His hair is a bird's nest.
The ravens come and go, carrying epaulets and golden buttons and belt buckles sprinkled with blood. They glisten in the starlight and he wonders whether this is the beauty, the one everyone was fighting and dying for. It did not seem worth it, and he asked the ravens about it until he believed he understood their answer.
It sounded the same as men's speech. Screeches and cries and silence.
The birds never stay for long. They leave their trinkets on his lap and he offers them onigiri taken out of a sleeve down the field. He is not picky. Neither are the ravens; they peck from rice dry from time and moist from dew, say their thanks and fly away. They have work to do, lots of it. Battlefield is always full of nice things that nobody will miss anymore.
He collects the trinkets afterwards and hides them in the soil of field and wishes he would be once gathered by someone, too.
Sometimes he wonders whether he is not one of them. Strange kind of bird with no beak and no wings. If he floated his arms forcefully enough, maybe he would soar and disappear into the vast sky. He tries, but either becomes hungry or the bloody rain starts falling from clouds again and flying seems appealing no more. After all, his feathers are white, and remain so even with mud and countless rainpours burning red marks on his skin.
He cannot be a raven, no matter how much he tries.
The problem is that he does not want to be a human either.
One day, a pair of titmice comes to him with dried grass and twigs and tiny branches. He mistakes them for small ravens until they fly on the top of his head and start pulling his hair and kneading them with grass. He keeps his posture straight despite cramps in his neck and his legs going sleeping and shelters the nest from wind and rainstorm with hands no bigger than the birds.
He figures that if he cannot become a bird, he will be a tree.
Then the army comes, then another one and he runs away from clashing blades and smell of death and horses spitting foam in agony. He runs and, just as he has learned in countless encounters before, does not stop until the sounds of battle die out in the distance. He then leans on the trunk of long-dried cherry tree standing lonely in the deserted land and reaches to brush his damp hair. His fingers stumble upon the ingenious construction created with materials tediously carried in tiny pecks from afar. The nest; but the nest should be warm and chirping and not this empty, abandoned wreath unknowingly caught in the war that is not its own. He feels sad, but he never cries and does not do so now. Instead, he disentangles the nest from his hair and puts it on the lowest branch of the cherry tree. He is sure that had the birds returned, it could do his job much better than he ever could have.
He returns to the battlefield, because that is where he belongs.
A recent battle means food; fresh and tasty and not infested with worms and horseflies. The pungent smell of dying is hanging over the plain together with morning mist and familiar flocks of ravens. No titmice in sight; he wonders if they got messed with the rain of bullets or got their flight halted by a blade in their blessed ignorance. He eats rice still warm from the not yet faded body heat of a fallen man and thinks that if that is not the case, they have nowhere to come back. He made them lose it, their shelter, their home. He wonders whether birds have their own battlefields, where the little lost creatures sit in the dawn, dine on rice stolen from corpses and make a hasty escape when the fight draws near.
For the first time, he wonders what having a home feels like.
The man is tall, with no armour and no glint of blood thirst in his eyes. He knows better. Men in cloth and men with gentle hands and men trembling in fear; he saw them all unsheathe their blades and cut into flesh with precision of seasoned warriors. He has his own sword now, even though it is too heavy to carry but on his shoulder. The ravens brought it one day, attracted by the reflection of moonlight on the silver threads woven into the scabbard. And in the scabbard it remains, because the soldiers still seem taller than trees and their horses thrice as much. So he keeps on running and the sword tangles into his yukata and he knows he cannot protect anything since nothing is his.
The man crosses the battlefield and he lays his hand in his hair. The titmice return for a passing moment, their feet turned into human fingers building their nest once again. The man smiles and his smile is warm and he catches himself vowing to never let go of this nest.
He has a sword to fight, after all.
The man calls him a demon and it still does not feel right, but he figures it could suffice.