Rose should have insisted that her father rest. She should have put her training to use, enough to recognize that all was not well. She should have administered herbs to him; maybe mint tea to ease his deep breathing; maybe burnet root to strengthen his blood, sickly as his skin tone was that day.

   But he had quirked a smile encouraging, and convinced Rose that he served this town as its mage – that included safeguarding his own health. It's fine, he said. I'll rest in an eightmoment. Go see about some greens for dinner, Rose. Anything you feel like eating.

   She never should have left the house that day. She understood how quickly a person's health could crumble, so she should have known better. 

   Every resident of Fenwater came to the burial. They made a jagged ring – all the other aemets, with drooping-eared ferrin between them &ndash. The breathing of one hundred people made a jumble of the air. Father's remains were buried under stones now, grasping ritual leaves: their lucky essences would help him pass. Even the pain of death had its poultices.

   Quiet spread, filled with the hushed rustling of trees. Everyone had said their fond parting words and now they looked to Rose. 
   “He was an example to us all,” Rose said. Her voice shivered, inside her throat and out. She couldn't think of him now without seeing that smoldering brand in her memory, the instant she came through the door curtain and Father sat there sprawled, blank-eyed and open-mouthed, a hand over his heart.  “Arnon ...”
   Rose didn't need to look around her. She airsensed the shapes of Fenwater's people, their faces all turned the same way; she felt the stares numerous enough to crush her.
   “He carried on the family ways wonderfully, it was always foremost in his mind. And I'll keep up the traditions he showed me.”
More force came into the one hundred breathing gusts. Relief, surely..
   “We wouldn't want anyone else,” came a voice, and warm murmurs followed it.

   After passing moments, with shuffling and backward glances, people began to leave. Rose couldn't move. Shock wound too tightly around her, the fresh memory of Father's last breath and the even fresher thought that Fenwater village supported her so. Of course they stared at Rose, waiting for the words she chose careful. She was Rose Tellig, the last Tellig left alive, the last daughter of a talent-gifted bloodline. For all their words of sympathy, the people of Fenwater already thought she stood in a gloried treetop; they thought she was someone to look up to.

On this day, alone and unfinished her training, Rose Tellig wasn't just a healer – she was a new mage. If she had tears left, she would have cried.