Shadow Hunters

Prayers

"Are you sad Wammy?"

Wammy was terrified. He held it to himself as the woman beside him stood over the cemetery, dressed in her olive colour hood and looking pale.

He didn't respond.

"You should be Wammy. How can you not? He was your brother"

That was true. He was his brother but not in the context she believes in. He only knew his brother for just a night, half that night he groaned.

"Let's pray" she commanded and closed her eyes, a long white rose pressed between her palms as she spoke in her lifeless voice.

"To Tommy, a son to be proud of and a brother to be fond of. You have left us like a passing winter and no amount of mourning will ever be enough"

"It is tragic that you had to leave...that fate can be so cruel yet it's our destiny."

Wammy's throat was dry. The croacked up body was lying in front of him on the top of someone else's grave. The smoke ushering from him was slow and little and most of his body broken away in ashes. The rest of him that remained still struggled to live on. But there was no denying- the sadness hard on his pupil. He was close to death. Just moments remained.

"I was always proud of you the day I met you." Her voice continued. She rather have him dead than alive. She carried him here on her shoulders. When Tommy wasn't responding for a long while, she knelt beside his body and exclaimed in an unenergetic voice " Dismal...his eyes are dismal.."

Her grey eyes stared at Wammy's then as if piercing him. The shock and horror of the evening left him stuttering and trembling. He felt weak.

"Your brother is dead Wammy" she explained. He was shaking uncontrollably. She killed him.

"Such a pity" with those words she lifted Tommy's limp long arm to her own and pressed its scratchy surface against the rose of her cheek. It was an abomination.

The storm was wielding. The cemetary had no visitor except for her. The gaurd came once and warned her.

"Miss the sky don't look good. You must hurry with your prayers..."

"Dont worry" her steel voice said. "My son died. I must grieve for him"

The man left her alone after that. Despite the jolts behind the clouds, he didn't intervene anymore. The white rose between in her hands looked whiter as Tommy's body flaked away by the violent wind. Whatever life was in him, it was lessening.

"I still remember the day I found you. You were young and sprightful and happy. I saw your eyes fill with dreams when I spoke of my home to you. You never hesitated. Never."

Her voice became bolder.
"Not even for once!"

"You always wanted to be with me. You respected your mother and loved your brothers. You always listened to me and never dissapointed."

"Its just incredibly unjust that you must depart us so soon..."

She knelt a knee and placed the white rose on top of his crippled body. She stood up and placed a palm on Wammy's bony shoulders. Wammy shuddered to that touch.

"Give your farewell to your brother. No need to be sad." She reasoned him. "He is now in heaven.."

Not much remained of Tommy. His skull was half eaten by the wind, his body dislocated into two halves-the midsection was long gone. His left arm crumbled away and his right arm twitched every now and then. Was it alive or just the wind playing, it was hard to say. And there was his jaw- long and open and hollow. Too hollow.

"No..."

"Now now...it's okay.."

"No.." Wammy struggled to pronounce his words, his breaths fighting to persist.

"You...hyou killed him..."

Her grey eyes turned static cold. "You shouldn't Wammy...You shouldn't disrespect your mother...there will be punishments..."

Wammy gulped in his next words. His body given away to fear and shaking relentlessly. She put her hands together to pray.

"I'll show you. Do it like me"

Wammy's long arms were trailling behind him. He dragged them toward himself, folding his fingers to acknowledge this death. He shook violently with the wind and the shadows growing bigger.

"You mustn't Wammy, you musn't"

He knew he must.

"You killed him!"

And he twirled away, dimming into the shadows belonging to the grave stones around, anywhere as long as not around her.

The storm was truly brewing.