Excerpt from the latest project: To Bury Their Parents.

Erlo stood over the corpse, hand over his eyes, trying to hold in the grief.
“Damned sorry,” the man said. Erlo did not even know his name. One of the new ones, the ones who came after the battle. “He was your friend.”
“I know what he was,” Erlo said. His voice tasted like blood. “I could use a drink.” But he said that out of habit. He had not touched the horn for twenty days now. The first of those he had shaken, teeth chattering, skin itching. He had stank and his eyes had hurt. After four days his lodge-mates had tossed him in the lake. By the fifth, he could eat again, and after ten the children had demanded he come back to teaching.
“Sorry,” the newcomer said again, and backed away.
“It happens,” Erlo said. He took the hand from his eyes and the tears flowed out as though that hand had been a dam. “It is not fair. He was a good man. The best of us, really. And I go on.”
Mang lay on the path to the outhouse, curled up with his knees to his chest, dark skin graying in the morning light.
“He was sick for years, you know,” Erlo said. There was nobody around to hear, he knew that, but he spoke anyway. “Chewed those leaves like we would not notice. Made the pain go away. Cost him all his teeth, which hurt more, so he just chewed more leaves. I had forgotten. Forgotten.”
Morning. Too early, always too early. He hated to leave his bed, empty though it was now. The day was full of work. He loved the children, every one of them, but teaching them was the least of his labors. Each moment he did not scream was a victory, every day he did not strike out a battle won. And keeping the mead off his lips the greatest of challenges. But the newcomer had woken him first, Erlo of all people, Erlo the useless. The sot. The weakling.
“You should see. You should come. They will all look to you.”
Erlo wished the man had shaken Ham awake instead. Ham had been here as long, knew Mang as well. No-one really knew Mang, in truth.
Well, nothing to do now.
He stooped, cradled the body in his arms, lifted. Mang came away from the gravel with hardly a fuss. Bits of rock dropped off his skin to patter back to the ground. He was stiff and cold, not changing position as Erlo lifted him, and light. Much too light.
Dying all the while. You lived, made us think you were living, but you were dying.
Erlo carried his friend into the long hall and laid him on the hearth, thinking the fire might start to unfreeze his bones, but he knew it was too warm for him to be frozen. This was a death thing, the hardening of the body as the spirit left it. A good spirit, a brave spirit.
The first of the children came out of a room to the side. Chara, a dark little girl from Hitai. Complicated blood in that one. “Erlo. You woke up first.”
“Yes, baby.”
“I am not a baby. I have six years.”
“Oh, so sorry. So sorry. Go and make your toilet, little one, and then bring me a bowl of water and some cloths. We have some work today.”
“No lessons?” she said, pouting.
“Hm. Lessons, yes. Today we are going to learn how to wash the dead and dress them the best we can, how to build a raft to float them on and how to burn it. Today we are going to learn how to say goodbye to our friends.”
The girl just stood there, tears filling up her eyes. She seemed to notice Mang then, lying on his side on the hearth like a thing, an object.
“I should say not to cry, Chara, really I should, but that is another thing to learn today: how to cry. Go on, now. We have much to do today.”