![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
notthislife posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sticksandbones[The mood in the Grove has shifted. How could it not, when bodies of their own had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Verso hadn't known either of the men, but it was clear that many had. Their grief is... difficult to stomach, leaves him feeling unpleasantly itchy and irritable.
Drinking doesn't help it. Neither does ignoring it. The grief permeates everything, until his ability to resist is worn away and he finds himself rambling away in his journal. Growing up, this had helped him. Maybe there would be some wisdom to be found for the citizens of the grove.]
You wanted to know more about the Gestrals, didn't you? You being the general Grove and not anyone in particular.
In addition to being broom-headed menaces, and pseudo-experts in engineering, they really seem to have it right.
They don't fear death. When they're lost, they enter what they call the queue. It's... a line to get into the "sacred river." Once they're bathed in those waters, they come back. They aren't always the same, children might become parents to their forebears, and so on. But they still come back.
And that's how it goes.
They play their games. Fight their fights. And when it's time to go, they go.
I never understood why we grappled so angrily with the concept of death. Why we let grief and loss change us so deeply, or do things we might regret. It's another journey. A trip down the river. And the comfort that you will find another again one day
