The air at the edge of Solace didn't smell like a funeral.

  It smelled like minerals and dust, like iron filings on a hot saw blade, cut with a sharp, minty resin that bled from the white-limbed trees the Nexus had printed to shade the paths. The branches arched overhead in pale ribs, their leaves thin and luminous.

  Subject V-1243, Vivian Knight, was the first human they'd return to dirt since arriving in Solace.

  Nathan stood at the edge of the crowd where the blue grass faded into the alien soil. He kept his hands in his pockets because he didn't trust them not to reach for his missing finger of habit.

  Above, the Hive hung like a second sky, a lattice of cobalt light suspended beyond the dome's curve, pulsing brighter than usual. Watching. Today, the rhythm of its light was off… faster, sharper… like a surgical lamp hovering over the colony while it waited for the next data point of our grief.

  On the far side of the clearing, a shallow grave waited. It was lined with fabric so Vivian’s wrapped body wouldn't touch the alien dirt directly.

  Jason knelt at the edge.

  He wasn't just grieving. He was gone. His hands were braced in the dirt, fingers spread like he was trying to feel for something under it. His head was bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the ground.

  Nathan watched him and felt something in his chest tighten.

  He'd been Jason, just quieter.

  If he stayed in that shop much longer, he'd be buried the same way Vivian was. Wrapped in fabric, surrounded by people who didn't know what to say, lowered into ground that didn't belong to them.

  Dr. Brown stepped forward. He planted a shovel's handle into the dirt and tapped it once, then again, finding a rhythm that sounded like oars on wood.

  His voice came out rough, too low at first, almost private, and he started to sing.

  "The fire is ash, the house is cold, The fields are turned to stone. The story ends, the bell has tolled, I walk the path alone."

  A few heads lifted. A few people swallowed hard.

  Brown kept tapping. Slow. Syncopated.

  "The valley fades behind my back, The mountain hides the sun. The sky above is bruising black, The heavy work is done."

  Then the chorus came, and the crowd finally answered.

  "Oh, row me over, row me through," Brown sang.

  A woman near the front repeated it, voice thin. Another joined. Then ten.

  "The water is wide, and deep, and blue. Though the river breaks and the current cries, I'll meet you there, on the other side."

  The words moved through the clearing like a rope thrown across a gap.

  Amra and the two women lifted the shrouded body and lowered her into the grave as the song continued softly in the background, voices weaving together. The wrapped body shifting into its final resting place.

  Jason lunged forward as if he were trying to pull her back.

  Amra caught him. The women braced his arms. Mara stepped forward, carrying baby Alan against her chest with one arm and holding the new baby (Vivian) with the other.

  Jason's hands gripped the grave's edge so hard his knuckles went white. His shoulders shook. He didn't scream. He couldn't.

  Nathan felt the familiar pain in his chest flare in response.

  Christine.

  Her name rose in him like a reflex. A bruise you keep pressing just because it hurts.

  He watched Jason and realized that Jason had been forced into the moment Nathan had been avoiding for months. The acceptance. The return. The dirt.

  Amra stepped forward, holding something small in her palm.

  A seed.

  Not a printed pellet. A true seed, brown and rough, taken from one of the first living trees that had actually dropped fruit in Solace.

  Amra knelt at the head of the grave and pressed the seed into the dirt.

  "This is for her," she said quietly. "So the ground remembers."

  Jason's head lifted a fraction. His eyes found the seed like it was a lifeline.

  Mara shifted baby Vivian in her arms and leaned down, holding the infant over the grave. Not touching, just close enough that the air from her cry fell into the hole like breath.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "Listen," Mara whispered to the baby. "This is your mother. This is where she rests."

  The baby screamed harder, as if offended by the concept.

  Nathan's throat tightened.

  Above them, the Hive pulsed again, brighter, as if the Nexus was registering the moment: human grief ritual, human burial, human attempt to turn death into growth.

  Nathan hated that it was watching, curious.

  He shifted his weight and started to step back when a presence approached his side.

  "You're doing it again."

  Nathan didn't turn. He didn't need to.

  Elara stood beside him. She hadn't dressed for mourning because nobody had mourning clothes anymore, but she'd tied her hair back in a way that made her look like she was about to go to work. Her face was tired, but honest.

  "What?" Nathan rasped.

  "Standing at the edge like it's safer." Not unkind. Not mocking. Just accurate.

  Nathan's jaw tightened. "It is safer."

  Elara let that sit for a moment, watching Amra cover the seed with dirt.

  "No. It's quieter. That's not the same thing."

  Nathan's breath came out sharp. He looked down at his boots.

  Jason rocked forward, forehead against the soil now, arms wrapped around himself. Amra stayed near him. Mara stayed near him. The others stayed too.

  A tribe without ever saying the word.

  Elara shifted closer. Not touching, but close enough that Nathan could feel her heat.

  "I used to do grief counseling," she said. "In the Earth that was."

  She looked back toward the crowd. "I worked with refugees. Assault survivors. People who lost children. People who lost their countries. They all had the same lie they tried to live inside."

  Nathan waited.

  "They thought silence was respect. They thought if they didn't talk about the dead, they wouldn't disturb them. They thought if they didn't move forward, it meant they loved them more."

