Sorrow

Diente walked across the open field quietly, glancing up at the gray sky as the fine mist of rain came down around him. He crossed his arms over his chest as he walked across the dampened grass, nearing the figure his crystalline eyes had been focused on.

“Sil…” he said quietly.

Silaquil sat cross-legged on the ground, not facing her older brother. She was fingering a single red rose and staring at the humble marker constructed over the newly turned plot of earth.

“Sil, come on inside…it’s raining…if you don’t want to go for you, at least come in for Kil. He needs you…” Diente said, stepping forward and placing his hand on her shoulder.

She still said nothing, her multi-colored tresses splayed languidly across her shoulders. She moved her eyes down to look at the rose.

‘You didn’t deserve this, Mil,’ she thought, tracing the petals delicately. The words hadn’t meant anything to the woman in life, maybe they would mean something now. ‘You didn’t deserve this…nobody deserves this…and I’m sorry.’

A lump established itself firmly in her throat as she placed the rose gently on the grass, thinking of when they’d been kids, and everything had been simple.

'Sorrier than you’ll ever know,’ she thought, taking her brothers hand and using it to pull herself up.

As though reading her thought, Diente shook his head gravely. “It’s not all your fault, Sil, don’t do that,” he said, pulling her into his arms and kissing the top of her head.

She laid her head against her brother’s chest and closed her magenta eyes, letting tears spill from beneath the lids and stain her ashen cheeks. Maybe it wasn’t all her fault, but she had started it. She had started it, and now the woman who had once been her friend was dead.

Heaving a sigh, she pulled back, smiling sadly as Diente placed an arm around her shoulders.

“Hey Diente?” she said quietly, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand as they walked back to the house.

“Mm?”

“Do you think she’s happy now?”

Diente glanced back at her, slightly surprised at the question. She wasn’t looking at him, she was looking off into the horizon.

“I hope so,” he replied after a moment, following her gaze, “I really do.”

The rose petals fluttered behind them in the light, moistened breeze, the only sign they had ever been there at all.