(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

like a woman returning courtship. And more than once, Soego noticed,
those eyes seemed to fall on him more than on others.
"The True Death is peace. It is liberation from your suffering. It is the final
restful sleep after a lifetime of toil. Passions are the anchor that keep you
locked in this pointless cycle of rebirth, good people. If you only release
them, you can know freedom."
"Aye? And what 'passions' might ye have sacrificed?" A satyr asked, his
words slurred with drink and hot with lust.
When the laughter quieted down (and it always did, quickly, when Seladril
smiled), the odd lecturer answered, "Well. If you goodfolk must know...
before I first accepted the robes of an Initiate, I was quite fond of roses."
The smile she held was meant for Soego, and him alone.
And once again, Soego blushed.
~~~~~
While interest in the bright young woman waxed and waned with the crowd
over the weeks, Soego was one of the few that sat on the bench every week
to listen to Seladril's lectures. While he had yet to be convinced of Dustman
philosophy, he was one of those faithful to Seladril, at least.
And when he was 17, Soego took the title of Namer.
One of twelve Namers that Seladril had gathered that year (an astronomical
number, by Dustman standards), Soego found himself grumbling with the
others over mundane tasks and sitting through lessons on the five arts of
embalming (and their many variants) and the stages of decay. Being
continually quizzed and tested and beaten with a stick by a maggot-haired
old crone was not the best way to spend one's youth. But still, like the other
Namers he studied and fetched and worked with, to see Seladril glance at
them with those deep blue eyes from down the hall was enough.
Each time those eyes twinkled in the distance was like the first time he had
seen a portal open to the Blessed Fields, Elysium. A wind sweet with
meadow-scent had caressed the long-stemmed grasses that bent in
reverence under an azure sky, all framed in the silvered borders of the
portal itself. It took all he had not to leap through and follow the travelers to
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