Color surrounded her, the brilliant yellows and reds and greens of summer in the garden. The sky glared blue overhead, and she glared back at its near cloudless face. Her hand closed around the nearest white spray, twisting involuntarily, the crushed petals releasing their nauseatingly sweet scent as they fell from her fingers.
She took a shuddering breath, her chest aching as if with vacuum. The fountain nearby was as dry as her eyes; she resented it’s deathly emptiness. Perhaps the red that surrounded it was the remains of the bloody tears of its untimely end, an irrevocable stain on the land. She pressed her fists into her eyes until they ached, silently screaming for a single drop of relief.
A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched. “It’s going to be alright,” someone said, and the hand caressed the black of her sleeve like flame licking at tempered steel. Her arms fell nerveless to her sides and she walked away without a word.
The Word Worker 