“You didn’t answer me, in any case,” the man said once Sabrina managed to compose herself. “What’s this place meant to be?”

“A garden. What else?”

The man with the cross looked around more carefully this time, taking in the dry shrubbery, the sun-burnt flowers and the dried up trees that were never able to grow. And if that wasn’t enough, he then glanced at Sabrina and raised an eyebrow to drive the point home.

“I’m trying, okay?” she complained, grabbing a cigarette from her pack. “I never said I was good at this.”

“You clearly aren’t,” he said, immediately swiping the cig from her mouth.

“Those cost money, bastard.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I already told you, you’re too young to be smoking,” he sighed, half concerned and half annoyed. “Anyway, how come the whole place is dead and dried up… except for this?”

He rapped his knuckles against the hardy bark of the oak giving them shadow. Sabrina was silent for a moment. The crease in her forehead was no longer due to anger, but something else.

“This one… I planted the day I got here,” she said. “I don’t know why, but it never dried up or got sick. I tried to plant some other stuff, and they grew well at first but… the more time passed, the harder it got to keep them alive.” There was a pause. “Nowadays I can’t make a sprout last longer than a few hours. It’s like…”

“...Scary,” the man whispered after a short, uncomfortable silence. “Maybe we’re on top of an ancient burial ground or something.”

Sabrina didn’t hear him. Her gaze was a million years away, sad, so terribly sad. The man with the cross glanced at her again, his eyes momentarily losing that childish spark of theirs.

A cold gust of wind battered them from the side.

“Should we go inside?” he whispered, offering Sabrina a hand.

“Don’t act like you own the place, dickhead.”