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Creeping vines coiled around the crumbling headstone, burrowing into the weatherworn cracks. Lilah’s knees were buried an inch in the mud, but still she sat, staring at her own name—or what little of it the rain hadn’t beaten away.
“I’ve been gone a year,” she said.
“You’ve been gone a lifetime,” a voice whispered back, whirling around her on the wind. “You cannot measure what you’ve learned with time, my love.”
A swell of sorrow rose in her chest. “But I can measure it in loss,” she replied. She could almost feel the vines coiling tighter.
