~*One Week Later*~

The day of Railyn's burial was bright, warm, beautiful; just how she would have wanted it. Even thought birds sang merrily in the trees embelishing the summer's rays, a dark, invisable steam of grief floated in the air like a soap bubble. A small mass of mourners, cloaked in dark clothing contrasting the comfortable weather, gathered at Hansberry Cemetary to see that Railyn gets properly put to rest in the earth. Weeping willows surrounded the cold, eternal resting places of those long gone but not forgotten, shielding them from the crack-enducing sun. Greg slowly strolled toward the mourners sensing the heat rise from under his button-down black shirt. Even from the back, he could tell Danielle was crying, her red tendrils laying loosely on her back and her tears cupped in her hands.

"Danielle," he said in a low tone, standing solemly at her side.

"Greg," she gasped, surprised to see him before her. She dabbed at her crimson sad-stricken eyes with a tissue. She leaned in for a hug gratefully, knowing in her heart that Greg would have definatley been a keeper. "I...I thought you said you couldn't come."

"You should know me better than that," Greg proposed whispering, holding Danielle firmly to soothe her rattled composure. "Every one did, I just couldn't see it."

"Yeah," Danielle agreed with a reassuring smile, "Sometimes the most precious things are the things you can't see."

Greg hooked his arm neighborly around Danielle's shoulder, her hand clinging onto his arm for dear life. He glanced over the death pit to a familiar face, Ben, the hipster bartender from Serenity. His hands were clutched together in prayer and laying lazily from his arms, his eyes fixaded at the ground. His black skin was glistening with fresh tears.

Greg's eyes couldn't travel as far as the hole in the ground before they spiraled into emotional breakdown. Something was empty inside of him; a cold, foreign emptyness that made him sick to his stomach. Something was missing from his life, his soul; and she was decaying in a dark box. He's been a wreck all week, not focusing or participating in the good things his life still offered on the table. His body was a sack of potatoes; heavy, lumpy, and dirty. The old, pruney-face preacher droned and droned about this not being the end as he read emotionless from the leather-bound bible. Someone looked on from beyond the circle...

Stephanie was invisable behind the sagging branches, leaning herself against the bark of the tree and thrusting her hands in her jeans' pockets annoyed. Stephanie's chestnut eyes viewed the burial as pitiful, this pathetic, orphan girl causing so many people such anguish. But, Stephanie's conscience demanded she go to the burial even thought Stephanie loathed Railyn with a deep passion for so long because of what she did. Railyn was someone special to Greg and even if Stephanie did hurt him, she felt abliged to go. She only wanted to see him happy and nowadays, seeing him now walk past her house, he looked like the world was crashing around him, suffocating him and it made her heart shrink a few sizes. She laced her tanned fingers to her lips, blew a semi-thoughtful, caring kiss and left.

The preacher asked those who wanted to place roses on her casket before she's lowered into the ground to do so now. Railyn and Greg paced slowly to the bunch of roses laying peacefully at the foot of a willow. They all encompassed different colors of the spectrum; raging reds, pure whites, dainty yellows, but two caught his eye. He bent down and picked them up as if they were his children.

In his hand he held two-of-a-kind white roses with a unique pattering covering them. Thin rivers of purple, blue and red streamed across and around the powdered white roses. Greg peered at them astounded, never seeing anything like it as he ran his fingers along their silky coats. Danielle pulled lightly on his arm, motioning toward the coffin. It was their turn to drop the flowers of love to their deserving recipient.

Danielle stared deep into the bottomless pit as if trying to find a source of light to clear her head. She hugged the red rose close to her chest with both hands, one last tear precipitating onto the black casket. Her eyes followed the rose sadly as he dropped it on top of the coffin blanketed with other roses of love and remembrance. Greg walked up next to her, laying a sweet kiss along one of the roses' petals. Gently, the rose descended from his hand to land the casket, the one as special as Railyn, laying tall and strong among all the other normal roses of the world. He weaved the other one in his back jeans' belt loops, peering down and patting it gently. He leaned over the hole to get one last glance of Railyn's transporter to the world down under. "I love you," he whispered passionately, blowing a kiss that could cut through the hard material of the coffin. The tender kiss perched on Railyn's cold heart, snuggling there and warming it up for the rest of eternity.