b2mem | Scarcity, by Starlight (Reply)

B2MeM Challenge: b10: Economy: Scarcity
Format: Drabble
Genre:
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Characters: OCs from Rohan
Pairings: None. Really.
Summary: War puts an end to more than dreams...

"These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality."
(The Dead, by Rupert Brooke)

"What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds."
(Anthem for a Doomed Youth, by Wilfred Owen)

She gathers flowers because it is Midsummer-- it's tradition. This year they feast again!

They say that if you find calendulas to put under your pillow on *Litha, you will dream of your one true love. Calendulas are not very common in Riddermark, unless you know where to look. And she did.

Excited, she returned home with her bundle but, before she had fully pushed the door open, she overheard her mother saying, "I had not the heart to tell her--"

"You should have." Her grandmother. "The war took most our sons-- who will she dream of tonight?"

~the end

*According to The Venerable Bede, Litha is the Anglo-Saxon word for the months roughly corresponding to June-July.