Dead Bodies in the Forest

Two bodies lay deep in the woods.

The first is of an elderly, barefoot man. His clothes and beard are burned, a stone maul tight in his hands from rigor mortis. The second was a genasi, his embers all but smoldered away, his skull caved in by a heavy object.

Birds chirp happily in the trees above, oblivious to the dead combatants below.

Closer inspection would confirm the two men died fighting each other, the genasi first from the blow to his head, and the old man after, succumbing to the burns. Neither soul will return to its body; both men have left this realm, never to return.

Questions asked by Ka would at first reveal nothing; neither man was well-known in this land. The rangers at their post, however, traded with the old man on occasion and would comment he was likely crazy, wandering the woods alone, never bathing, often stopping to push his toes into the earth, only to grow frustrated when they wouldn't take root.

The bodies remain buried and slowly rot. Perhaps one day, many seasons later, a sapling begins to grow there, and the hermit will have been right.