She stood on the hill and looked into the valley. The devastation was complete. She didn’t need to find her way back to the village because there was nothing to go back to. Her brain could hardly comprehend what she was seeing, and her heart hurt in a way that defied words. The dog, her companion, whined and she put her hand on his head.

“Easy, boy.”

He looked up at her, a feeble wag of his tail, and then he, too, stared down into the fiery maw that they had once called Home.

She sighed and shifted the quiver of arrows and slung her bow across her chest, then turned away and wearily made her way back along the ridge. She had been too late to at least try to stop the militia. Too late. Too late. It was all gone; they were all gone, and she knew what she had to do next. She had avoided taking up arms with the ragtag group of dissidents, but what choice did she have now? There was no other way.

She was one of them. A Revolutionary.

So be it.