A short piece, set just after AtA
Disclaimers: standard, don't own them, no profit being made
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please ask
- for Molly

Clear and Bright
By: Cousin Mary (Jenkins)

 Tracy stumbled down the Church's front steps, she could
still hear Vachon's strangled last gasp, the horrible sound
of death that had rattled around deep his chest, ending only
when a worse sound, silence, had taken its place.  She
closed her eyes, then blinked up at the sky in surprise, it
was day.  She hadn't been aware of the passage of time, or
even realised the night had ended until she was hit full
force by the too bright sun.  Eyes grown accustom to the
softness of twilight ached in the brief moment it took her
to slide on her sunglasses, it seemed she wasn't 'more of a
day person' anymore.

He was gone, she couldn't believe it.  Almost in a daze, she
forced herself to walk to her car. The warmth of the late
summer day was almost too much after coolness of the Church,
and the heat wilted her already sagging shoulders.  The sun
was shining, dawn had come and passed with all the pomp and
circumstance of any late other September day. Out here it
was just another day, a day like any other.

 She pulled open her car door and mechanically sat down
behind the wheel.  She looked back the way she'd come, the
sun bathed the Church in glaring white/yellow light.  The
roughly carved stone blocks sat in neat rows, the dusty
cobwebs glinted in the sunshine.  She closed her eyes
against it all.  It seemed so alien that such a picturesque
scene could house such grief.  She drew a jagged breath,
resting her aching head against the steering wheel.  She'd
have to wait until night fell again to retrieve his body, to
pay her last respects and bury one of the most important
people in her life.

 Turning her head she cracked open her eyes and looked at
the sun drenched scene once again. It was wrong, surreal and
perverse that the world could dare keep spinning in the face
of such a loss.  How could the birds be singing?  How could
the sun possibly shine down from a whispy cloud dotted sky?
The world should mourn.  The sky should be storming, ripped
with wind and rain, thunder and lightning.  The world
shouldn't be as it was.

 She'd forgotten to shut the car door, a light, warm breeze
wafted in, scented by the long untended roses that had gone
wild in the Church's long forsaken courtyard.  She thought
back on Susan, her long dead childhood friend.  Death always
smelled of roses.  The tears began to fall then.  For
Vachon, for Susan, for everyone, herself included, and in
her heart at least, the storm raged.  Clear and bright was
the day, but it didn't deserve to be.

>>>>>>>>
anteros@juno.com