Tonight, I stood my turn at watch near the Fallen Bridge. There is a small band of us who try to embrace the newly Fallen, to protect them. We stand six days after the new moon, food and salve at the ready.

There are roughly ten of us in all, sometimes more, sometimes less. It's difficult to ask people to revisit the Bridge, but we do. Falling is terrible enough -- it's harder to go back and see it again in the face of another. I've never had to stand alone, someone always comes with me. Ruth the Healer, usually. This is her idea, her mission. She keeps this going when others would rather forget that bridge even existed. We stand, hiding under the flickering torches of the Watch, waiting just beyond its glowing circle for those who make it.

Many, too many, die with us there. We take what supplies we can, but only the very strong live and no amount of salve can heal a heart that refuses to beat. Mass graves, dug by our hands just at the forest's edge, hold those whose breath never knew Hom; the bodies of those whose life was beaten from them by family, friends, and only then by their Fatima.

The hollow eyes of the newly fallen will haunt my dreams until the day I die, but it is a duty that must be done if the Eighth Tribe is to survive, Ruth has convinced me of this.

-- Lucine, Fallen Evan Lightbringer, member of the Bridge Revisitors and the Eighth Tribe