I’ve had this idea for a literary element in a story, crows being a sign of memory. An example of how needs two character stories, one short, one long.
The first is a kind of hero-king from long when The War started, for this is a war story. The oldest depictions are fairly standard, showing him a bit puffed up, with his gear and his faithful friends and legendary army. But as you get into more modern showings, the element of a crow creeps in. Feathers where there weren’t before, random birds perched on his person. The most recent ones aren’t of the king himself, but a simply a crow meant to symbolize him. As if the memory of his actions are so strong, it overshadows and consumes who he was as a person. Which can be good as it can be bad.
Second story are of child soldiers. Both orphaned by The War and adopted by The Resistance for their power more than anything else. The girl came first, the boy second. They are, at first appearance, quite the malicious pair, more than willing to kill for the war effort, but also finding primal joy in the act. Dark in thought, pointed faces, black outfits, and usually followed by a murder of noticeable size they don’t acknowledge.
It’s eventually gotten out of the boy’s side that he was much more reluctant to take this path, and had to be roundly whipped into line by his younger female partner, a Teach Him Anger sort of situation. But she has a glance at a turnaround when she’s forced not to fight, but to spy, and she learns in spite of herself that the faction she thought was comprised of entirely evil bastards is actually only run by evil bastards.
But their personal climax comes when The Resistance acquires the means to enhance their abilities to inhuman levels, with the consequence that they lose much of their remaining humanity. of course, in the case of the orphans, this causes them to mutate into massive, crowlike demons.
This effect is later dispelled, but not before their primary enemy is defeated and they are betrayed by key elements in The Resistance and left for dead. They survive, but the girl seeing her quarry dead is ready to pack it in. Not so for the boy, who now wants the blood of his former allies on his hands. This leads to what should be a tear-jerking and dramatic scene where the girl admits she would rather live well, normal, perhaps even happy.
It ends on a triumphant note, the murder that was their shared trauma dispersing in an explosion of light, leaving only a single bird they set off together, symbolizing their letting go of the past.