She stirred the fire with the air of a sous-chef, and the care of an archaeologist.
The key was to be gentle, but firm. Too much stirring would put it out, too little and the fuel wouldn't burn. It was dark now, and she hoped that meant the fire had reached the right temperature.
It certainly felt hot enough.
She'd been tending it for a few hours, and though she'd started it in broad daylight, she'd chosen a bit of forest that was so well-known for its solitude that even satellite images seemed not to exist. The book she'd borrowed surreptitiously from a friend had been cagey on actual numbers, but the upshot was that this type of fuel took a very long time to burn, and that whatever the case, she could expect to be there for quite awhile.
As she broke various parts into pieces with her iron furnace poker, she felt at last that her persistence was paying off. Most of its moisture had likely gone by now, and what once had been several large chunks now were blackened, shrunken ash, unrecognizable from their former grotesque beauty. Several times she'd had to resist the temptation to throw on more accelerant, before she'd remember that doing so wouldn't speed the process along.
She was awfully lonely, though. One could only take the sounds of nature for so long.
Still, it was a small price to pay for the years of abuse she'd suffered at his hands.
His humerus stuck out from the pile, still several inches long despite being a piece of charred ash. She reached out with the poker and broke it in half. The pieces of her ex-husband were getting smaller, and soon there would be nothing left but ash.
She stirred the fire again, humming a cheerful tune as she did.
