3.1

In the bucket at the bottom of the well, wrapped tight in careful folds of sopping fabric, the oldest urn from the old home, an antique so aged and new-to-me lay not discarded but protected. Once the four or five black-masked men finally left, me bruised and bloodied, house aflame, contents ransacked, I crawled out to the ancestral well. The well house was protected on two sides by hemlocks whose laced branches built a roof no ray could pierce, and even so the wood of the walls was sun-bleached with age. I ached as I dragged myself up over the stooping floorboards, shuddered as I pulled myself up to the winch, gasped as the torn flesh of my arm stabbed new when I slowly levered the bucket higher. I held my breath, hoping against hope.
And there it was. Dull cloth against dull bucket, all aflame with the light from the house. Carefully, reverently, I pulled aside the cloth to show the shining ivory-azure pattern, the softness of the patina, the translucence of the ceramic. I lift the lid, find the contents still inside, and heave a bone-deep sigh. Three heartbeats, a soft inhale. I roll the urn from my fingertips and take two shuffle-steps toward the door before I hear it splinter and splash, disgorging its contents, dying its last death.