“It smells like roses,” she said and slid on the daybed across him. “Death.” she specified. “It smells like roses.” He didn’t look at her but kept applying ointment on the whining boy, bucking and trashing in his arms. The room was small, separating them from the world. The windows, cranky and crooked, barely managed to hold the iron rods. There was no floor but the land under their feet, cold and deserted. There was no air, but hollow silence, like shattered glass in their chests.  

The medicine had long ago finished, but they were trying their best, reusing the bloody water, again and again, hoping that the infections are preferred to the wounds, to the falling apart skin and unseeing eyes. To feel rather than forget. To die on their will, but not give up on death.  

“What do you mean?” he uttered and withdrew his hands when the tiny figure froze in silence. They both stared at it. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he closed his eyes. He would do it every time someone died. A minute to escort them to that one place, far above their heads. To let it be. At least once. So many single tears had rolled down those cheeks, so many, that even the stars couldn’t count.  

“It’s flowery,” she said and leaned back. She wasn’t crying, nor did pain clench her chest. No memories ripped her mind or haunted her shadow. She just watched him silently bent over the little body, too big to be held in a tight hug but small enough to be forgotten by everyone. “When you take a bath,” she continued, “when you pour it on your skin and rub it in to keep that body. When you serve their wounds. It all smells like roses.”  

“How does that relate to death?” his gaze travelled across her face, body, and back to her face. Her eyes hollow but profound, she answered his gaze and smiled softly. Smiling, despite the cries asserting around them. Despite the blood dripping from the walls and the souls leaving them alone with the ghosts from the past. The shadows of their choices. “They smell like roses.” she breathed. “We all do. And we all are dead like them.” He already knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. His eyes pinned on her face, studying her presence. She wasn’t a healer, a warrior either. She didn’t belong here, and he knew it. Her clothes were expensive, her hair falling in thick waves around her shoulders, her fingers still, laying calmly in her lap, tucked in silk and gold. Her breath flew in thick clouds as the last bits of warmth left their bodies, as snow covered the vestiges of their presence. Of their existence.  

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His eyes darted across her hands. She let him do so. She patiently waited as he gobbled every detail, searching for the information she would give him if he only dared to ask. She studied him too. His dark hair and stone-like features, the swift but gentle hands, the deep grey eyes, soul-devouring and knowing. He was too tall and strong under the white clothes, unusual for the healers, always tiny and tenuous. His words were rare to be heard, but enough for a whole lifetime. His existence, enough for hers’. 

“You are not supposed to be here.” he just said and rose to go. She serged too. Was she not supposed to be? He could say so much more, but he said just those bland words with such a vacant voice. Her head wiped at him, and he stopped, even with his back to her, feeling the chains absent around his feet, hands, and heart. “In those times, death only decides where we shall go.” the woman whispered, remaining in her place. “You’ll find out that life,” a cracking breath, “the so-called death, as you say, is just to begin.” 

“Where is life.” he cut her off, eyes catching hers in a roust grip. “Where do you see life? Is that life?” She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He was gone before his words faded with the cries and sudden silence weighting in the growing distance between them.  

“What is going on?” he asked, darting out of the sheds, her shadow on his heels, but his attention was fully on the silence around for him to even care. Even death had gone still before the horror awaiting them. The soldiers, gone from their posts, had joined the army, coming for them with fire in hand. They would burn them down with the camp, those rich bastards, just to live a second more.

He glanced around for someone to demand answers from, but there was no one to be found. Only the kids, the wounded, and him. And death. Only their end, waiting to be set. 

“A second more,” said the woman and sat on the ground beside him, clothes all in blood, soaking in the snow and whispers of the dead.  “is worth millions of lives.” He dared not look as she took out a small pistol and shot a howling man. His face was already gone under the festering flesh, his life, wasted the moment he’d set his foot on these lands. “Do you know how many roses that mean?” she whispered, and he jerked his head towards her. The question in his eyes was enough for her to continue. “Set that garden on fire.”