*
The funeral, or kuenmah, as the ritual was called in Kolean, was starting, and the December’s crew made it just in time. Vandoraa got several looks from the Koleans in attendance but no one said anything.
Since it was being performed on a spaceship instead of one of the huge temples on Kolea, the effect was sort of mitigated. Nonetheless, the service was beautiful. Juiya’s body had been burnt to ashes ahead of time, so his ashes could be sprinkled throughout the stars at the conclusion of the second ceremony on Kolea. With their current technology, the Koleans actually could shoot themselves into the sky. Before they’d achieved space travel, they had simply burned the bodies, hoping their life force would return to the earth and start the cycle of life anew. As the kuenmah started, people in the military who had known Juiya gave small speeches, singing, sometimes literally, the young officer praises.
After about half an hour of speeches it was time for the lithuli. Trell had described the procedure ahead of time so Ted would have something to write down and give. The lithuli was the time in the ceremony where everyone in attendance would come up and place a message they wanted the deceased to receive. The messages could be anything from a simple compliment to something the giver had been unable to tell the deceased when he or she was alive. The lithuli messages would be burnt as well, and released into space with Juiya’s body. Ted’s message had been simple. He told Juiya that they had succeeded, thanked him, and wished him peace. He didn’t know what Trell, Alana, or Vandoraa had written. The notes were meant to be private between the giver and the deceased.
“I think she’s let go of her hatred now that the Drevi have been defeated, at least some of it,” Trell confided to Ted as Alana stepped up to give her message.
“What makes you think so?” Ted whispered back.
“The color of the paper on which she wrote her lithuli note. That shade of purple signifies the subject of the note is an apology.”
Ted watched Alana place the note in the basket and mutter a few gentle words to the deceased Juiya before returning to her place.
After the lithuli came the huji, where several Koleans filled the room with a powerful scented fragrance, supposedly to connect the spirit of the deceased person to the spirits of the people who had been kind enough to show up at his kuenmah. Ted struggled not to cough and when they came by he almost fainted. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life, but he managed to keep it together.
After the huji the ceremony was over, and the attendees began to file orderly out of the room. Some of them had more kuenmahs to go to that day. Ted didn’t envy them.
Silently the crew of the December returned to the shuttle they’d used to attend the kuenmah. And there, in Shuttle C, Trell began to speak.
“Life goes on,” Trell began, his eyes firmly focused on those of his To-Be. “Things change, but I think we are destined to love forever. Alana, I would like to propose the fiftieth day of the time of Olan as the day we are Bonded.”
Alana did not cry as many brides and grooms did when such moments came upon them. She simply took Trell’s hand in her own and said, “That sounds like a good day to me.”
Ted watched them, almost crying himself with the emotional weight of a funeral and a proposal in the same afternoon. Indeed, even on the dawn of the day following a terrible tragedy, life did indeed go on. It had to.
December Page 53
