Regardless of our feelings, life goes on.

The walk back across dusty dirt roads could be called solitude, or loneliness.

It was also the first moment entirely to himself this boy had gotten in days.

Surrounded by abundant life, a change since Sasha Sokolov had come of age amidst the greatest bloodletting of Autumnal history. He’d taken part in more than his fair share, too. Taking lives as easily as breathing.

Would these women want to be anywhere near him if they’d seen what he’d done? Age, gender, and race didn’t matter. Not even the color of the uniform. Only whether you were behind him, fighting alongside, or blocking his path.

Yet this boy, despite all he’d done, been **** to do, and enjoyed doing, was now as harmless as the glowing magical butterflies that were common to this valley in spring. They now positively filled the air by high noon.

No, it was more like he was an atomic bomb. Capable of unleashing hell on Autumn only when certain triggers were met. Beat an atom bomb, knock it around, shoot it, it would just sit there meekly. Only exceedingly-delicate firing mechanisms could unleash the fire.

In the absence of his mechanism, he had time to breathe, to think, to live.

To wonder what had become of the Major, and when she’d return.

It was impossible even for a simple tool to avoid looking around now. Using his goddess-given senses to take it all in. Winds carrying strong, **** pollen from endless flowers now in bloom lining the roadways. Their colors mere sprinkling dots upon the greenery everywhere, with trees and grass locked in their own war.

Passing cliffsides which allowed the flowing, abundant sparkling clean blue waters to flow down in enormous waterfalls. Their distant roar only itself a counterpoint to the rush of the inland sea further on. Sparkling as the water caught the sun high overhead, foam spraying constantly.

He got so lost admiring the waterfalls, so new to the wonders of Lilisburgh spread as causally as the fields of dandelions, that Sasha floated along line one of those little white puffballs.

Until he found himself at a certain hilltop, far from town.

He thought it was just a field of flowers, and indeed many bloomed. But it was absolutely covered with little white stones. Evenly spaced into endless, close-packed rows. Each bore a name and a date. Some were rough-hewn, obviously carved by hand, while others bore the marks of machine tools.

Many were older than the concept of machinery, if these dates were right.

Some were in a language that Sasha couldn’t recognize.

Of course he knew what a cemetery was. It was a necessary public facility, like any other. Every town needed one nearby as surely as they needed a fire station or general store. He didn’t understand why anyone would ascribe it more emotional weight than those services.

So he really didn’t understand why, when he reached the crest of the hill, he found the Captain with tears in her striking sky-blue eyes.

They sparkled off the bright sun just like the reflections on those waterfalls.

Her pink hair rustled in the breeze and that sky-blue ribbon bobbed with her motion. Instead of saying anything, the Captain just pulled him into a hug. Surprised but unconcerned, Sasha let it happen, hugging her back, feeling the strength packed in those arms. Enough **** and power to crush a normal man’s ribs. He glanced over her surprisingly broad shoulders to see what she’d seen.

Captain Kurosawa wasn’t looking at any particular stone, but instead the fields. From this vantage point, he saw they stretched for miles in every direction.

Though he was himself a flicker, he hadn’t grown up in any kind of town, much less one primarily composed of the shorter-lived races. The familiar sight of these endless, close-packed, entirely-ceremonial gravestones was foreign to him.

There was nothing under there. From their spacing, there couldn’t be.

Upon realizing that the Captain had her service sidearm, Sasha took it, but was relieved to find the black pistol empty. Not even a round in the chamber. He returned it promptly, all without the distraught woman in his arms noticing.

“If it wasn’t for the purges, I’d have never gotten where I got. I’m not exactly an academic, I dropped the last year of high school to enlist. Seemed like it might be fun. But they were **** for any two-bit sergeant who got the lads going in the right direction. Raised from the ranks.

I never forgot where I came from, though. Us 'lilies’, we were all a breed apart, and everyone in the 75th knew it. They’d listen to me, because I was one of them. I said I was gonna get them all back home. Well, I did.”

The Captain produced an urn full to bursting with ashes.

“We all agreed, kind of as a joke, if any one of us bought it, we’d get our ashes spread on this hill. Like something out of a movie, it just seemed right. Somebody’s got to catch it, it’s war. If nobody dies, the story isn’t dramatic, right?

None of us wanted this. To be the only one left, to have to carry this heavy thing all the way back across the world…”

Sasha wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing.

“... And now, I can’t get the fucking lid off!”

It was about the only thing he could help her with on this hillside. His automail arm made short work of the lid, and together, they tipped the urn out.

They spread those ashes to a favorable wind, and the soldiers inside were free.

“I was trying so hard not to show you this, sorry. I know you’re dealing with your own stuff. Everyone in town is trying to use you like a renewable resource, and I can’t exactly protest… I’m the one who started it. Just because you lost the Major…”

“Until she comes back, there’s nothing else to do.”

The Captain was silent for a long time after that reply.

Still held securely in his arms, feeling the warm soft-hardness of a man, and the sense of safety that came from having his strength around her like a blanket, she found it easy to lean up on tip-toes and kiss him. Her cheeks flushed with color, and those sky-blue eyes finally dry. Mostly.

“Come on, then. You’ve got work to do, mister! And I don’t just mean the farm. We can’t… none of those bozos would want me to sit here and mope. Not when the fate of this stupid village and its stupid traditions hang in the balance.”

They’d both had their fill and more of ****. The whole world had.

Now it was time to live, and love, and to make new life.

So much blue, green, and fluffy white clouds overhead on the walk home.

Unreachable high for his metal arm, yet like nekomata for countless generations back, he reached anyhow.

Even the races granted wings and flight as their birthright were living beings. They got tired, and faltered. The clouds stayed up there regardless. They had **** in the matter; they formed when conditions were right, and when they grew too heavy, they’d rain back down on these verdant farmlands and lush waterways.

Nobody understood the cycle of life quite the way flickers did.

Sasha Sokolov wouldn’t be alive by the time rockets crewed by brave flickers went up, to finally touch beyond the sky, to the heavens above, but his spirit would go there too.

He had no past to speak of, but through this program, he could make a future that would outlast himself. A family… quite a big one, as well. Children, who would take a part of himself, mixed with others, and go on to do whatever.

They wouldn’t be limited in ways Sasha would always be.

Finally, the farmstead came into view, and all that abundance and life... was still overgrowing the whole place. It was a mess, but that just meant there was plenty to do. He fought the urge to roll up his sleeves and get right back to the stumps.

There were five letters in the mailbox addressed to him.