'Scattering' by Cate McGowan

Rita books the volcano tour for November. Not for the novelty. Not for the view. But because it’s empty.

Dormant, the guidebooks say. Resting, say the locals, with a particular squint. The air smells rusty. The path up is cracked and steaming in places like the earth’s thinking hard beneath her boots.

She hikes slowly. Not from fatigue, but because it feels rude to rush. At the rim, she sits. Unclips the jar. Glass, with a metal clasp and his hand-written label still smudged on the side: Sugar (Raw).

She waits. The volcano hisses faintly. It’s barely tolerating being a mountain.

“You liked to say fire was honest,” she says to no one. “Which was your way of making bad decisions sound like principles.”

The wind presses against her. Not comforting. Just there.

“You never climbed a thing in your life. Ladders. Stairs. Emotional heights. But here we are.”

She taps the jar once on her knee. The ash shifts inside.

“You’d hate this. You said nature was too theatrical. ‘Always fog or wind or birds screaming like unpaid extras.’”

A bird screams on cue. She smirks.

She opens the jar. The ash is lighter than she remembers him ever being. It eddies in small, uncertain whorls, then dives into the crater in a rush.

“Don’t make this a habit,” she mutters. “No haunting. No smoke signals. Stay in the magma like a grown-up.”

The volcano exhales steam.

She lingers, her hands warm on the jar. The sky is pinkening with effort.

She leaves the label behind. Tucks it into a crevice in the rock.

Sugar (raw). Feels about right.

Then, she begins the descent. Lighter, but not absolved. Just slightly less full of him.