Shade and shame covered her as she stood staring down at the hole in the ground that now housed her mother. Had it not been for the unused tissue providing a barrier between nail and skin, she would have bled from the force of her clenched fist. There were no tears here just a stern pale straight face staring downward, wondering whether she would ever feel full up with enough satisfaction to walk away.

A bird had been watching from the high branches of the old oak that sheltered her but she had not noticed as the dark angles of him had danced along above. The tree shaded them both from the afternoon sun of that day so thick was its maturity that dappled light could only be found at the periphery of its shadow. She had hoped for heavy rain and fast winds to mark the occasion, yet none came, only a bright stillness was in attendance that brought nothing that the dead woman did not deserve.

She had dreamt of this day many times, and each time the scene came to her in her sleep, it had been raining hard with an aerial view that presented sharp black and obedient umbrellas in a neat row boxed around the hole. In the first dream, she had seen the bird swooping across her vision, and in all of the other dreams that followed if it did not come to her, she had scanned the treetops, and traced her mind along the stony outline of the church in the distance to seek it out. He was the only guest she cared to notice but he was not a mourner and he only wore his textured black suit through obligation and no choice of his own. He did not pay respects, or forget all the bad things she had done, he just danced from branch to branch in the old oak, or skimmed on the breezes that blew through the cemetery.

Outside of the girl, nature knew nothing of the storm within her and bore no reflection of it. She made no change to it but for her weight channeled into the earth through the small soles of small shoes. No noise came from her to change the sounds, no movement was made to disrupt the air there, save the regular deep breaths that came from her. Petite and perfectly still, she did not hear the mourners voices carry from where they stood, chattering among themselves, waiting for her in clusters. She did not register the crunching of gravel under the tyres of a shiny new hearse full up with the next body moving slowly around the crematorium. Her being, connected to only the ground beneath her feet and the intensity of her fixed gaze, quietly celebrated the death of her mother.