The morning after the chaos, the sky refused to turn blue.
Thick clouds hung low over the valley, pressing their weight on the earth below, as if mourning alongside the people of San Isidro. There was no song of birds, no rustle of leaves—only the hush of a town caught between grief and fear.
Mateo's house smelled of dried lavender and silence. His mother sat by the kitchen window, the same place she used to peel fruit while watching him play in the fields. Her hands were motionless now, her gaze fixed on the tree where his swing still moved, gently, as if pushed by a ghost.
The news called it an "incident." The mayor blamed "agitators." But in San Isidro, they knew the truth. The banners had fallen. The blood had stained the soil. And the youngest among them had paid the price.
They buried Mateo under the old fig tree.
People came without speaking. The church bells did not ring, but each footstep on the gravel felt like a prayer. A wooden box, too small for dreams, was lowered into the earth. Someone tried to say a few words, but his voice broke halfway. In the silence that followed, Mateo's father took a handful of soil and let it fall—slow, steady, final.
"A seed never dies," someone whispered.
That night, the wind returned.
It howled through the broken windows of the schoolhouse and scattered the last protest flyers down the main road. A group of teenagers gathered in secret, lit candles, and read aloud from a journal Mateo had hidden beneath his mattress. He had written about freedom. About a future with trees, and books, and laughter.
"He saw more than we ever did," said Camila, his cousin, clutching the notebook like scripture. "We can't let them bury him and his voice too."
No one answered. But the silence had changed.
It was no longer the stillness of fear. It was the quiet before the rain. The hush of seeds waiting in the dark.
Far from the village, the land stood untouched, but the crops had stopped growing. Even the trees seemed to bend under a sorrow they could not name.
Something had ended.
A generation.
A dream.
A boy.
But under the soil, something remained. Something stubborn. Something sacred.