The red and sticky seeps down, smearing across her inner thighs. She takes the fingers from her right hand and slowly rubs it into the skin beneath her hem, as if it were lotion, butter even, in those desperate times. Her left hand is wrapped between the folds of another’s. This one hand belongs to an pale skinned woman, black lace casting specs of shadows on her stone face.

Facing south, a streak of sunlight peaks through the clouds and all of their worn blacks are illuminated displaying the stains, the fades of wears, the whip of winds; not even Shout can color them correctly anymore. There they stand, those two, amidst a handful holding flowers above a freshly dug tiny hole.

It was that time of day, where sunlight turns into ash in the sky and surrounding trees swayed with the beat of an unseen wind, casting an uneasy feeling upon their necks. She turned around, her eyes following each young trunk to their precarious tips and down again.

Whispering quietly in their other’s ear from the tip of her toes, “I want to go”.  Her red tinted fingers move from in-between her thighs to within the other’s depth of vision.

“Oh thank god.”