Isole visited Rowe's grave before anyone else woke.
She told no one she was leaving.
Practical, she decided.
Fewer people meant fewer questions. Fewer questions meant fewer things she would have to translate before she understood what she was trying to say herself.
The burial place was easy to miss.
No carved stone.
No name.
No marker rising above the grass.
Only earth disturbed two mornings earlier, beneath which lay the severed end of Rowe's cord.
That was the custom.
The part that carried his provings had returned to Torvin's archive.
The ending had gone into the ground with him.
Isole understood the reasoning.
She still wished there were something taller.
Something visible from the path.
Something that announced, plainly enough for even a stranger to understand:
Someone had been here.
A life had occupied this piece of the world.
She lowered herself into the grass.
