The breeze is soft around her neck as she leans lazily against the willow tree. Rays of light shine through spindly branches and the grass gently tickles her legs, which stretch, pale, from beneath her knee-length cornflower blue dress. Her eyelashes flutter with every gust, and she pulls her hair behind her ears so that her navy eyes can read the sky. There is a great peace, in her spot, and she longs to never leave it. It has housed such a host of events in her life, more grand than plays and more colloquial than lunch at the cottage.

She can remember when her eyes closed under this willow tree, in a moment of wonderful desperation and fear and wonder and awe and beauty. The day the freckled boy across the lane touched her neck with his unsteady fingers and pulled her face close to his. Eyes met, understood each other. Nerves dissipated with such a lovely kiss that neither had ever experienced, or would experience ever again. There was a silence after, as they pulled back, and spent the day looking at one another. They lay under the tree, as she always had, and read the sky. When the stars came out, he looked surprised. Quick pedalling, as he rode away under the shining moon.

The beauty of the moon was enough to enchant her, and so she remained beneath her tree. A steady wind picked up and threw the spindles about, and her mind began to remember the stories of little girls lost in forests. She was not afraid; she trusted her tree. The sheepskin coat with wrinkles and a rusty throat, however, she did not trust; as he stumbled down the lane, she felt herself pulling closer to the trunk of her tree. Protect me. In the darkness, she could hear his foul words and had to cover her mouth as he passed, for he smelled of rum and blood. She could hear his whispers in the wind, speaking about the boy, that boy, he'd deserved it. The moon shone brighter once he had passed, and she recoiled as she interpreted his drunken speech. Which boy?

A linen jacket was torn on the dirt, a nose smudged with mud and crimson. Eyes fluttered with the wind, open and shut, open and shut. A groan escaped from a throat, mingled with fury and pain. Ears heard screaming.

No.

A crumpled form on the side of the path. A twisted metal object. A cry, wild with pain and fear and sadness. There was no question, there was no difference. What once was loving her now was floating away in the wind, his last words enunciated with the sound of a kiss.

Blur. Silence. Tears.

The willow tree bathed in her pain, and wrought with it. She tore off it's bark, and stamped on it's roots. Branches fell onto the soft grass and turned brown, dying, as he had. The willow felt her pain, and drank her tears. She collapsed beneath it quietly, once her tirade had subsided. She crawled into it's knot hole and slept an aggrieved sleep.

Upon awakening, she could hear a distant flute and a cry of all mothers. Her mother, the mother who had lost her child. His mother, who's child had been stolen. The flute summoned them to their loss and they would never be happy again.

Mother's eyes meet young blue ones. Laughter outlives the flute. Thank Heavens.

He looks not the same in the daylight. Paler beneath his freckles, heavier than a boy of twelve. His mother's burden, his mother's child, his mother's prayers. Pale and cold, touched by terrible, irresponsible death.

When the stars came out, he had looked surprised. Perhaps it was that their love was to keep the sun shining. Perhaps it was that he had missed dinner in his hunger for her lips. Perhaps it was fear. The moon hadn't protected him from the night, and his quick pedalling had stopped as easily as a staccato a minor.

The flute sang her lullaby, as she returned to the willow. She remembered his touch and his sandy hair. The willow would never meet another of hers again.