  Nathan's hands curled in his pockets. His fingertips found the absence where his ring finger used to be.

  Elara's gaze flicked there. Quick, clinical.

  "The truth is that silence is a predator. It doesn't honor your dead. It eats your living."

  Nathan swallowed.

  She turned slightly, angling her body so Nathan had to see what she was seeing.

  Mara, still holding both babies, was speaking quietly to the women around her. Coordinating, building a plan without calling it leadership. Amra passed cloth to a young woman with shaking hands. Someone else brought water.

  No one asked who was responsible. They just became responsible.

  "That," Elara said quietly, "is a family."

  Nathan watched as Mara adjusted baby Vivian's bundle with practiced tenderness.

  “That’s Mara’s baby,” Nathan said, his voice flat.

  Elara didn't pull her gaze away from the crowd. “It’s Mara’s because she’s the one holding the weight. It’s Jason’s because he’s the one left to hear it cry. Normal life ended back on Earth, Nathan. Out here, you belong to whoever doesn't let you fall.”

  She finally looked at him, her eyes hard. “We aren't just a colony anymore. We look for reasons to keep going. This is one of them.”

  She finally looked at Nathan, and the directness of it made him want to step back.

  Her voice softened. Not sweet, just quieter.

  "You think you're keeping her alive by staying empty. But you're just keeping yourself frozen."

  Nathan's throat worked. "You don't.. understand.”

  Elara held his gaze. "You're right. I don't."

  She paused, letting that boundary stand.

  Then she said, "I'm not asking you to erase anyone. I'm asking you to stay in the room with the living long enough to remember what it feels like to live."

  Nathan looked away, jaw tight, and caught sight of the grave again.

  "Jason is going to survive this because people are going to take turns holding him up." Elara's voice came again, steadier. "You've been holding yourself up alone."

  Nathan's laugh was a dry, ugly thing. "I've been building."

  "You've been hiding inside building."

  The shovel scraped. Dirt fell. The grave began to close.

  Jason reached forward once, fingers digging into the soil as if he could keep it open.

  Mara took his hand. Firm. Grounding. No words.

  Jason’s grief let out a yell.

  Nathan felt something in his chest shift. Not relief, not peace, just a subtle movement, like a stuck hinge finally giving.

  Elara watched him see it.

  "You built our homes," she said. "Do you know what that tells me?"

  Nathan didn't answer.

  "It tells me you haven't given up. It tells me there's still a part of you that believes in something, even if you're scared to name it."

  Nathan swallowed. "It's just work."

  Elara's eyes didn't leave his. "It's a choice."

  The last shovelful of dirt fell. Vivian's grave became a mound.

  Amra pressed her palm to the top of it, placed an orange flower on the mound, then stepped back.

  Mara did the same, careful because of the babies.

  One by one, people approached. Touching the dirt, leaving small offerings: a strip of cloth, a carved bead, a handful of dried mint leaves. Mostly flowers.

  Nathan stood motionless, hands still buried in his pockets, watching everyone else do what he refused to do with his own grief: make it real.

  Elara waited a beat longer.

  Then she said, her voice low and final: "She's not coming back, Nathan. And you're still here. That's not betrayal. That's just the curse of being left behind."

  She didn't wait for a response.

  She turned and walked toward the others, disappearing into the crowd gathering around Jason.

  The chorus rose one last time as people began to leave, softer now, like a promise spoken into a child's hair.

  "Oh, row me over, row me through, The water is wide, and deep, and blue. Though the river breaks and the current cries, I'll meet you there, on the other side."

  Nathan stayed at the edge while the gathering dissolved.

  Jason was guided away. Supported on both sides, not fighting it anymore because he had no strength left to fight anything.

  The clearing emptied. The trees rustled. The dome hummed. The song faded into silence.

  Only the flower-covered grave remained.

  Nathan finally moved.

  He walked to the mound slowly, as if approaching something that might detonate.

  He stopped at the edge and stared down at the dirt.

  It looked like dirt. He felt Christine's name push up behind his teeth again, wanting out.

  He didn't say it.

  Instead, he took his hand out of his pocket.

  His builder's hand. Scarred. Calloused. Missing a finger.

  He reached down and pressed his palm to the covered mound.

  It was cool. Slightly damp. It held the shape of his hand for a second before settling.

  Nathan's chest tightened so hard he thought he might fold.

  For a moment, he felt the old workshop silence closing around him, familiar and deadly.

  Then, softly, involuntarily, he remembered Christine's voice, sharp and warm:

  Don't you dare build yourself a coffin, Blue Lando.

  The memory hit like a shove between his shoulder blades.

  His throat worked. His eyes burned.

  He lifted his hand from the dirt and stood.

  In the distance, he could hear voices. Laughter that sounded guilty. Babies. Arguments. Human. Messy. Alive.

  Nathan didn't move toward it. Not yet.

  But he didn't walk back to the workshop either.

  He just stood there in the clearing, beside the grave, with dirt on his palm and Elara's words echoing in his skull.

  She's not coming back. And you're still here.

  The sky above him (cobalt and watching) pulsed once, bright and curious, as if it had noticed the smallest shift in the architecture of a human heart.