She lay with her head in her hands, her back to the brick wall, her feet propped up on a plant pot. Her face was wet and heavy – looking like an evening rain.
She heard the door banging and the steps echoing through the hallway like a rabbit running scared.
The water was still running in the kitchen, but no one was going to stop it.
His breaths came out short and loaded with sincerity, the kind she had been asking for, for a long time now.
She had meant to tell him the other day that she would like to buy a car, but she couldn't do that anymore.
He was wiping his feet against the porch because something had got under his boot. He smiled to himself and winced in pain at something chilling his heart.
The air was soft and pungent. No whistle was heard in the yard. No bird came out of any tree. No leafy sound of nature.
'I'm leaving,' he said hoarsely to no one in particular.
'I will be back...maybe tomorrow,' he added, as a measure of assurance to himself.
Someone hollered inside the house. It was a little girl who was throwing toys on the wet kitchen floor. She slipped and yelled a sweet 'ow!' as she fell on the cold tiles. Her face hit the white surface with a small thud and she closed her eyes as one of her eyelashes fell into a puddle of water.
The only other black colour on the watered floor was the handle of a kitchen knife hidden behind one of the cupboard legs.
The little girl stretched her hand towards it in vain. She couldn't reach it. Her small hand fell in another heap of water. And she was quiet.
He wiped his mouth and sighed, in an awfully sound way.
'Don't come home,' she whispered at him from afar. She knew he couldn't hear.
He said 'I'm not coming soon.' Even though he knew she couldn't hear.
The gates crashed into each other like two hearts. And Hermione felt the plant pot slipping from her feet.
It rolled down the slope into the fence and cracked in three, but did not split.
Her feet were on the ground now.
The little girl was blinking.