In all the years Peregrine spent working and living, he had learned that sad days dawned eventually. His friends had only a few years to spend on him. Ferrin were a people full of life but they weren't spirits, nor gods; Peregrine had the same long portion of time as any korvi but he couldn't hold back fate.

   He laid a last cornstalk on the funeral pyre. Kelria would leave this land on a blaze fit to warm the fire god. Under berry-bright paint, her bundle looked smaller than even a ferrin ought to – because Peregrine thought about the eighteen bursting years Kelria had sat on his shoulder. A friend's presence couldn't fit into any wrapped bundle.
   Tillian sat in earferrin position now, on Peregrine's shoulder, shifting her silk-furred weight and curling her tail close around her. It was good of her to oblige an old mining korvi at a time like this, while watching her mother depart.
   “She was–” Peregrine stopped and swallowed careful. He bolstered his voice so his clan might hear him. “She was everything we could have asked for. Even if we might not've thought to ask.”
   Silence held the plains that evening. If Peregrine's mate or children spoke, he couldn't hear them and Tillian said nothing about it. Wind pulled at his quill feathers; he yanked his wings closer to his back, out of the wind's insistent way.
   He shook his head. He had nothing more to say, only sour regret in his belly and a daughter-friend perched on his shoulder. The sight of Kelria passed behind his eyes, a middle-aged Kelria seated in the grass outside the mine, lacing a basket together. She made such tight, sure basket weave, tied off double for luck. She might have been a weaver and made a trade for herself, if she hadn't been an earferrin.
   Touch rested on Peregrine's back, gentle as straw. Giala stood at his side, smiling wan and offering the murmuring words he couldn't. Peregrine could guess the majority of what she said; grief formed the same flowing shape whenever his dear partner spoke at a pyre. He still wished he could hear the details, the sounds folding off her tongue: he touched Tillian's foot and she repeated in high, clear voice:
   “In this life, we all loved Kelria Kellen, call her Kelria, and held her dear as anything. Her service was a gift to Redessence Clan, and we folk gathered here will miss her. Great Ambri keep her safe, all right?”
   Without waiting for the gods to answer, Giala knelt, the silvery jingle of her horn ornaments piercing the quiet. Swelling with a deep breath, then blowing her firecasting essence outward, she set the pyre alight. Firelight splashed red over her feathers, carving her stark with shadows. And then she was only a shape on two retreating feet; the pyre called Peregrine's eyes; the leaping flames wouldn't let him go.
   They watched in growing quiet. The rest of Redessence Clan, all of Peregrine and Giala's borrowed children, brushed close to his ankles. He took Giala's clawed hand in his own; she held tight and grateful. Perhaps she was wondering, too, if goddess Ambri minded these services of fire. Ferrin carried electricasting sparks inside them, but whatever Kelria's kind, whatever her element, she had lived as a member of a korvi clan. All of Peregrine's earferrin had.

   Because as long as Peregrine needed earferrin friends, his earferrin would live this way and pass on this way. So their promise said and so it would be. Peregrine felt chill inside, as heavy as wet earth, and his inner fire could never bring that to boil.

   The worst part of a funeral pyre was waiting for the smell to burn away. Tillian fidgeted rarely, to her merit; breathing in cremation's burn through a sensitive furkind nose was a displeasure Peregrine could nearly imagine. The flames were soon gone, their embers faded, the ash motes fled on the wind. Which was when the remaining ferrin of Redessence clan approached one at a time, lolloping uneven, their ears low with uncertainty. Wellis hesitated, his posture stiff and full of thoughts; he glanced a question to Peregrine.
   “I'll be here a while,” Peregrine said, hardly more than a breath. “Stay or go, however you need.”
   Tillian slid closer to his neck – whiskers vibrated against his skin as she spoke. “I'll stay with you. We talked last night, just before she died, so ... I don't have anything to say to her remains.”
   Already tethered to Peregrine. Already sitting with her long ears raised, ready to do earferrin duty. He sighed. “Not much remains of her, anypace.” He ran a hand rough through his mane feathers, up to his horns and back down to close his own eyelids. “The flames were to bring her luck in finding her goddess, so that's likely where she is. In the thunderclouds, or in the electricstone. I couldn't say where.”
   Too-slow motion caught his eye – Giala pausing, reading him. Peregrine forced calm onto his face, letting his feathers lay sleek. He must have looked in passable condition, because Giala gave him a shard of a smile and headed toward home.

   And Peregrine stood there in the deep purple night, with Tillian as he was always going to be. Until she withered with age like her family before her. People's differences were such wretched bedmates in times like these.
   “It's quiet,” Tillian said. She paused, considering her own tale-telling hanging in the air. “I just hear grass, waving a bit with the breeze.”
   “I remember grass.” Four generations of Tillian's forebearers had told him about it, every rustle and swish and rattle. Grass never changed. “Tell me what you think matters. That should be plenty.”
   Vibration hummed through Tillian. “I can do that.”
   They stood onward. Sparks winked out, darkening the ash field at Peregrine's feet. He swatted grass with his tailtip/ Hhe drew a breath.
   “Tillian. It's your trade now.”
   “It was already my trade. I don't think a funeral changes it that much.”
   This had been underway since she was a kitten. Since her dusting of birth fur began to thicken, since she opened blue eyes and spoke in a flute pitch Peregrine could blessedly hear. He had a cask of wine at home that was older than Tillian. Somewhere on his back, one more feather was likely turning hoary.
   “I'm going to listen as well as Mama Kelria did. And as well as Great Great Grandpapa Zitan did. And everybody in between them, too.” Tillian sat on her haunches, straight with pride. “I'll try my best. And I won't talk about the grass anymore.”
   “Just the things I need to know about.”
   “Yeah.” A moment of thought passed, in which her wide-flared ears must have swivelled. “There's a bird clucking. Over there.”
   That might have mattered in some other place and moment. Right now, Peregrine stood in a silence like cave depths, and he was long since sure that he loved Tillian Sri, call her Tillian.
   “You're sure you want to take this as your trade?”
   “Well, I have to. It'll help you.”

   If she hadn't said it so sincerely, Peregrine may not have hurt so deep. They walked home, with Tillian snug against his neck.