12

You're standing on soft, grass-covered ground in your good shoes, your nice clothes. It's drizzling. The sun is but a dim lantern, barely visible behind the miles and miles of gray cloud.

You don't have anything to protect you, so the rain has wet your hair and started seeping through your clothes. You can almost feel it on your skin. Everyone else is carrying an umbrella, all black and solemn, like a funeral scene pulled out of some run-of-the-mill movie that's trying too hard to be art.

It would be a total cliché, if it weren't for the police force present. Some of the more hardcore segments of the ethocampaign supporters have gathered around the cemetery, still protesting the evils of VE. The police are there to push them back, a bit more forcefully than one might expect from an instrument of the state. Perhaps the tide has started to turn in favor of the activists.

You glimpse Torvald among the uniformed riot force. He looks your way too, catches your eye, nods. He seems almost apologetic.

You turn your back, away from Torvald, away from the noise behind you.

The grave sits empty still, but not for long. You are standing far away, on your own. The people gathered around Chalidah's open grave were either kind enough to tolerate you or too distressed to bother telling you to go away. But nobody comes near you. You blew whatever chance you had of connecting with these people.

You look at the gathered crowd, the solemn faces, the devastation in the shoulders. Have you ever imagined your own funeral? It's a thing people do sometimes when they go to funerals, isn't it?

Who would be at yours?

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