~Ojos~

The afternoon sun shone its harsh rays onto the young woman uprooting handfuls of dirt in her backyard. Armed with spade, shovel, and trowel, she worked in earnest to heave large portions of black, soft dirt out of a hole two feet wide in diameter. Beside her lay a pair of discarded, faded yellow gardening gloves, the right hand glove was missing a thumb and pinky while the left was split in half and straight down the middle, a vertical slash down the palm onward to the wrist. A faint silhouette of crimson could be seen coating the vertical cut.

Also lying down beside the young lady was a four foot high fountain, it's bowl separated from the base, the two pieces laying in the grass together. The fountain was colored a simple drab of imitation granite, the actual fountain a composite of wood and plastic. The only noticeable factor about the fountain was its bowl centerpiece: a tiptoeing six inch high cherub that was poised in a spitting position, cradling a tiny scroll in its arms, his eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of ejecting the expected clear liquid forth from its puckered lips.

Melissa Travers swiped at her brow with the back of her suntanned hand, mixing dirt and sweat in one movement. She leaned back on her haunches, blowing away brown strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail that now threatened to stick to her flushed red cheeks. She panted for a while, rolling her slim neck in slow circles to release the half and hour crick that had lodged itself in her spine. Hearing the satisfying muted clicks come from the base of her neck, she stopped down and excavated the remaining handfuls of soil from the pit with one last exhaustive burst of strength.

"Lisa! You done yet?" Erik, Melissa's older brother called out from the back porch. His head stuck out from the sliding door like a bird in a birdhouse. Melissa, or Lisa as she was known to her family, slapped her hands in contentment over the hole that gaped from the middle of the flower bed. Lisa stood, trying not to accidently 'rearrange' her mother's random assortment of flowers. Lisa stepped out of the flower circle and picked up the two parts of the fountain, base pedestal looped under one arm and the bowl cinched in the other. She would have to fill up the hole later when she came back; maybe add a few roses to fill the void that had now taken the place of its previous owner, the fountain. But even if she did, Lisa knew it wouldn't be the same. Her mother had that special aesthetic touch that couldn't be rivaled by anyone else in the family.
She would know what to do with an empty hole like this in the middle of the flower bed, Lisa thought, walking through the side alley leading to the front of the house. She definitely wouldn't have put roses.