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On the edge of the town it was almost almost pure alabaster, covering the fields and the trees. The dark evergreens were just caligraphy strokes against paper-whiteness.
They were colorful dots, though, in their thick winter jackets, a child's paint on a parent's will. A mother in red, a daughter in purple, a father in blue. The clothes were painstakingly made by bare, warm hands, each little misstitch just another way of saying "I know who made this, this was made just for me."
And even in the cold white nothingness, there was this odd feeling of warm and caring among the inevitable slaughter. They would all be gone soon, but here they were, just a simple family scene.
Blue mittens held purple ones, nearly swallowing them in yarn. She was tiny, barely went to his torso, but she had plenty of himself practically traced onto her face. The same eyes, the same lips, same button nose. All that was there, hidden past scarfs and hats.
"When will you be back?" She asked, her voice cracking the way a child's does when they're near sobbing. "A lot of people haven't come back. But you will, right?" He chuckled, low and without the nervousness he felt deep in his heart.
"I will. I promise." He leaned in, touched his foreheard to hers, feeling the warmth, the yarn in the hat, her dark brown bangs poke out from under it just barely. "I'll come back home from the battles and we'll be together."
"But what if you don't?" She said. Her mother stepped forward, saying the little girl's name, but he stood up and motioned her back. This was him and her now, she was just a sentry, a witness.
There was a breeze, the sort of lonely wind that blows through melancholy days. His fingers reached up to his neck and undid the scarf, and the blue billowed and twisted as he handed it to the purple girl. "Take it. Wear it. And if I don't return?" There was a playful sort of smile trained on his lips. "This is your flag, your symbol of revolution. And you will run into the fray with it." She held it, gripped it, and nodded.
"It's a promise." He laughed, mirthful and low.
And when he finally walked towards town, towards the rest of the eventual warriors, the scarf was still in her hands. And she wasn't going to cry. She was going to be the strong one in her house now.
The tears leaking down her face weren't crying by any means. They were necessary, a means of release.
---
On the edge of town there was fire and blood on the snow. She was standing her ground as they marched forward, holding her hand-made spear in her hands. Something she made for herself and herself alone.
They were afraid, all those who stood behind her. The bravest amoung them was a small, waifish girl ready to make them all pay.
The winter coat she wore was oversized, made for a woman at least 3 times her age, stained with that woman's and her killer's blood.
The girl still had her father's eyes, the wartorn, seen too much eyes. The kind he had near his end. They were wide, dark, surrounded by shadows and haunted by the need for sleep and retribution, the ghosts of so many dancing in front of her old eyes in the weaker moments.
There they were, an army of monsters surrounded by shadows and fear. But she stood tall, the spear in her fingers held rigid. The came faster. She heard their battle cries. Heard the trampling of their feet. The whites of their eyes.
A blue scarf billowed on her spear. Her revolution flag. Spotless.
She raised the spear in the air and her voice, powerful and small, shrieked over the battle cries.
"CHARGE!"