(Originally posted March 2012)

Even on Good Friday there was hope. Hope that the one they had followed, the one they had believed would conquer Rome and free them all would come down from the cross and save them. On Saturday, all hope was gone.

What will happen now?

Drops of dew cling to blades of grass. Fog shrouds the earth like the gauzy cloth they had wrapped around their master hours before, burying their hopes and dreams behind a huge, grey, immovable rock.

Everything is still. Not even the slightest breeze rustles the leaves, or stirs the thick, stifling air. As though the earth, like all of them, holds its breath. Waiting.

What will happen now?

Memories of the day before assault them. They shudder. A day filled with slashes of red and suffocating, unnatural dark. The clanging of metal against metal and the laughter – the screeching, mocking laughter. Sights and sounds they will never be able to erase from their minds.

They tremble. They bury their faces in their hands. They wait for the pounding on the door, for rough hands to drag them away to the same fate as the one they had followed. The one they had believed in. The one they had given everything up for. For nothing.

They weep, shoulders heaving, reaching for one another in a desperate – and vain – attempt to find comfort. Comfort needs hope, so there is no comfort anywhere, in anything.

Except maybe in the faint, whispery echoes of the words he had spoken to them. Talk of the third day, of the temple destroyed and rebuilt. Words they didn’t understand then and cannot begin to comprehend now. Whispers they try to reach for, to grasp, but that dissipate in their numb fingers like the morning mist on the sea.

They sit, knees drawn to chests and backs pressed to cold, damp walls. They mourn. For him. For themselves. They wait. They try to draw in one painful breath after another, pushing back thoughts that it would be better to just stop trying.

What will happen now?