Thank You

Colored Version: [link]

The Imperial Guard relief force marched through the city gates with crowds of the native inhabitants looking on. But there was little cheering or celebrating.
The grim-looking army was not the angels of salvation that the people had thought they would be. Rather, they were silent, lifeless beings that spared the people not even a single glance as they marched by. The peoples faces grew nearly as dreary as the soldiers masks as they realized that their saviors were not like angels, but more like walking corpses.

But through the crowd of bleak and cheerless faces, a bright and sunny one appeared.
'Why is everyone so afraid of them,' she thought, 'when they're here to save us? We should be thankful.'
She leaned over the side and reached out to the nearest passing soldier, holding one of the summer flowers she had gathered.

'These are for someone else, but you can have one.' she said cheerfully.
The soldier hesitated for a moment, looking at the gift being presented to him, then he moved back into formation. He didn't take it, but she was sure that he wanted to.
Her grandmother frantically pulled her back and began scolding her. She didn't listen, she just put the flower back with the rest and stepped back, her smile unchanged.

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Drawn after seeing this: [link] (with the permission of the artist)

drew a pretty neat scene here, so I thought I'd give it a try.
The original idea is (C) him.

I drew it slightly different than the original idea (i only realized now now that the original intention was that everyone was supposed to be grateful for them, not just the girl. Sorry about that Nicklaus ).