War drums, war chants, mournful choirs wailing in archaic languages over the misfortune and lament of man…
Screams and cries and explosions and the clang of metal, the lonely sobs of a child left without a home…
He did this. This carnage, this hopelessness, this destruction. He caused this.
It was his fault.
It was all his fault.
_000_br /
What the populace doesn't see is the haunted looks in the veterans' eyes.
The people don't see the blood on their hands that they can never seem to wash away. The blood has stained them.
Empty eyes, bloodied hands, burning bodies, massacre, what do they know of this? What have they been told?
Only families see the deep repercussions.
There aren't enough victims left for the victim's families to watch scars attempt heal over, ugly and unforgivingly painful. The scars still grow and score furrows through the nation's people.
In this grief, in this aftermath, a golden-haired child soldier's difficulties fade into obscurity.
Just as the light in his eyes did.
_000_
The man said he'd never do something like it again. He had caused too many families to be ripped apart. He had destroyed too many cities and ended too many lives.
Yet here he was again, reeling from the orders he had to obey.
At least this time it didn't qualify as genocide. Only a battle on two sides.
No one was counting the civilian causalities. If they did, something tells the man that the nation's collective outrage could send him to the gallows.
He deserves worse.
_000_
He doesn't wear red any more.
It reminds him too much of blood-stained snow.
Black was more fitting. Black was the colour of mourning.
_000_
The girl waits.
She doesn't know that only a husk will come home to her.
He won't say anything to spite her rage.
His voice is gone. Stolen.
Her voice will cry out for an answer to her questions.
Just what new hardship has blackened his soul while he was away?
His soul wasn't blackened, as she will think. There is only a fragment of what used to be.
_000_
Far away, the ghosts of the child soldier and his brother's past call out for the return of their son.
They call out for what has been stolen.
The light in his eyes. His voice. His laughter.
They call out for what has died.
His laughter. His voice. The light in his eyes.
One voice rises high above the rest.
It weeps for the fate of its sons.
One is alone. One is little more than a shell.
And still the blood runs into the snow.
With the falling of each drop, something deep down inside the child soldier succumbs to the darkness.