The Dance Beneath The Banner

The square was alive with color, though no one seemed to smile.

Ribbons of red and white fluttered from the balconies, the women of Oxia moving like a tide of muted grace. Every time the kingdom went to war, the women danced — an old ritual said to bless the soldiers’ path and call for their safe return.

Junari had watched the dance every year since she was a child. But this time, for the first time, she stood among them.

Her father had protested, of course. “You’ll tire yourself,” he’d said that morning, packing herbs in the back room for the apothecary. “Your lungs won’t bear the cold, Junari.”

“They bear everything else,” she had answered softly. “And this is for Jorai.”

Now she stood beneath the pale winter sun, her hands trembling as she gripped the silk fan given to her by the temple women. Her breath clouded in the air.

Around her, the circle of dancers began to move — slow, deliberate steps tracing the pattern of petals falling to earth. The song was old, wordless, sung by dozens of voices rising like mist over the stone square.

Junari tried to follow, her crutch resting against the temple wall nearby, her uneven steps careful and small. She lifted her arm the way the others did, her fan unfolding like the wing of a bird that had forgotten how to fly.

Her chest ached, but she kept moving.

Each turn, each sweep of her arm, was a prayer — for her brother, for the strangers he marched beside, for the mothers who waited at windows and the daughters who stitched quiet hopes into handkerchiefs.

When the song reached its final verse, she knelt as the others did, her skirt spreading like a pool of pale blue fabric around her. The bells in the temple tower tolled once — low and heavy, echoing through the square like a heartbeat.

And when it ended, she realized she was crying.

Not from pain, but from the strange beauty of it — of all the women moving together, promising the sky that they would remember.

⸻

That evening, the fire in the hearth burned low. Her father had fallen asleep at the table, his work scattered in neat piles.

Junari sat by the window, ink and parchment before her, the scent of drying herbs filling the air. Outside, snow began to fall in slow, delicate flakes — not yet winter, but near enough to taste.

She dipped her pen and began to write.

When the frost melts and the grass awakens,

When the robins cry and the wind turns kind,

May the men who walked into the storm

Find their way back to the hearth they left behind.

Let the rivers remember their names,

Let the mountains echo their laughter again,

And if spring should come before they do,

Then let it wait — just once — for them.

She read the words twice, then folded the page and pressed it to her chest.

“Come back, Jorai,” she whispered. “Come back before the spring.”

Outside, the snow kept falling — quiet and endless, like time itself refusing to listen.