Ellen left the building feeling numb. She walked, unseeing, through the black wreckage. Past a single, burnt out wall that had once been a building. A pile of skulls gleamed white in the ash. Ellen recognized the same wreckage as the view she and Sky had seen from the broken window. The column of smoke still billowed in the distance. But somehow, things seemed-- quieter. Perhaps it was only her imagination. Had she done the right thing?
When is a victory not a victory?
A few grains of black dust clung to one of her hands. In her other hand, was a seed.
Ellen looked down at the seed in her hand. It was greenish but the ridges stood out in silver lines. She said I would know what to do with this, Ellen thought. So what do I do with a seed?
Plant it.
Ellen stared at it, afraid to put it in the wrong place. She looked around her at the ash and the ruins, and knew that the rest of the world looked much the same.
Here is as good a place as any, better in some ways-- it's where Sky always used to look, when she was planning-- planning to die.
It meant Ellen would have to come back here, pretty regularly, to water the seed and make sure it had light. But here was a good place. Ellen picked up a skull from the bone pile, sending a few bones clattering, and used it to dig. Even though she was only digging with one hand, still clutching the last bit of Sky, it didn't take long to dig a hole in the soft ash, a hole deeper than was probably necessary.
Ellen looked at the skull. Finding the time to grieve for and bury fallen friends was often impossible. Her father had not been buried. She would plant the seed with this fellow, whom she would pretend was her father. And Henry, her friend growing up who had given her her first kiss. And that little boy whom she didn't know the name of, but who she had seen crushed by a robot. And all the others. And-- Sky.
Maybe it was because Sky's death was the most recent, because it was the only death that Ellen hadn't accepted or understood, but it was only at the thought of Sky that tears filled Ellen's eyes. She dropped the seed into the skull and carefully sprinkled the last of the Sky's black dust over it.
She covered the skull and the seed, clumsily pushing ash back into the hole. Then, and only then, did the tears spill over her cheeks, watering the grave.
A sprout appeared.