The Girl Born of Smoke by Jessica Billings

killing. It's all the same.” He trudged away.
    “But you could help prevent this tragedy
from happening to another family!” Jonah called after him. “Don't
you want to help turn all this into something positive?”
    The man turned back toward them. “No,” he
sounded angry. “I don't. I couldn’t care less about some other
family right now.” Without another word, he walked around the
corner of a building, out of sight.
    Jonah shrugged and turned
toward the group. “Well, you know the drill,” he said. “Go see if
we can at least find a couple people who will join us. Talk to
everyone you see. Explain we're trying to help them.” The group
began to disperse and Aurora looked around helplessly at the sad
scene. She had lost track of Djerr after entering the town.
Frowning, she noticed that no one was approaching the woman
mourning the child. No one even looked at her. They seemed to go
out of their way not to look at her.
    Breaking away from the group, Aurora slowly
walked up to the woman and crouched down in front of her, on the
other side of the child. She looked at the body. It was a boy, his
curly brown hair matted with blood. Part of his skull had been
crushed inward and his face was twisted into an expression of pain,
both eyes still slightly open. One arm was flung out to the side,
the smooth palm facing upwards. Aurora touched the boy's hand and
found it was clammy and unnaturally stiff. The woman had stopped
wailing and instead rocked silently back and forth on her
heels.
    “What happened?” Aurora asked,
swallowing.
    The woman showed no sign that she was even
aware of Aurora's presence.
    Aurora put a hand out and laid it on the
woman's shoulder. “Are you okay?”
    The woman snapped her hand up and grabbed
Aurora's wrist tightly. “What have you done?” she asked sharply,
finally meeting Aurora's eyes as she stopped rocking.
    Eyes wide, Aurora shook her head violently.
“I didn't do this!” she protested.
    The woman slowly let go of her wrist. “What
have you done?” she whispered, looking horrified.
    Aurora stumbled backwards. “I didn't-” As
she watched, the woman suddenly went back to rocking and sobbing
loudly, paying no attention to Aurora. Shaking slightly, Aurora
turned and walked away, back to where the forest lined the town.
She sat at the base of one of the trees and drew her knees up to
her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Watching her fellow
soldiers wander around the town, often in small groups, following
after the townspeople, she felt embarrassed that she was even part
of the group.
    “Hey!” Jonah had noticed her sitting by
herself. He walked over and looked at her sternly. “What are you
doing over here? There are still lots of people to talk to in this
town. Everyone's working hard except you.”
    Aurora shook her head. “I don't want
to.”
    Jonah sighed loudly. “You're Kirian's kid,
aren't you?”
    “I guess?” She wasn’t sure how to
answer.
    “Well, how would he feel about your refusal
to participate?” Jonah asked her. “I mean, here we are, providing
you with a place to go after your home was destroyed and you don't
want to do anything for us in return.”
    Aurora didn't reply and set her head down on
her knees. Jonah simply shrugged and walked away, back into the
town, advertising the glories of the Citizens’ Army to any of the
townspeople who glanced his way. As it turned out, no one in the
town wanted to join their group and Jonah was forced to count it as
a loss.
    They left that evening, heading back into
the remote forest. Only ten days later, they came to another town
in the same state of recent destruction. After a lecture from
Kirian, Aurora reluctantly participated. That time, they managed to
recruit three new members for the army. Two of them were recruited
by Aurora. Both were young women who had lost their daughters in
the attack.
    Djerr dutifully performed his duties as
well, attempting to recruit the townspeople, although he had