#wowau

A fistful of dirt trailed from her splayed fingers. Dirt, rock, and fragments of bone. She moved through the city unseen, her black coat trailing against her boots. Her face was slick with rain and her footsteps heavy with mud.  She found the place where her little boy died. The roof had long caved in. The building was old and rotten, even before the city fell. It was always the same, no matter how often she came here. She didn’t know what else she expected to find. Her heart and soul were buried under that house and she knew she could never dig it up again. 

She moved on, towards the old courthouse. She remembered the look on the killer’s face as the judge slammed the gavel and announced his execution verdict. The memory of his empty eyes still drove knives into her chest.  Now she was standing at the jail. The wall was shattered by stray cannonballs that were launched from the coast. The broken stones of the wall still lay upon the skeletal remains of forgotten prisoners. One of them could be him. But she could never be certain. The need for certainty drove her on. She walked from the jailhouse down the road, weaving between alleys and rotten gutters.  If he wasn’t among the dead, how far could he have gotten? Past the bell tower? Through the market? Into the forest? Against the cliffs? How could an unarmed prisoner survive the chaos of war? She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the rain. He wasn’t unarmed. He never is.