[There is still some semblance of life hidden away in the Memorial, and when River walks there, she's more often than not taken by surprise with the way it changes. It almost feels like a necessity, on mornings when the air breaks through the pores of her skin and pushes down to chill her bones. Like some sort of monotony-breaking ritual that her feet have decided to walk through if only to keep up appearances with her mind.
She thinks, on her better days, that it might be a very human sort of nostalgia: those trees, that life. Like corn husks and climbing branches in the early days, her hands never fail to stray across the bark of something that survived in the same way she did. How it grows. How it moves.
It could have been empty. I could have been bustling with the footsteps of people here to mourn rather than soak the energy that the area gives. River wouldn't have noticed -- not with the buzzing in her ears that comes across so very loudly today.
And where there is a break in the branches, there is a River, placed poignantly beneath it, glancing out and up — craning neck to see the night sky. Pregnant with billowing clouds, there’s no light to be seen beneath them.]
I thought there'd be stars.
