There was a wrench buried in the garden, sticking up among the carrots like a rusted hand reaching for the sun.  It was nothing special to on onlooker, nothing worth looking at or even noticing, but it stood firmly in place, having been there so long that the plants about it had curled around it, as if concealing a secret.  As if the carrots longed for the hands that once held the tool, for the hands that once tended them.  So they cradled the wrench, for it stood as a reminder of the time before; before they left, before the destruction, before the sky fell and the world crumbled.

A ray of sun broke through the clouds and tumbled down to glint off a small spot of unrusted metal on the wrench, then bounced up to dance across the cracked windows of the house.  Images, memories of happier times, played and twirled inside the light.  Two children, a little boy and girl, skipped along the broken glass, laughing.  They were playing a game, though exactly what had been lost to time.  They couldn't see the destruction beyond their glass haven - they didn't know what was coming.  They were gay and young and free of such terrible knowledge. 

Then the light that formed them grew resentful of their carefree joy; it ducked back into the clouds jealously,  stealing away the scene and plunging the neighborhood back into its uniform, decrepit grey. The carrots curled their leaves over the abandoned tool in a sudden breeze, protecting it diligently.

So the scene fell back into its tired abandonment.  The breeze ended and the leaves settled, leaving the wrench to stand once more in silent vigil, protecting within the single, bright memory of the little girl and the boy next door, happy and carefree before everything went so terribly wrong.