Azra did two things on his eighth-hundred and seventy-fifth birthday: the first was cleaning his wife's grave, the second was joining the army.
Cleaning his wife's grave was not something too monumental since death was inevitable despite the longevity of Midgardians. Furthermore, death was a necessary process in the long cycle of life—everyone would ultimately return to the Mother Tree and become part of eternity, and old Azra felt that he himself would be called by the Saint anytime and leave this physical plane, much less his wife who had been a little other than he was.
Things were different this time, however, and very much so.
