The sky was filled with smoke and ash. It was everywhere. Ash was on windows, roofs, and streets. It floated down from the sky like snowfall and that is how I tried to think of it. Snow, covering the entire town. Fine snow. I filtered out the putrid stench of flesh burning and the screams of people who experienced this. There should have been no one else in the town, after all I was just on watch after the first raid. No one should have been there. I formed this perfect world around me to block out reality. Sadly, something disturbed my world. The pitter patter of quickening feet on the street just behind me. I turned and found a small child. Immediately she froze. She was exceedingly short and skinny. Her hair filled with the town’s snow, so much so that I could not make out her hair color. Her face was uncommonly circular and well structured. The face was grey with the snow. For a moment I hoped she was a statue. Every muscle was still and tense, even her frightened eyes never moved. Her fist tightened around the purest white doll that ever was. Not even a smudge or blemish appeared on it’s surface. I moved toward her, hoping she would flee from my sight. She did not. She only clutched her doll tighter and brought it toward her malnourished frame. Closer and closer I drew, each step slower than the last to give her some-any time to get away. Nothing. When I came upon her she only put the doll under her tattered and snowy clothes and then held her hands above her. As if the whiteness of this doll was somehow more important than her own life. I swung.

I moved her under an overhang of rock, untouched by the town’s snow. Then I laid her doll next to her head. She kept a white doll spotless for a entire day in the ash and soot. Her doll was the only thing left in the town that had no snow tainting its being. And I walked back through the ash and let the town.