loimata e maligi {Jamie}

for all we are is falling stars in the night
a blinding light raging down from the sky

"Looking for a few graves. That's all."

You startle, slightly. There's a corner of the graveyard you know well enough from the funeral - that there was a neat little stone labeled LANHUA, PING that sat next to another with moss growing at its feet labeled IZAR, GABRIEL, and an empty patch of dirt where they'd removed the grass but not yet finished digging a grave for LACROIX, FELIX.

You haven't been back there since then. This wasn't Ping anymore, wasn't how she'd want you to remember her, you reasoned, in a row of imported stone quarried from Two and processed in the Capitol, that had no place in the landscape of rolling corn fields that you knew as home.

Your grandmother had taught you that everyone had their own unique connection to the nature around them, and their spirits reincarnated after death, to become part of the landscape. You'd seen the manta rays begin gliding beside you, after she'd passed away - and you'd felt something warm beside you when that storm hit, guiding you to remain unharmed when you washed up on shore by the splinters of your wrecked boat.

Where was Ping's spirit, you wonder? She had always been like a flower, gentle yet strong -

"This is depressing," the boy laughs, a nervous chuckle that disappears into the wind as it rattles through the trees along your path, and the broad leaves of the magnolia fling water across your already soaked faces. You bend down, and pick up a branch with a solitary flower, snapped and tossed aside by the force of the gale.

She'd always loved the magnolias, when they bloomed in the spring. The white buds would show up to announce the beginning of spring in District Eleven, often before leaves began growing in earnest across the branches. You remember her disappointment, the year a late frost had come in March and killed most of the blossoms.

The last petals were beginning to fall now.

"I wouldn't mind showing you there," you tell the boy as you cradle the flower gingerly in your hands, careful not to have it crumble to pieces between your fingertips. "There's a friend I ought to visit, too."

You would lay the magnolia at her stone, the way others had brought bouquets to place during the funeral. And this stone was not her, but you could believe - that her spirit would appear to you every year with the blossoms of spring, and guide your way.

"Whose grave are you looking for?"

And with her beside you - you know the way.

the rise and fall, the rhapsody of our lives
it's all we are and know, we've got to let go

lyrics: covered by roses - within temptation
d4 Panda Scope [Gayton]
OOC: 木蘭 (Mulan) means magnolia