Farewell, Lito

As the mass concluded, everyone has gone back to their regular lives. The men resume with their work at the farm, tilling the soils of their land owners; the women resume being either criadas, lavanderas or plain mothers nurturing their children. Families move on living their lives after giving two days in remembering the departed. Mothers and fathers will soon worry again as to where they will get the next reales they need to spend to continue living with their families.

At the gate of the cemetery, there stands Isko with his neck peeking at its iron fence, as if inspecting everyone who comes out of the cemetery. Though the days of remembering the dead have passed, there are still people in numbers who flock the cemetery to visit the graves of their departed late. This is also an opportune time for the sepulchers to tidy up the trashes that the visitors left from the feasts. Isko would take several steps forward towards the entrance, then will suddenly turn his back and walks away from the gates. He keeps repeating these gestures and will continue to peek through the iron fences with his growing impatience starts to show on his face. He keeps on reflecting why his Segnor no longer brought up his claim of finding Utoy at the priest's lair as one of his workers when the friar just clarified at the mass that it was the Captain who found him. Add to it his confusion of how his Segnor was made to believe the mysterious woman, Fabiana, and her claim of where the missing boy can be found

At the far end corner of the cemetery, where the grasses grow tall from the tombs; and the graves are only marked with stones on top of each other; and where some of the tombs are no longer visited; Teo kneels in front of a stone monument. He picks one stone from the ground and settles it on top of another stone and he starts to scrub the grasses off the ground. He keeps pulling grasses from the ground until the sheared off grasses reveal a small grave.

"Lito" Teo sobs as he finally sees his child hood friend's tomb

He is somewhat surprised that he still knows the way to Lito's tomb and that he still knows which of the unvisited graves belongs to him. He takes air in before he continues to pick another stone from the ground and settles it again on top of a stone he had settled earlier

"It must have felt so lonely not being visited by your family anymore. They still could not accept the fact that their child is gone, they chose to stop visiting you since they buried you for they are afraid of being reminded of their loss when they see your grave. They must have been scared of not being able to cope up and move on that they chose to totally forget about you. Isko and I no longer have news about them, the last being was that they moved towns to heal. I hope you understand people have different ways of burying their pain"

Teo wipes the snot from his nose and he picks up another stone from the ground;

"Isko is at the gates, he must have been the toughest kid back then and even now, he still tends to act as one; but the toughest kid could not even step in here to visit you as well. I know he is hurting from the death of his mother, like how I am hurting with the loss of my foster father, those losses took a huge part of us. Yet your death was the first loss that we both had, and that loss left a huge void in both of us. I want you to know that we remained your friends all these years. We must have not been able to visit you regularly but you were always remembered. I understand if you still cannot forgive a friend who caused you your death, because after all, a friend would not kill another friend, right?" Teo weeps as he settles another stone on the grave

"I came here to finally admit my partaking in your death. I was terrified of Isidro back then, I was not as accepting as you were and I should have been as courageous as you, but I chose to be afraid, I chose to be unaccepting of people who looked different from us. I chose to run away, pushed you away and eventually got you killed. To that I am really sorry," he takes air in and closes his eyes, "I hope you can forgive a friend, Lito"

The stones that are settled on top of each other crumble and gets scattered into the ground; with the new stones that Teo stack up along with the old stones that had been stacked up originally. Seeing the phenomenon, Teo weeps audibly and puts his clenched fist into his mouth as he shivers from weeping which takes him a long moment before he finally gathers back his composure;

"I accept it, Lito"

Teo wipes away his tears and his snot before he stands to fix his coat. With one last look at Lito's grave, he nods as if to bid farewell at him before he steps away and walks into the pathway. While walking away, he suddenly looks up to the sky only to realize that the night sky starts to devour the orange glow of the afternoon sky.