Sending Fourth

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    Anya's body was claimed by the water. The water god heard her sorrowful soul cry out for mercy and he felt that she was an innocent. So he gently drifted her body to a distant shore, where the god knew she could be found and given the proper burial rites. Rather than leaving her on the sand, the maidens of the sea carried her to a large rock in a meadow. Paying their respects to the deceased bride, they returned to their home and expected someone would find her and bury her. But no one came.

       Her body began to decompose and sometimes animals would come along for the carrion. Soon, the once lovely woman was nothing more than a few bones and tattered cloth. Her soul would sit by the body, as a soul must stay with her body until her body has been given its proper last rites, and wait for someone to come along. And for five long, long years, no one ever did. Until the harpist.

          He was known as Luke the Harper, for that was what he did. And very well, too. He had come to this particular place, simply for materials for a new instrument. Every few years, he would tire of his harp and travel to a place he had never been before and fashion a new one out of something that he found there. Luke had found that the magic and history of the place would become contained within the instrument and would help him to tell stories with it. As he walked through the meadow, he saw the rock and the bones.

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