Volcanic Orc Name Generator

The story

I had written sunset on the lid of the packing box, as if the word would keep the sun from setting before we were ready. Beneath it I listed the cloth, the little urn, the food, and the lamp. My brother Irg added socks. I crossed them out because he was wearing socks already. He put a second pair into his bag without argument. It was the first sensible thing either of us did that morning, and I did not appreciate it.

Mother had spoken of the western terrace during the last spring she was able to walk there. I remembered the light over the dark slopes and the way she never sat on the bench because she said sitting would make her notice the climb home. After her death, I chose the anniversary for taking her ashes back. We had not managed the visit in summer. I had been working in another district when she died. There are facts that remain facts while becoming, in a person’s private arithmetic, an endless accumulating debt. I thought an exact date might stop the counting.

Irg had agreed to travel with me and, if necessary, stay one extra night. He began a paid season at the lower mill two days later. I told everyone that I understood this. I said it with the generosity of somebody certain that understanding would not actually require letting him leave. On the road I rehearsed the few sentences I would say before opening the urn. They sounded foolish aloud, so I practiced them silently. The words became smoother and less like anything I had ever said to Mother.

At the terrace shelter, ash lay along the window edges in soft gray ridges. The route keeper had not confirmed the upper path for visitors. Ordinary trips now required preparation the two of us had not arranged. I pointed to a pale interval over the slopes. The keeper said an interval we could see from a window did not tell us the state of a path we could not see. He did not speak unkindly. I disliked him immediately for giving an answer that contained no place to put the importance of our errand.

Other people were waiting. A traveler kept counting a row of boxes and losing count when anyone spoke. Two cousins argued about whose blankets had become damp. A young mason was trying to send word that he would miss a paid day. I wanted them all to recognize that our delay was different. Then I looked at the small plain urn in my lap and felt ashamed of wanting an audience for it. Irg asked whether I would like tea. I said we had not come all this way to drink tea. He put the kettle on anyway, and I drank what he gave me.

He had brought Mother’s note. I knew it well enough to resent seeing the paper. If you decide on the terrace, when you are ready, she had written. Under that she reminded us where the spare house key lived. Irg laid the note beside my carefully packed cloth. “She didn’t give us today,” he said. I told him a year was long enough. He asked long enough for what. I had prepared an answer to bad weather, late travelers, and a brother’s inconvenient employment. I had not prepared an answer to that particular question.

By afternoon I began saying we could wait several days. Irg said he could not. The mill had held a place for him, and he had promised to be there. I heard myself telling him that Mother had held places for us too. He looked away, and for a moment I was pleased that the sentence had struck where I aimed. Then I saw his spare socks drying beside the kettle. He had expected a difficult journey and brought what might help. I had expected the world to cooperate because the date frightened me. “You already agreed to tomorrow,” I said. “I’m trying to make that become something else.”

Before evening I set up the memorial cloth as a screen beside the entrance. It gave the urn a small privacy and made me feel less foolish about practicing the words. It also narrowed the passage from the landing. A porter arrived with two packs and had to turn sideways. Our people’s Waykeeping duty did not stop applying because a person was grieving. I rolled the screen away. The porter thanked me and asked where he should leave the second pack. He did not ask who was in the urn. I discovered I was grateful for his completely different concern.

The shelter divided the watches so everyone could rest. I took the entrance station, the least comfortable place, because I had asked others to follow my arrangements all day. Endurance meant taking that turn, not staying awake until nobody could tell fatigue from devotion. Irg would relieve me at the named hour. I had wanted to sit warm beside the urn in a private vigil. Instead I watched arrivals, kept the opening clear, and listened to a loose edge of fabric tap the frame. My rehearsed sentences slipped out of order. I let them.

Sunset happened somewhere beyond the ash. No sign announced it for me. I knew roughly when the light in the shelter changed, but not the exact moment I had written on the box. The urn remained closed and full. At relief, Irg brought the dry spare socks and took the place I left. I went inside, put the urn beside my bed, and slept. I did not dream of Mother giving permission. I did not dream of anything I remembered. In the morning, this absence felt neither like punishment nor like proof. It was simply another morning.

The confirmed lower route opened for our return. It did not mean the terrace had been confirmed too. We packed the same weight we had carried up. At home, I almost put the urn in the cupboard where unfinished work went to stop being visible. Instead I placed it beside an ordinary picture of Mother squinting at a market sign. Irg left for the mill with both pairs of socks. I crossed sunset off the box, not because the day no longer mattered but because it had passed. Under it I wrote Cinder-Stay, the interrupted journey and the watch I actually kept. The terrace remained a place we might visit. I could not yet say when.