"Well you can go straight to the Devil!" the woman lashed out, waving a wooden spoon near Ivan's head. Ivan stepped back, clutching his hat to his chest. Although it had been five years since he left his regiment, most of the peasants still took it upon themselves to loathe Ivan.

"Can I at least buy a dress? I need a present for my sister…" Ivan began assertively, but ended in a weakened tone.

The tall peasant lady glowered at him. She was thick-set but by no means flabby. Her arm muscles tightened when she met Ivan's eyes. Her own were of a similar color, as was her hair that was tied into a thick braid down her shoulder. She ran her fingers along her stained white apron and sighed. "Varvara! Come over her," she called to one of her workers. She sold fabrics and dresses from her own home. It was midday and she had been preparing a meal, hence the wooden spoon. She handed the utensil to Varvara and ordered her to watch the soup while she dealt with Ivan.

As she chose out a blue dress with a white collar, she continued to upbraid Ivan for his cowardice in battle. "And look at your arm now! Sure, a bit bumpy and crooked, but you can shoot with the other hand! You leave your men as though they hardly matter. Have you no conscience? You parasite!"

Ivan took it all in without arguing. He was set on visiting Natalia the next morning and then going to see Katrina. It would take him several hours to get from Moscow, his current location, to Natalie's home in Vitebsk. Then it would take another few hours to go to Katrina's home in Odessa. Sighing, he purchased the cloths and even tipped the girl.

She looked at the gold pieces in her palm with awe. "No, sir, you are taking these back." She grabbed Ivan's sleeve and tugged him forth, pressing them back into his hands. "I was rude to you. Albeit, you did deserve it, but you should have paid me less!"

"No, you should have charged me more," Ivan said solemnly, replacing the coins and leaving with the package in his hands.

He exited her home and started towards the street. He past a monastery and smiled politely at one of the monks. They smiled back and wished him a good day.

The sun shone fiercely overhead. Several fleecy clouds occasionally went past it, but were cut by light and hardly noticed. Summer had set in hotly that year. Ivan rolled up his sleeves involuntarily and slid into the cabby, telling the directions curtly and sitting back.

The cabby, a balding man with watery eyes wanted to speak, but once glance at Ivan told him it was better not to. He recognized the man, as everyone else did, as the colonel who left his regiment for a small wound on his arms. But the man had a good heart and could see in Ivan's foggy, mournful eyes that he had suffered enough grief already.

Like many foolish men that believe their honor must be held at all costs, Ivan had taken all his sorrow and locked it away inside. Many of his female friends, who knew how to deal with sadness better than he, insisted that he weep at least once.

"It will clear your mind!"

"Nothing weakens the pain of loss like the shedding of a few tears, Braginsky!"

But Ivan refused. And, also like other men of the same stretch of cloth, he forced himself to divert his attention with conversation. When he did so he became uncharacteristically animated and loud. Those he spoke with understood that he was upset and submitted to his often cruel comebacks.

Ivan held the package in his hands, rolling the string that bound it between two fingers. He had already bought Katrina a present and it lay in his satchel which was strung over his shoulder. He shouldered it, checking to see if it was present out of habit.

The road stretched on and it was not until early the next morning that he reached Vitebsk. The sun began to part the horizon and climb up. He paid the cabby duly and exited the carriage, his legs numb from being stuck in a certain position for too long. It was a short walk along a clean path to Natalia's home. He followed the address that was printed on one of her recent letters. Yawning, he knocked on the wooden door.

Moments later, Natalia opened the door. She had changed greatly, as she had predicted all those summers ago. Her hair was thicker and tied up. She had grown more beautiful and stern, her face hardening with age and her eyes wearied by the years. She kissed Ivan's cheek and embraced him briefly, letting him enter. Ivan thought that she did not miss him as much as he hoped. But she had. She refused to show him this and, once his back was turned away, her face contorted in an effort to suppress cries of joy.

"Breakfast is made, come sit at the table. You are no guest." She said. She spoke Russian but formatted her sentences in the French way, as does happen when one does not speak a certain language for so long. Ivan then stopped her, touching her shoulder, and holding out the present. She took it and thanked him, kissing his cheek again and setting it away, gesturing him to go into the kitchen.

He pulled a wooden chair over, causing it to scrape the floor. He plumped down heavily and looked at the meal laid out; soup, bread, red tomatoes, fruits, rye bread, and glasses of milk. Natalia refused to drink anything but milk or water at breakfast. She sat down and admired Ivan's face for a moment.

"You've changed so much." Ivan commented, picking up a piece of rye bread and fingering it.

"So have you. I'd say you've changed more than I have." Natalia responded and sipped her milk. Drops of it stuck to her lips and she licked them away.

