No More After Me

On nights when the skies were clear and the surf was calm, the oldest member of the village sometimes descended from her home atop the green hills to the beach down below. Gingerly, with some difficulty, she worked her old bones down the slope and padded across the soft sand, with the salt breeze flowing through her mane. Most nights her little ever-present companion, Bird, would join her, perched upon her antler as its chosen roost in leu of the branch most birds would choose. She joked that its feet had perhaps never touched the ground since the day she picked it up, so tightly did it cling to her. She had raised it from its adolescence, finding it scared and alone when it was lost from its own family in a harsh storm with broken wings. Cared for the woodcrafter's gentle touch and so disconnected from those nature intended it live among, it grew to love her and the strange new life it found with her in the village became its normal. Though now it could again fly free and return to its kind, it chose to stay. She could relate well to the bird's circumstance as a woodcrafter among gravediggers. But Bird had the choice to go "home", and chose to stay, whereas she was without choice. For she was the last woodcrafter among the gravediggers. An unwitting final act.

The water lapped gently against sand and stone alongside her, lit up bright blue by bioluminescent plankton and appearing to ebb and flow with a life of its own. She didn't know why the sea put on its mesmerizing display on these nights, what caused it to dance and flicker on a dark night like cold fire, casting her under its spell. She didn't know why so many things happened the way they did. The world was a big place, full of secrets. In some ways she liked that; there was always something new to find.

Some things she knew all too well. She knew all too well why the woodcrafters would soon be a memory lost in the wind. She thought often about what could have been had things gone other ways. But she didn't wonder why they didn't. Maybe before the migration, in the old land, but not now. This world didn't give anyone reasons for what it gave you. All she, and anyone, could do was go with the flow, wherever the tide brought you like seaweed in the surf.

Sometimes the surf was calm, like tonight, lapping the shore like Bird's little beak lovingly nuzzled and preened the hair on her head until it was perfectly groomed. Life could be sweet and gentle and beautiful.

But sometimes the sea was angry, throwing itself against the sea cliffs like a snared thorngrazer, threatening to rip away the hills and drag them deep into its depths. Life was unpredictable and difficult. From the first breath to the last, challenges await all on this mortal plain, the experience of life. It's never easy, and it's much more about luck than skill, the last one decided. For she was nobody notable in her old life at all. So many more capable, more trained, and in better health failed before her. She did not feel she did anything to deserve such a long life, or the simultaneously noble, yet lonesome position as the very last of so many. It was just chance, the throw of the dice, the choice of a world too complicated to ever understand in one lifetime that she, of all the woodcrafters, was the endling.

It wasn't something to celebrate or to despair over to her. It just was. She had made choices, some good and some bad, to get to where she was now. The past was gone. The flow had taken her here, and so here she was. Anything else was just silly, child-like imagining games. But in her old age, she let herself fall into them more than she would have before. She felt she deserved it. She dreamt about the children she never bore and imagining futures that could never be. She recalled fond memories before she was the last, picturing the faces of others whose stories ended sooner. But she didn't dwell on it too much. Just short visits into her mind. When she awoke from a waking dream, she'd find herself again at the sea shore. Cool night air blowing onto the hills, gravediggers talking in metallic chatter around firelight on the hills by the mound-houses. The eerie cry of a shadowskimmer off the coast. Bird sitting on her arm all the while, its intelligent eyes staring down into hers as if straight into her soul. This was her strange but beautiful reality, more incredible than anything she conjured within her minds' eye.

She knew her story would too end, and didn't fear it. As far as she felt, she would have died long ago had she not been taken to this special place. Each day since the migration was now a blessing that could not be counted on. None before her had lived this many cycles, at least not for generations.

The last woodcrafter accepted her role as the involuntary terminal of a once incredible people with as much fuss as she accepted everything else the world had given her - with passive acknowledgement. Everything was what it was. After a while walking along the beach, she began to feel the chill and turned to head back up the hills to her home for the night. She cooed sweet, loving nothings to Bird, baby-talk that transcends species line, and the sparrowgull jumped down onto her head and nuzzled against her forehead.

"I love you.", the bird spoke to her as they walked back home, miming words she had spoken to it many times. It probably did not understand their exact meaning. But it understood the connotation. It was what you said to someone you cared for.

"I love you too, Bird.", she responded just as she would to a child, and the bird imitated her laughter, causing her to laugh too. The world didn't let the last woodcrafter have children. But at least it let her have Bird.