Alright. Well, life is being a bitch. So I'll leave you with this little snippet:
It was cold.
That seems a little inadequate, but it was. The sky was a steely gunmetal gray, and the clouds that darkened the horizon was gray, and the snow that covered the ground feet thick in some places was gray, probably from the ashes that had mixed up in the air when Fairfax burned, even though that was a hundred miles away.
It was cold like the end of the world.
Snow had obscured most of the graves, the rounded tops and the carved angels poking up out of the gritty hummocks like tombstones in miniature. All except hers, of course.
I trudged through the gray snow, clutching my scarf to my neck, my breath and the tiny margin of exposed skin at my face and wrists steaming in the cold winter air.
Her grave was clear. The grass that had grown over the the little mound was brown and dead, of course. A scattering of wilted roses lay limply at the base, crushed and brown. They'd come from our garden, no doubt, and for a moment I imagined I could smell them and in that instant I was back in our gardens and it was high summer, the sun hot on my neck as I toddled out to her, where she sat on stone bench next to the fishpond, her long white sleeves trailing into the water as she fed the fat, golden koi breadcrumbs from a basket in her arms.
But no. I was here, in graveyard empty of the living, in a city likewise.
ROSEMARY, the inscription read, fresh-cut, below the long, slanting angular sigil that was our familie's secret sign, under a pair of carved, feather wings. LOVING MOTHER.
Nusquam in vita , nusquam in nex, it said, underneath.
I put my hands on it, wanting it to feel different, somehow.
But no. Just stone.
There was nobody there. Just me.
“Hello, mum.” I whispered faintly “good to see you.”
Presently the snow began to fall again, clean white snow. The last storm had cleaned the burnt city from the air.
I left, alone.
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