She picked up the clearest image of bones, not these bones wrapped for this burial, but of the bones of the Linyaari missing in space, as their relatives and loved ones imagined burying them. The grief for the long-dead kin was only part of the loss being mourned here. The planetbound Linyaari cried for future as well as past deaths, grief joined with fear for the safety of the missing husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Acorna suddenly felt tremendously protective of her own people, and wished she could do something, anything, to help.
Aari stood perfectly still as horns touched in silent remembrance, and then, startlingly, clearly even to him, a keening began inside him, low at first, then rising and falling, until it turned into a melody and Acorna realized he was singing. As the first chorus began, other voices rose to join his, those of the older Linyaari, and then, more tentatively, a few of the younger ones, singing their lament for those missing as well as the dead.
Where Do you graze now that you’ve gone away7 I no longer