The sun rose up over the crumbling plaster elephant in the square. It had been there since Napoléon I's reign, half-finished,
becoming the home for several gamins who had nowhere else to go. The feet of the giant elephant seemed to be tinged in red, as did the entire square which it inhabited. This effect could have simply been the result of the rising sun, or it could have been the effect of the blood still running in the cracks and gutters of the street. The blood was meant to have been unseen by the public, meant to have been gone by the morning after which it had flown. Alas, much like the plaster elephant in the square, the cleaning up of the blood was a job half-finished.

The source of the red rivulets glistening in the square were the several barricades situated throughout the city. All but one had fallen on the first day of the rebellion, and even that final barricade had eventually been eradicated. The guardsmen who had been told to squash every and any possible revolutionary had, unlike their governmental counterparts, had successfully executed their orders. Only two men who were present at that final barricade had managed to escape. Every other person who had chosen to fight for their beliefs had done so until their last breath.

The dead bodies of those brave souls were picked up the next day, their wounds still gaping, eyes still reflecting an odd mixture of horror and determination, and roughly dumped onto to the cobblestone streets of an alley behind the café frequented by the now dead students. Almost immediately had gamins and women of the night descended upon the bodies, looking for anything of value. They found almost nothing, save for two rings on the fingers of what used to be a married couple. It was strange, thought the gamin that spotted the rings first, that there was a woman part of the barricade. As far as he knew, the rebellion had mostly been planned by law students at the local university, and they rarely made any contact women during their meetings at the café. Even more surprising was the fact that it was the leader of the group who was married. The gamin had always assumed that the leader of the rebellion was one of those men who was married to the cause, not married to an actual flesh-and-bone woman. He wondered how this woman had managed to convince the leader to marry her, for convincing the leader of the rebellion to even change the fashion in which he wore his cravat was no less a feat than conquering Russia. The gamin had seen the way the leader sneered at women of the night who tried to seduce him, and he had been close witness to the way he had rebuked his friend for speaking about the girl he loved. How then, had the leader not only fallen in love, but also married the woman who now laid next to him? It was obvious, even in death, that the couple were deeply in love, however. Their pinky fingers were lightly touching, and when their bodies had been found, their hands had been deeply intertwined. It seemed that nothing, not even the horrible death they had suffered through, nor the life they had lived, would be able to tear them apart.