What Natalia said was true. Ivan had grown skinnier, for one, as his appetite had lessened greatly due to his depression. He often forgot to buy food some days and locked himself away in his study, reading the same book for the umpteenth time and forgetting to even sleep. He fell asleep on the couch and Sveta, who stubbornly refused to leave his side, had to gently set him on the couch. She felt sorry for him and had forced him to visit his sisters in the first place.

Ivan's face had grown gaunt and now he sported a mustache that limply hung down. White hairs had begun appearing on his scalp and along his temples. Spots of age also presented themselves at the base of his cheeks and his neck. He scraped at the plate with a short and not so clean fingernail. Shrugging, he agreed softly to it.

"How was Paris?"

"It was good. I spent some time in Lorraine and Alsace in the summers." She itched to tell Ivan about the man with the red ribbon. Although his name had slipped away from her memory, his impression on her and that ribbon remained deeply embedded in her mind. She waited for the right moment to tell Ivan.

"What do you do now?"

"I work on translations and I am often inviting to diplomatic tasks."

"I see…"

Natalia could no longer refrain herself and cleared her throat, biting into a tomato and gathering her thoughts. Ivan watched her expectantly.

"When I was in Paris I met a most remarkable gentleman," she began.

"Don't tell me you made him your husband." Ivan snorted.

She colored at once, her cheeks reddening and her eyes flaring in rage. "No, don't be a fool! As I was saying, I met him on a rainy day. Why I was out then is beyond me, but I was. Regardless, I spoke to him. I can't remember what he told me but I do remember that he was most kind and, in a way, he reminded me of you."

"How so?"

"He had the air of someone who had lost a great deal."

Ivan nodded, casting his eyes downwards.

Ivan left shortly thereafter. Natalia, following breakfast, showed him around the lively city and taking him to the forest as well. She then cooked several of her Drainikis and bade him off. Once he was gone and Natalia was left alone in her home, she began to weep.

She brought her hands to her face and sobbed freely. Her large tears slipped down her cheeks and moistened her hands, her small shoulders shaking. She wept for Ivan, for his loss of his loved one whom she dared not ask about, and she wept in part for herself. She found it selfish to pity herself so, but she could not stop from doing so. She was so piteous, she decided, for her loneliness and her inability to keep Ivan there longer than a few hours. Most visitors after such a long journey stay a night or two, but Ivan refused to do so. He was stubborn in his own way.

Natalia, the cold, calculating, and quiet girl felt in that moment warm, driven by emotion, and obstreperous. But that feeling faded away and she continued on with her daily routine, picking up a leaf of paper and composing a letter to one of her friends in the nearby town of Lepel.

Ivan fell into a light doze on the trip to Odessa, his head bobbing down and his chin nearly touching his chest. He clutched his bag where his gift to Katrina was, ascertaining that it was there.

That night he reached the town and sleepily walked to Katrina's small house along the edge. He rapped on the door, yawning. The rustle of skirts followed from inside and the door flung open. Katrina looked at him and burst into gleeful tears, embracing her broth and gesturing for him to come in.

Unlike her sister, Katrina chose a more rural lifestyle. She lived in a wooden house at the edge of Odessa. The rooms inside were not parted by doors but rather by blue, striped curtains. Only the back and front doors were made of hard wood. She ushered Ivan into the living room, her face red from emotion. She clutched her skirts and pushed off the white kerchief from her now lengthened hair, and brought out a samovar. In the kitchen, lighted by a candle, Ivan watched her ignite the wood beneath the samovar and place the teapot atop it. While that boiled, she went back to Ivan and sat by him.

She grabbed his hands and pressed it, finding her voice again. "Oh my dear, sweet brother! Dearest of mine, how I've missed you! Give your sister a kiss."Ivan kissed her cheek. "You've changed!" she giggled, as his mustache had tickled her, "Oh how much you've changed…" she added in a glummer tone.

"How have you been?" Ivan asked, fishing for her present in his bag.

"I've been well so far. I have work and a cow. I think I'll be fine for now."

Ivan dimly recalled a cow lowing when he knocked on the door. He pulled out the gift, wrapped in brown paper, and held it out to her. She flushed and took it, letting go of Ivan's hand that she had been pressing tightly. She peeled of the paper and burst again into tears of joy.

"How lovely! Oh how absolutely lovely!" in her hands she held a wooden carving of a sparrow. Ivan smiled. She brought the bird to her lips and kissed it, placing it on a table and then taking Ivan's hand and kissing that too. Her neck reddened from her intense emotions.

Ivan could only pet her hair.

"How sorrowful, how dreadfully sorrowful… I've heard about that ball those years ago, Ivan." Katrina said, suddenly changing the subject.

