disappear, until the large, weary frame of Uncle Hans came into view. He had not, by the looks of him, been permitted to sleep. Standing in front of the abbey steps, he regarded Kairie suspiciously, before turning to his nephew.

"There's been issue on the roads," he began, grinding his knuckles into his forehead, "so the office won't be open for a few days. Go home, rest. I'll not need you back for a few days."

"The roads," Iyan interrupted, furrowing his own brow. "What's wrong with the roads?"

"I don't know!" Uncle Hans snapped, before waving impatiently at Iyan. "Some obstruction; the rain or some such has been hampering travel for days, and we won't be able to mail anything until it's fixed."

This was bad news indeed. As often as Iyan and his uncle worked, money was hardly in easy command. Even an extra day out of business would hurt for weeks to come. How would he be able to rest, with the knowledge that this funeral would be the last of the sympathy his dwindling family would be afforded henceforth?

"I understand," he conceded quietly, if only to let his uncle continue on. Luckily, the widower made his way back home, and Iyan was left to stare hollowly at Kairie.

"This isn't all that bad," she said, smiling despite the emptiness Iyan felt.

"No?" He stood and rolled his head, cracking his neck in several places. The release felt good, and he wobbled to the exit of the cemetery, taking care not to look at the now-smouldering embers of his aunt. Kairie bounced after him, her feet making nearly silent thuds on the dirt.

"You can come with me!" She whirled to a stop in front of him, holding a glass that had survived the night. Her fingernails were painted a dark green, a colour Iyan had not noticed before. Where had she time time to colour them, seated by Iyan all night? They didn't matter, anyhow. Iyan wasn't sure why they captivated his attention so, but he forced himself to look up into Kairie's brown eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Home, silly. I am not staying in your country forever, but I wouldn't mind at all if you came with me." He blinked emptily at her. Home was here, in Tottenham Cross. The idea of there being anything else was always foreign to Iyan, always an amusing notion that would never need to be explored. He wasn't responsible for delivering any of the mail that he organised and sorted - at the end of the day, it seemed to him a peculiar thing, to travel away from home.

"I... I can't do that," he nervously laughed, turning around and frowning. Leave? It was indeed impossible! "I don't even know where you live!" This elicited a snort from his companion, who crept up behind him and draped her arms over his shoulders. Tinkling against her rings and her nails, the glass came close to hitting Iyan in the face, and the sensation of having his nose brushed caused him to flutter his eyelashes.

"How silly," giggled Kairie, and she gave him a quick squeeze of her arms before she released him. "I live at home!"

The topic was eagerly discussed as Iyan walked in the general direction of his house. Kairie explained that her trip to Saint Ivry would be ending within the week, a fact that filled Iyan with a great deal of sorrow even as he heard her tell of it. What would he do, if left once more by somebody he had grown to care for? Would his heart give up if abandoned to the company of only his uncle?

Kairie proposed something very simple to end this pain of his, and that was to bring him along, regardless for how short a time, to her country of Catrodea. "I promise, it has all of that precious life in its soil which your country lacks!" She apologised for the bluntness of this exclamation, assuring Iyan that Saint Ivry was still beautiful in its own way. "It is just so... dreary! I feel as though I walk about in a book of grim plots and skeletons that inhabit cities." The description made Iyan laugh, at the very least, and calmed his panic down somewhat.

"Not quite skeletons," he said, growing sober and shaking off the sensation of rain from his skin. "We have ghosts, I'm afraid."

"None of that!" Kairie whirled to a stop in front of him and pressed him against the bashful trunk of a nearby tree. "I promise you, Iyan Lutton; we have no such monsters in Catrodea!" The sound of the word on her lips was fascinating, exotic even, and Iyan was transfixed by the impression of the letters in her mouth.

As they kissed again, a passionate and sorrowful one that seemed to summon the emotions of the last few days, Iyan had the distinct feeling that somebody was nearby. He couldn't very well move (nor was he terribly inclined to, with Kairie so attentive to him), but the feeling grew stronger until he could take it no longer without making some sound to express his discomfort.

Just as he pulled his head free and gasped for air, the voice entered his head, the voice from the night his aunt had died. It was deep and strange, and familiar in a way that Iyan could not place.

The dead are remembered, Iyan, but so are the living. Go where you shall not be forgotten.

Shrieking, he whirled his head around and stared hard behind him. His breaths came in uneven shudders, until Kairie reached her hand up and pulled his face back to look at hers.

"Listen," she whispered, her lips still red and wet. "Listen, Mr. Lutton, and do not let these people erase you." Had she heard the voice as well? Why was she not scared? A heartbeat choked his breathing, and he was able to at least stop hyperventilating.

"What awaits us, Miss Felling?"

"Everything that is not here!" She smiled and caressed his cheek. "Everything that you were meant to be. Come, Iyan, come home with me."

There was no other answer than yes. With one last kiss, Kairie bade him good day, and left Iyan pondering how best to explain his departure to Uncle Hans.