The lavender stems rose from the soil like crooked fingers to salute Death. The night brought with it companions of darkness, of lone and far. Death waltzed through flower fields swathed in veils of mist. The moon and all the celestial wonders of the sky watch the jaded boy with shears in hand, clutching at the roots of ferns and deadheading bluebells. The conclave of stars could not bury his longing: it filled his lungs and burrowed into his chest like a wild animal dormant in his heart.

Death laid fingers thin as cane on Francis' shoulder, but the boy did not stir from the tares. Death is grand as the black sky, a tower hovering over mangled trees⸺perhaps not in stature, however in the insurmountable weight of darkness. Francis trembled like a mangled branch shaking off leaves in wait of a new season.

Death's voice humbled the wind, it rumbled like a crack of lightning striking fresh earth, "The fates have summoned you this hour." The boy remained silent. He clipped the head off a rose, the petals fell in a disorderly fashion, and Death sunk next to him, "The time has come to take my hand, boy."

A shudder cast itself like a knife through Francis' chest and he dropped his shears. His voice frothed between the apple of his throat, his thoughts a thousand a minute, but the boy saw the sky and forgot himself⸺he forgot Death, his eyes fixed on the ochre moon. He swallowed his tongue and spoke, "Before I take my leave, I wish to see the sun rise once more."

The moon was silent. She watched the boy from the riverbend, her waves carried a cool draft into his chest.

Death bowed his head to the sky, "If you hold till daybreak," Said the messenger. His face had grown gaunt, Francis looked like a phantom made of ash and moonlight.

Death collected his mother in May. Her soul dissolved from the white whistles of her eyes before Francis sensed she was gone. The fields were silenced by death, the dogs did not bark and the ewes need not collecting. The pastures were distilled in a film of fog, Francis felt himself suffocate in the varnish of his mother's absence like a figure trapped in a snowglobe.

Francis buried his mother in the garden, it was a day where even the wind drew no breathe and the stars bore no face. It was all that was left of her; the fields and her illness which took possession of Francis' bones. The malady had grown limbs, it crawled through his veins in arachnid fashion.

At sunrise, Francis planted orchids and water lilies through the fields. He milled and reworked the land until his fingers bled rose petals by spring and flower fields tall as the stretch of sunlight poured a valley to the pit. He spent days in the fields with no rest or grub. He grieved in petals, he wailed in stems.

"You have sowed many seeds since my last visit," Death says, "These fields are full of life."

Francis scoffed, his thick brows pinching together. Francis saw a burial ground⸺a mausoleum of cosmos that housed one soul. The flowers had become contours in the neverending mist. Francis watched the husks of berries and june bugs mingle in the breeze. He had littered these lands with hollyhocks and marigolds in hopes of making beautiful these fields of ends. But beauty does not recast remains. Francis saw death in these fields, he felt the cold hand of his mother in each orchid he met.

Francis clutched at his collar, it tightened against his neck with each breath, "These flowers are the face of death." He said.

The boy looks to the herald who had stolen his mother away, who would steal him away. Death was a ticket belonging to one traveller, an unknown destination with much speculation. Francis abandoned the fields and walked towards the horizon. The crickets hummed in accordance with the wind, it passed through the boy like blood slugging through him. The hymn followed, it sounded like the end of times: the crack of thunder, a whisper passed between oleanders, the descent of trees eld as the churn of the first season. Francis felt his skin prick up, he shoved his hands into his trousers.

Death followed the boy.