Ivan made a strange sound in his throat that faintly sounded like "how".

"I believe you've met one of my acquaintances, Felix? Well, he sent me a letter not long after the—oh I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"

Ivan had begun to cry. Tears spilled out of his eyes, as though a dam had been broken. He had bottled up his emotions for so long that now they flowed like a waterfall. He bowed his head and covered his reddened face. He wiped his tears with the backs and wrists of his hands.

"I'll bring the tea," Katrina said. The room had begun to smell of burnt wood.

For the next hour Ivan wept, trying to drink tea but spilling entire cups on his shirt front twice. He tugged at his hair and wept himself dry of tears. Katrina spent that time alternatively apologizing and consoling him. She took the red and black shawl off her shoulders and wrapped it around Ivan, holding him to her bosom and petting his head.

"What I find the saddest of all of this…" he croaked out some time after his final sob ceased to ring in the air, "Is that you still don't have a family to care for…"

"Oh my dear brother…" Katrina said, trying to refrain from bursting into tears herself.

"I say this honestly, sister. You are no longer in your first youth! You let your loveliest years slip away without a single suitor."

"Not a single one…" Katrina muttered and kissed his forehead. She wanted to make a comment about Ivan being a widower but decided rightfully so against it.

Ivan raised his head from her shoulder, where it had migrated during the course of his sobs, and kissed her cheek again. He wiped his eyes and a yawn ripped at his mouth.

"Sleep, I'll set up the guest bed." She stood, gently setting him on the couch, and pushed the curtain away from the extra bed in the house. She set it, bending over and sending a wave of pain through her back. She rubbed her side, fearful that her age had finally caught up with her.

After finally downing a complete cup of tea, Ivan shed his outer layer of clothing and dropped down on the bed, falling asleep instantly. Katrina watched him sorrowfully, tucking him in and shutting the curtain around him, plunging him into the moonlit darkness.

For once, Katrina did not cry out of sympathy. She could only look at the blue curtain with glittering eyes. Her brother had suffered so much in his life. He had gone to war with the full expectancy of dying then and there, happy that Yao would be at home, and that his sister were healthy. One of those things, perhaps the biggest to him, did not happen and thus he was plunged into infinite grief. Katrina then, deciding what to do in an instant, smiled to herself and went outside. There, in the bluish darkness, she plucked up a flower. She dusted it off from soil while watching the stars glitter overhead. The distant rumbling of horses sounded in the distance, along with the talk of various peasants.

In the front of her house, several bells were placed upon metal hooks. In the summer wind they rung, but their sound was drowned out by emotion: summer bells ringing silently, just as they had for Yao so long ago. His heartbreak had silenced them and now her's did too.

She returned to the house, locking the door behind her, and pulled open the curtain.

Ivan appeared at complete peace for the first time in five years. His face was expressionless and dried tears stained his cheeks. His hair fell over his face, over the faint line between his eyebrows. She placed the flower on his chest and left him to sleep.

It was a sunflower.

Notes on "translation":

When Anya (the seamstress at the beginning) says "You have no conscience! You parasite!" it's a direct translation of a Russian phrase. It does not carry over with the same meaning but I felt that this rendering of the phrase would be the most exact. It means basically that "You have no morals, you jerk!"

Odessa is a city in Ukraina. Vitebsk is a city in Belarus. It is a nice city, similar to Minsk. Lepel is a smaller city/town near Vitebsk.

Kerchiefs are essentially bandannas that are worn on one's head.

A samovar is a notorious Russian technology used to make tea by placing fire at the end and allowing boiling water and smoke to heat up the teapot on top. Now there are electric samovars.

All those kisses are part of culture. I was tempted to write kissing on the lips or mouth because that is also a tradition, but it could have been misinterpreted.

The Russians speaking French is no uncommon thing. French culture was spreading through Europe and plagued Russia especially. This occurred around the Napoleonic era. French, around 1812, became a dangerous thing to speak in Russia for some time.

Speaking of dates: this story is set in the eighteen hundreds. The war is fictitious.

I realize that Yao should probably have been older. My bad, sorry.

Yao, on that note, did in fact return home. Whatever happened to him I will remain ambiguous about. Firstly because it's fun and secondly because I want to leave it to the reader's imagination. I suppose he could have become an elderly man trekking through the mountains and offering wisdom to all those who asked for it.

Also-when Yao speaks of Achilles, if I recall correctly, he is referring to the part of the Iliad where Achilles grows stubborn and refuses to fight for the Danaans.

And finally-THANK YOU ALL! Thanks for all the support with your reviews. Thanks for reading! I hope you had as much fun reading as I had writing.

I enjoy writing like this. I think I'll do something similar in the future. Maybe one to do with France next...