The view from the top of the rusty water tower was eternal. Tall ears of corn rippled like an endless, golden ocean as the hot, dry wind played across the fields; time lived now would never end, would never grow old and could easily be re-lived at will.

The heat from the afternoon sun carried a physical weight; it pushed down on bare shoulders and pounded on exposed heads.

She lay back, hitched up her skirt a modest way, and exposed white legs to the heat. Closing her eyes she could hear skylarks overhead, singing as if nothing but they existed in the world. It wouldn’t matter if she stayed here forever and the thought made her smile.

Sitting a dozen yards behind the tower in the shade of an elderly oak, her family watched her final moments with tear-filled joy.

She died then and the skylark didn’t care enough to break his song.