The white dust rose up out of the rectangular hole in the ground, forming a cloud around the crowd of mourners standing around its edge. The two scrawny, vest-clad men working to deepen the ditch made a gentle chinking sound with their tools that combined the low hub of conversation and crying from the mourners. The pick and shovel cut easily through the dry, grey earth, and some of the soil that the two men dumped around the edge of the hole threatened to slide back down into the pit, even as other parts of it floated up to become part of the powder cloud.
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