“Daughter of mine, will you ever marry?” Her father asks her one day beneath the weeping willow tree; a dried-up creek-bed ran beside their feet, the current still alive with crickets and toads and the stagnant rainwater of a world that had not yet washed the sins of the first away with its rushing flood.
“No, Father,” she replies, the hem of her dress muddied by the riverbed and the soles of her feet dirtied as she slipped down into the almost-ravine. Her father remains underneath the weeping willow tree, watching the dark clouds of an approaching storm fall over their safely hidden home.
“Why not?” He asks, plucking herbs from between the roots and praying that the sweetness of his little golden flower would keep her from saying what he fears the most.
She reaches down to pick up a frog from the creek-bed, cupping it in her hands as its throat billowed and deflated with the discordant cacophony of a song. “Because Father; your daughter is going to war.”
Beneath the wispy willow tree, Father weeps for his daughter’s fate.
“Daughter of mine, will you ever yield?” Her mother asks her one day as she tries to cajole her wandering girl back into the gates of the city. The sun has set and the cicadas are alive, buzzing with a song that none but her had the patience to hear and understand.
“No, Mother,” she replies, picking up her sword to face the shadows creeping in and to fight again. It wasn’t mud beneath her feet this time, it was blood, and her armor has rusted copper from the heady thickness of it.
“Why not?” Her mother asks, her nails digging into the wood of their home, charred and ashen and long gone. There is no safety in the broken doorframe anymore. There is no home left in the ruins of a time gone away.
The daughter heaves a heavy sigh, her attention called away by someone shouting her name. She raises her blade once more for justice, for glory, for death, and for ruin. “Because Mother; your daughter has gone to war.”
In the ashes of abandonment, Mother steels her weary gaze.
