From Spring, 2011…
He heard the explosions of the Imperial army’s artillery for the last time. He could feel the rumble of an entire armored brigade rolling down the hillside, slowly, confidently, through the once dense forest that had previously assured the fort’s residents that centuries worth of thick vegetation could stop iron and fire. Fools.
His body ached. He could feel the small pieces of shrapnel embedded in his left arm, each sliver an individual sun, burning his flesh from the inside, out. His head throbbed with so much force that he thought his brains were going to come bursting out of his temples. He kept his eyes closed tight to avoid even the dull daylight intensifying the relentless pounding. The pain was secondary; and his now adrenaline-reliant mind began focusing exclusively on survival. Laying on his stomach, he lifted his face out of the mud. Realizing it hadn’t rained in days, he was reminded that the saturated earth that he had collapsed and nearly drown in was a mixture of spilled fuel from a nearby overturned personnel truck and the blood of the unrecognizable dead man that lay but an arm’s length away. Lifting his body, now heavy with exhaustion, from the ground with his arms was a battle in itself. His right arm was burdened with most of the task to make up for the weakness in his injured left. The muscles in his back wretched and his calves burned, but he had to move. Face down in the muck was the last place he wanted to die, and his father would never forgive him for it.
As he lifted himself but inches from the ground, he could feel the heat of the battle above. The air was stifling. The smoke from the explosions burned his lungs. he could feel the exhaust fumes singeing his nostril hair, and he began to sweat instantly. He could feel the soft accumulation of warm ash falling onto his clean-shaven head as he slowly began bringing one knee up into his chest to begin the arduous process of standing. Before he had the chance to anchor himself, a hot, dry gust of wind caught him unprepared, flipped him, and dropped him face up, like a limp fish splashing into the mud. he clenched his fists and his jaw simultaneously, and then let out a long, weak and capitulating sigh. Could this be the end, he thought. An entire elite division of the imperial army is bearing down on me, and I can’t even get my sorry ass out of the mud.
He felt the energy drain from his body, and he opened his eyes.
The sky that had that morning been a crisp, cloudless blue was now a hazy, crimson red, scattered with columns of black and patches of wispy gray. He had to blink and squint to keep ash from getting into his eyes. As he stared into the endless expanse of the sky, his mind wandered, and he was soon standing on the lighthouse dock back home, gazing at first across the ocean, into what seemed like undiscovered adventure and endless possibilities. But his eyes always were eventually drawn back, pulled downwards, violently, into the murky waters of the bay. What lies at the bottom of the bay? Deep, dark, nothingness. Expansive nothingness. Death. The fears of men. Oceans are not treaded lightly, for mistakes or misfortunes on her sparkling surface will end grimly with you beneath it, as his father always said.
The shrieking screams of a woman sent him springing suddenly into a sitting position.