This....was a long time coming.

To long, in fact.

Alice had wanted to do this right. See to the forms she'd been taught and open the Rite for the Domain, like what the Summer Solstice had been before and after the Brood firebombed the Farm. So she waited, neglected to bring it-her-up. Nights passed and close the Solstice came. Until it was nearly upon them, and....

...she slept through it.

She can't even say it wasn't her choice. Because it was. She accepted the stake, she knew she'd been weeks in torpor at least. But, she still hadn't thought she'd miss the Solstice.

But she had and so, to all appearances Emma French passing was unmarked and unlamented by everyone in the Domain.

Alice refused to let that stand.

So Alice came to the charred and now, overgrown husk that was once a temple. Wearing naught but a robe. Black as the night. Long scavenged from the wreckage. Tattered, burnt through, smelling of ash and gas and fire. Betwixt her exposed breasts is a sliver moon, red as blood. Just as striking as the black fabric was against her bone pale complexion.

"I didn't loose you to sun, or fire." she tells the night. "Even as I-we did." Remembering, as they gathered the staked Josephine, that their Coterie mate's - Emma's body had been left to the flames. "I pray your soul has crossed the River Acheron, and has found succor in the Elysian Fields.

"I pray Charon saw your valor and allowed you passage." A flash of silver, a knife, a fang, an anthame all, bites into porcelain flesh, "And if not, I pray He take this small sacrifice as payment, belated as it is.

"I pray the Judges of the Underworld, know you as I will not get to, and find the hero that rested within your breast.

"I pray Elysium treats you better in your true death, then it did in undeath.

"I pray that in the cycels of life and death, of underneath, true death, and rebirth come and go and that I will meet you once more."

Her anthame moves from her still bleeding wrist to press beneath her one eyeless socket after the other. As before and without hesitation the cuts are made, and the blood flows freely down her cheeks.

"I mourn you, Emma French."