That Lithuania should set the garland on Poland's head was just one out of that head full of bright ideas and dancing lights. It was ritual, it meant something.

She kissed her forehead and crowned her with flowers.

/

The way Lithuania remembers it, Poland wore flowers every day after that, even when they rode to war. A pansy tucked behind her ear winked out just as she lowered her visor. (At tourneys, they wore each other's favours.)

/

It wasn't crushed red petals in the bootprints in the snow that other day; it was just blood.

/

There was an old dream. At the dimmest midnight of the bleakest winter of her own captivity, Lithuania would dream the door open and Poland there, holding high a light. Or Poland with her arms full of flowers, crowned with splendour, bringing back the spring.

/

It is 194x, and Lithuania suffers, and dreams again of Poland. Poland who can no longer answer her calls. Dreams: Poland strung up and suffocating, her eyes full of death.

They made her a crown of barbed wire.