The cold air fills the area and wraps its bitter emptiness around my entire body. It is everywhere. It’s as if I’m standing within the radius of a recent atomic bomb site. It bites and it burns. Paired with its relentless ferocity is the unusual yet familiar sunlight that almost feels cold itself, dull yet blinding still. The only color is drab. I suppose the redness of my cheeks would stand out among the rest, but not by much. I don’t know when the smell went away. I thought it never would. It’s gone now along with most of what once was.

The hill, if you can even call it that, consists of leafy permafrost with some patches of wetness. Sludge and grime ruin the white snow that melts sporadically, which over time only adds to the muck and the mire. It’s the time of year where you can’t call it winter but you can’t call it spring yet either so nothing really matters. Nothing feels real. This is real though. There is not an inch of radiance left in her skin. Dry dirt rests in her hair.

Everything else was a blur. The past, present, and future were temporarily lost. I could see how this played out but could not yet accept any of it. I felt everything and nothing at the same time and this was the perfect place for that to happen. It was the only place. From an onlooker’s perspective, there would only be two subjects, alive and dead at rest and unrest. You could almost laugh at the meaningless environment despite it still thriving in its current state or beginning to regenerate, drawing all attention to the slow-decaying person and almost mocking life as we know it. Hours passed and I shifted. After today, I would never see my sister again.