The day had been bloody.

All across the battlefield, men lay dying. Blood splattered across faces, silent gazes fixed on something unseeable. Crows moved among the fallen, and searched for scraps of life to take.

At the bottom of a rise, there was a tiny stream. Face-up in that stream lay a boy. Too young to be in battle, too young to understand what he was fighting for.

And far, far too young to die.

But he was dying. The dark stain on his shirt proved that. He may have lived if they had found him, but neither side of the battle spent much time on their fallen. Find the ones with important names, leave the rest for the vultures.

The boy was staring at the sky. He had never been this far south before, and he wasn’t used to seeing such a blue day. There was not a single cloud, and the sun burnt his eyes, but he looked anyway.

His hand was clasped around an object which glittered between his fingers. He’d found it on the way to battle, hidden in the woods while he stumbled through the undergrowth during a forced march. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed to call to him. He had picked it up and carried it with him for the remainder of the war.

Sometimes he could swear that he heard voices at night, coming from it. But he was probably just dreaming.

A crow landed beside him and pecked at his dirty boots. He lacked the strength to shoo it away. And anyway, he didn’t really mind; he didn’t need the boots anymore. He would not be walking again, and the next journey he was to take did not require footwear.

His hand began to feel warm as the sun’s light turned everything to silver. Silver, that was odd -- he could have sworn that sunlight was gold. It didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered now. He felt unusually calm, like he was underwater, or on the edge of sleep.

His hand was hot now, almost burning him. The object inside of it was humming. He didn’t think that rocks could hum, but this one certainly was. It was a soft hum, a comforting one. He closed his eyes. He felt himself leave the earth - it was not how he expected it to feel.

At the bottom of the rise, the crow took off, leaving the empty stream behind.