My War

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How many roads have these boots walked? How many shores have these eyes seen? I've walked, I've ran, I've fought, and I've lost - for nothing at all.

Younger men thought it adventure. Feed the fire! Heed the call! For anything we'll fight, for nothing we'd fall.

At the end of things, love I've found. Not for glory, or fighting, or younger ambitions set abound.

I've found quiet - the peace of my small town.

The roads I've walked fade to dreams - in them I'll always be bound.

I cherish this peace. I cherish the end that I've found.

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[WC: 97]

In the Afterglow

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The faintly silver and white rocks scramble over one another as they tumble from the trough of the refurbished yet faulty excavator. The fashion of that brutal wave fits this place. I move my hand to the lever to bring the trough back up - it doesn't respond immediately. Nor does the excavator.

One of the other workers see's my vehicle lagging. Through the gray haze, I see him begin to trudge over. It's odd how quickly anyone can become a brother to you. Fraternal bonds formed from the sprouting seeds of death. Each of us, then all of us, soon none of us.

As he gets closer to the metal cabin of the beast, I see his features differently through the smudged glass. His withered face turns to a rounder, kinder thing. His eyes are green like mine. Like my son. Forgetting is painful. Yet in that moment, remembering is agony.

"I can finish up. Rest now." His voice comes gently as he opens the door. As he moves my hands from the controls, a bit of my skin sticks to the lever.

While my failing eyes watch him work, I see him morph further. Slipping deeper into the image of my love and my loss. We came here to die. Secretly though, we all hope to see our loved ones one last time, born again by the sickly glow.

​

WC: 230

It is said that when people die, their lives flash before their eyes. Decades worth of memories, feelings, choices... all reduced to one final kaleidoscope of life. There was a romance to all of it. Hearing each string of ones life played in one last harmony, the chord of one's existence letting ring one final and somber measure before being silenced unto eternity.

For Kristics, those imbued by the power of the land, this was not so. They were robbed of this like so many other things. Kristics would be sent back to one final memory - or so the scribes conjected. No Kristic had ever been brought back from death. Not that any would ever put so much effort into one such as them.

When Remin felt the chill winds of the Northern Province across his face and the grey shades of a fall sky, he knew exactly where he was. It was one of many outcomes. Perhaps also the worst of them. He'd spent his entire life avoiding this pain. Running from it. Cauterizing the pain in his mind so thoroughly that at some point, it lay so scarred and calloused that it had forgotten how to feel. In that numbness he had hidden his entire life. All things end in time, though.

"Look! Can you guess what it is?" spoke Linded, his long dead younger brother. In his hands a blade of grass was twisted and tied into a shape roughly resembling an animal. He'd always made such things. Many thought of him as simple, or otherwise afflicted. Remin always figured that he could just find beauty in what the rest had found mundane.

Remin's instincts kicked in immediately and he looked around quickly, trying to find his Kristine image. His mind tried to find the cycle point of the loop, yet none existed. Linded looked directly at him - the real him. So this is what they spoke of.

Tentatively, he spoke. "Is it.. a cow?"

"No! It's a horse, obviously." Linded made a face of simple annoyance that only a child could truly muster. "Can't you see the mane?" He extended his forefinger to a few shunted sections of grass that looked nothing like a mane.

Remin felt an alien. He desperately looked for the customary anachronisms. The clothes of those who forced him to bore the cognitive tunnel - the wardens or advisors of the lord who had forced him to re-spin this image. His own garb or age. Yet when he looked down, he himself looked to be only a child. The same child from all those countless days ago.

"Linded, can you see me?" Remin asked.

"No wonder you couldn't see the mane. You've lost your mind." Linded giggled as he spoke, discarding the horse onto the damp earth below. "That's alright. I'll make another one. One that even crazy people know what it is." With that he knelt down and plucked another long blade of grass, beginning to twist it and pull it as he slowly trudged forward towards the hills where he would die, as he had died a thousand times over in Remin's mind.

"Wait!" Remin bolted forward and grabbed his arm with a grip like iron. Linded winced and yelped, dropping his unfinished creation. Tears began to well up in his eyes. A great sense of shame washed over Remin like an ice cold wave. Back then, he had been cruel. Heedless. Such was the nature of youth - those who thought all which was precious would remain indefinitely.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry." Remin spoke softly, loosening his iron grip. "But... perhaps we shouldn't hunt today."

Linded looked at him curiously, the hurt and panic in his face washing away to reveal a mask of confusion. "But you said you wanted to go hunting."

"I.. perhaps so. You'll have other times to learn the art, though."

Linded peered at him a moment longer before speaking. "OK. I don't really care about hunting."

"Then why did you go? Why did you ever come here?" Rendid felt his voice cracking as he spoke and the long forgotten sensation of tears welling.

"I wanna go where you go. I came because I thought you wanted to hunt today." The answer was spoken simply, as if it was the most obvious truth in the world.

Remin gently turned his younger brother around, back towards their meager childhood home. He figured he would see the familiar grey mist soon - the marker of the re-spun image which denoted the boundaries within. He took a long look at Linded, and knelt to pluck a blade of grass which he handed over to his younger brother, who beamed a smile in return. Desperately, Remin hoped it would continue. He hoped there would be enough time at last.