Roses
By Pata Hikari
Based off characters and situations created by dan heron
The mansion was abandoned.
Burned and ruined, it was no longer a place to live in. It was a shrine to those who had once inhabited is, and those who had destroyed them.
The burned walls had a symbol painted all over them. A simple white cross, painted again and again.
It was simple to tell who had destroyed this home.
Aliku walked through the gates, no longer serving any purpose due to being twisted and broken. The stone pathway was cracked and uneven.
"Two weeks." Aliku said, two weeks ago this had been the home of a kind and wealthy businessman. Now it was his grave.
The front door was shattered; a battering ram had done the deed. She walked into the once elegant manor.
"Keh. Nothin' of value left." The entryway had been pillaged, all that remained were torn curtains and shattered furniture. She had no doubt that the rest of the house was the same.
Inside the kitchen were some old servants, still dressed for a days work, slumped over counters, covered in dried blood.
"All the young lookin' ones are gone. Go figure." The air was thick with the stench of rot, not only of the corpses but the food had gone bad as well.
"What's this?" Behind the house there was a garden, filled with plants and shrubs. To her surprise the garden was relatively untouched, only a few trees knocked over.
Down in the garden there were rose bushes. Dozens upon dozens of rose bushes. The businessman had liked roses, it seemed. Already they were beginning to go wild, no gardeners to keep them in check.
Aliku picked a rose, its blossom a deep velvet. The thorns pierced her hand, red blood leaked out, defiling the simple beauty.
For a moment she wondered, what was the difference between herself and those who had destroyed this home, other then the things they targeted?
All her life, all the deaths she had both seen and caused, she had only cried once. When she had realized that the people she was fighting, the people she was killing, were just that; people with hopes and dreams like her own. Yet, because they had chosen different sides, one of them had to die.
"Perhaps… that's the difference." Aliku dropped the bloody rose.
The mansion burned. It burned unlike anything else. The fire did not touch the land around it. And Aliku left the fires, left the flames that consumed memory.
The End