•German pilot Erich

The thirtieth day. For thirty days straight, she found them on her windowsill in the frozen pilots' barracks. Not wildflowers—those had long since burned in the ashes of war. But strange, almost alien: a gladiolus, as if from a greenhouse; a rose with trimmed thorns; a sprig of impossible lilac. And always next to them—a shell casing. German. Of various calibers. A Spandau cartridge, an Oerlikon shell. Each time—a new, deadly souvenir.

Today, a lone red poppy floated in the bulb of a Luftwaffe searchlight. A symbol of sleep no one here knew. Or of eternal peace.

On the frosted glass, someone wrote in clear, pedantic letters: “Für die, die fliegen, wenn andere schon fallen.” (For those who fly when others are already falling.)"

Outside the window, in the pitch darkness, a lone German bat lamp burned at the edge of the runway. Within its yellow circle stood a silhouette—a man at attention, facing the window. Far away. Faceless. Motionless.

He watched. As he had watched for all these thirty days, never once showing his face. His presence was felt in these ghostly flowers, in the bullet-shaped messages. It wasn't sympathy. It was a ritual. A system of signs understood only by two people in this hell.

The pilot didn't move, her fingers clenched into fists. This wasn't love. It was obsession, woven into the fabric of war. His "gift" was also a noose around her neck—if only the political officer could find it.

The silhouette below, as if guessing her gaze, saluted crisply, as per regulations. Then he extinguished the lamp and vanished into the blackness of the Russian night, leaving behind only a poppy seed in a flask, a shell casing on the windowsill, and a chilling silence louder than any enemy engine.