The train's whistle blew signaling the passengers to board.
In the distance a conductor yelled, "ALL ABOARD!"
Steam rose from the engines, and breath crystalized from the people surrounding the platform, their cheeks colored red and the cold nibbled at their noses. In the middle of the chaos, there stood a young man holding the hand of what looked to be his lady no older than fourteen. Her hair was black as a peregrine's feathers and she wore a dress that was made of silk with a woolen overcoat, spelling out to the onlookers that she was indeed a Lady. She received a lot of looks as she was the definition of beauty, the cold made her skin pale as new fallen snow contrasting that of her hair dark as midnight and her cheeks red as roses. Her hair rested in a bun on the top of her head and her corset gave her one of the smallest waists in France, meanwhile, the young man wore clothes that were covered in dirt at the knee and the hem of his pants, his overcoat was fashioned with a few holes and the sleeves were a bit too short. This man's face was bearded and his blonde hair was pressed somewhat sloppily against his head. His eyes were of a jolly demeanor and even though it was the middle of January, his hands weren't cold, as he held his lady's.
He brought her small, soft hands to his chapped lips and kissed them. She looked at him with a sort of longing and tears began to fill her ice blue eyes making them glossy.
"Y…you will write? Won't you?" she asked, the train exhaust filling her nose and sticking to her dress while her breath snuck out of her lips left slightly agape clouded between them.
"Every day…" he said simply, bringing her newly kissed hands to his cheek. She felt the rough against her skin and it almost tickled. He looked her in the eye, "Miss. Alma, please…if something were to happen…."
"Do not say that, please, do not say that…" she pleaded.
"Please," he interrupted her as he didn't have much time, "Alma listen, if something were to happen to me, remember me as I am. Right now, how I look, how I kiss you. My dear Alma, do that for me…"
"Take it back, say a prayer quickly, take it back." Alma knew that he was going to Mexico, France had invaded as to help put an end to the revolution.
"Say one for me…" he told her just before placing a kiss on her forehead. She stepped forward and hugged him rather strongly for her small frame. She didn't want to see him leave and was almost sure that she wasn't going to the train station, she was too angry with him. Then, she thought that if it were the last time that if she were to see him, she wanted him to know that he was loved, the only man she loved, the only man she promised to love.
She tilted her head, looking him in the eyes one last time, the eyes that were so kind, remaining the same ever since she was only a small child of six. He was in her dreams, her only wish, he was her hope and everything that should possibly need. He looked down at her, thinking of the times he'd spent with her, and she smiled as if reading those thoughts with him. He's looking at her and she's so beautiful, it was the perfect sendoff.
She looked at his lips and he looked back, she wished to live like that forever 'till time overtook the world and the lands became the oceans and the oceans dried. She wished to surpass that time, living forever even when her family and friends stopped breathing, turned cold and became nothing but a coffin of dust underneath the lands that would have disappeared.
She wished to stay that way until she met her family and friends, then one day, someone would come along and decide to remove their entwined bodies only to turn them to dust at the stoke of a hand. Alma had given everything to this man leaving her naked and still, her took her.
She hated him for leaving her. Their love was pain but she'd never cut it out even if she had the option. She didn't want him to walk away, she pleaded and begged until her knees hurt, but in the end, he did.
He kissed her on the mouth and turned away from her, boarding the train.
With that kiss, she told him all of the things that she hadn't before, she told him that she'd wait as long as she could, she told him thank you for being there and if he came back, she'd do the same for him. With that kiss she told him, "I love you…"
When she looked back, he became a ghost in the night, disappearing in the exhaust and morning fog, never would Aaron be seen again as he'd been killed during battle, another martyr to a cause that had already won, little did he know that this was to happen to him.
A few months later, Alma went with her brothers to live a home for Peculiar Children.