rhapsody in blue
It was a drab day out, but Roach liked it that way—gray and overcast, the late fall air so crisp that with every breath he took, he could practically taste the early winter frost. It made him want to take a walk, though he didn’t intend on going very far from home—not when there were things for him to do, graves that needed tending, weeds that needed pulling. A woman from the Mainland had come to see him the other day, to ask him to help lay her cousin to rest. They’d both been born and raised in Edinburgh, and when he’d fallen ill, she’d decided to bring him back home and make him as comfortable as she could. Roach had promised her that he would dig him a fine grave, and, after picking the perfect little plot of land in the cemetery, devoted an entire afternoon to doing so. As it stood, however, it wasn’t much more than a hole in the ground—no, his work was hardly so simple, and far from complete.
He headed westward, his path a well-trodden one. Melrose had seen quite a bit of him over the years, and he’d often wondered why the cemetery was where it was, so far from the pretty, populous fields. Edinburgh was so plain in comparison. Perhaps that in itself was the reason; his mentor hadn’t cared all that much for pretty things. Roach hadn’t either, at first, but he’d grown to appreciate them, and liked to think that the dead did, as well. Why else would they have made a tradition of leaving flowers at graves?
Gradually, the landscape began to change from the plains to the more colorful meadow. Roach took a moment to enjoy the sight of so many flowers in full bloom, despite the weather, and then he paused. There was a small mound in the earth, not far from where he stood. He went closer to it, curious, and discovered that it was a sizable rock, covered almost completely in moss. Its edges were smooth when he ran his paws over it, and when he realized that it was half-buried in the ground, he began to dig around it, claws tearing clumps of grass and dirt from its base.
From the look of it, it was perfect for a headstone, right down to its shape and size. All he needed to do was free it from the earth, so that he could take it back with him and show it to the woman, and her cousin’s grave could be properly finished.
"words"
