Rugreth & Norio Character in Rethium | World Anvil
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Rugreth & Norio

Rugreth and Norio.   Fielne siblings from Opron Center.   Rugreth and Norio were Fielne siblings from the city of Opron Center, and were only a few years young when they passed away in the blindingly-cold winter of the year eighteen-thirty. They are two individuals recorded as some of the youngest deaths in that part of the world at the time, but they were also regarded as the most famous of them all.    It was December tenth, and a train was on it's way from Norfolk, carrying a passenger load of approximately seventy-five passengers, who were all on their way to the capital city to spend the holiday with their families back home after a long year of work and toil in the shipyards and the factories. The train that everyone called The Norfolk Wester, was a small tank engine that had been running for only six short years, and which was heading into it's prime of seven years after this run between Norfolk and Opron Center. Unfortunately, it would be the last journey this train ever saw, and it would be the last night that two precious and unforgettable souls would spend alive together. They themselves were on their way back home from their aunt and uncle's home on the coast to see their parents again for the holiday, and had been looking forward to two long weeks of the Hosiosus season to spend with their loved ones.    But as night fell on the tenth, so did their time on earth.   The ride from Norfolk to Opron Center was a long one, but a journey that the Norfolk Western had made over one-dozen times already. The crew knew the line like the backs of their hands, and they had memorized every signal and turn and straight along the track. Confident in their load and their ability to reach the city by nightfall, they had set out early the morning of the tenth for Opron Center, a non-stop trip back west. Approximately seventy-five people were onboard the tightly-packed train, all of them eager to arrive in the city at the end of the line. But now a day into the journey and still just over ten miles from the city line, the journey was coming to an end. Between the cities of Pella and Yarn, the Norfolk Western was just arriving to a known bridge that crossed over a large and powerful river, when all of a sudden, the engine was thrown from the tracks and into the river below. One coach went with it, the rest remained on the line, trapped. No-one to this day knows how it was thrown off, only that the fifteen passengers in the first carriage were thrown clear and into the river to be swept away as the first casualties of the crash.   Through the hours that followed, it is unknown exactly why the remaining passengers lost control of the situation and began to panic, but it is understood that by a miracle, young Rugreth and her sister Norio took control, and were able to help the passengers escape, even as the wind blew harder and the snow piled up, eventually trapping the coaches on the line just before the bridge and submerging the engine and the first coach in piles of thick snow. The driver, the engineer and the conductor were killed when they were also thrown into the river after the engine went clear of the tracks. Over the course of the night, Norio the older sister began guiding the passengers back down the line to Yarn, the nearest city, while Rugreth stayed behind and tried her best to keep the passengers warm in the coaches. Due to their age, they were still susceptible to the cold, which contributed to the death of Norio that night as well as her sister Rugreth, and it is thought that their unwillingness to stop and warm themselves in favor of saving the passengers was also what brought them to their end all the sooner. What everyone does know however was that after almost five hours of walking back and forth between the station and the stranded train, Norio was last seen walking down the tracks with a lantern in her hand and a cloak over her back, making her way one final time towards the stranded coaches. There had still been at least five people left behind, but having not said anything of her intentions, no-one knew what was about to happen.   When the final group of passengers stumbled into the station at around quarter-past-three in the morning, the stationmaster asked where the little girl with the lantern had been, and if she was with them.   The next morning, their bodies were found huddled together inside the forward coach, huddled into a blanket. They had died together during the night with only each other and the lantern to keep them warm, and they had succeeded in saving the remaining sixty passengers that had survived the crash. They had died, cold but united together for the last time, only a few miles from a station and it's crew who could have saved their lives. Only the stationmaster knew what Norio's last words had been.   "I've been pushed around by the men all my life, and I'm done with it. I don't care about myself right now. If me and my sister can get these people warm for the holiday, then I won't ask for another present for the rest of my life.", she'd said to him that night. It would be the last that anyone would hear from her.   Currently, a monument stands in Opron Center, Yarn and Norfolk in honor of the young sisters, and in Opron Center they were given a city funeral fit for royalty for having dedicated the last night of their lives to saving the sixty passengers who had survived the crash of The Norfolk Western. In Yarn, their monument stands at the site of the station, it's figures looking towards the distant bridge, with the tallest figure holding aloft a great lantern while the smaller one holds close against the storm. It reads:   "In honor of Rugreth and Norio Nari, of Norfolk, Opron. To their bravery, tenacity and selflessness on the night of December the Tenth we salute them, and will forever hold their sacrifice in honor and humble thanks. To their family we give thanks for raising such powerful women, and to the world we will send them for eternity."
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