Even on Daedalus, the storms seemed somehow more ominous. The Calamitous Hollow drew ever closer, its looming presence a threat to everything Daedalus had and everything he had built.
his world was recovering. He'd begin to see the return of plants and animals that had been rare even in the planet's last days before Chaos, and he swore he'd seen one of the tiny, secretive miniature dragons that had been extinct before he was even born. His world was alive again, more alive than it had been when a tiny fraction of the populace decided to trade its future to line their pockets, at the expense of everyone else.
It was incomplete, of course. It felt especially so as he walked across the south bridge they'd had to fight their way across when he came to eliminate the Chaos that poisoned his world, onto that island that should have been full of laughing picnickers and running children. It should have been a place of joy, but now it and the shores of the lake were a graveyard, one he had dug with his own hands. He didn't have the capability to truly give them proper rites; didn't have the hands to build the stone crypts his people usually used. So burial it was.
He'd worked for much of the day, now, digging graves for the last few bodies. It was the kind of project that felt good, hard work upon hard work, a last bit of honor given to the world and the people he loved before he went off to fight a monster that might bring about the end of everything.
He might not walk away from the battle to come, even if they won. That was something he had accepted. But that meant it felt even more imperative for him to do this, to lay his people to rest before the end.
There was one last open grave. He had almost finished all of them, but in his arms, he carried the last complete set of bones he'd fished out of the water, and waiting in the center of the island was the hole he had dug for them.
He wished he knew who these people were, whose bodies he was burying. He wished he could make a list of the dead and memorialize them properly, but there simply was no way to do it. Not with so many bodies, not when they'd all died after he was lain in his own tomb.
So what he had would have to do.
Carefully, he laid the last skeleton in the dirt, and began filling over it. soon it was one last mound, in the center of the island, and Daedalus felt a sense of warm relief.
He had done it.
There was a little side project he had been working on, with some of the scraps that were unsuited for the satellites. something to do in between them so he didn't hit fatigue from working on the same thing over and over. And something with which to say goodbye.
From his subspace, he produced a little articulated statue. A brass dragon, with moveable joints and mechanical parts, but designed to sit in one place. It was small, hardly a grave marker of renown, but it was still something he had made with his own hands, and sweat, and care. Carved carefully onto the little statue's underbelly were the words "For all the nameless lost," in the intricate runic script of his homeworld.
He set it atop the mound, and his little wisp companion floated over to bump its glowing form into it, a sort of affectionate gesture as if it, too, were saying a funerary sort of goodbye.
Daedalus reached into the pocket of his jacket. There was one last thing he wanted to do.
A few weeks before, on a different visit to his world, he'd found the strange little cloth bundle lying unattended in a house. and he'd felt, in his bones, that he needed it. That it was, for some unaccountable reason, deeply important.
And now, he had a feeling as to why. He carefully scooped aside a little of the grave dirt, and set the pouch in it, then buried it.
And once it was planted, there was a burst of flowers.
They looked like little pinwheels, growing in blue and purple, and they spread to a three-foot circle over the grave, under the little marker statuette.
Another bright spot of life on his world.
And somewhere inside him, Daedalus felt his homeworld reach for him, and something in him sang, a tune of connection and peace.
He and his world were one.
