A Martyrs Respite

Begining: Rapture

All was quiet on the western front. 

The western front of what, she did not know, nor could she guess as to where. The only reason she was calling it the western front to begin with was because of the charred parchment in the dead man's hands.

His once tan uniform has been long sullied by dirt and blood, painting a grim picture of war across his body. Maybe he was a commander, or a general of some sort--the badges pinned to his lapel were meaningless to her, a code that she was not meant to decipher.

The breeze drifted through the tallgrass, shaking grains to the earth with each motion.

She couldn't recall how long she had been walking, only that the sun has come and gone, then come again, since she had pried the metal pins from the dead man's uniform. Unable to find a point in remaining with the decaying corpses, she had moved on from the scene of the unknown last stand.

She did not know where she was. She did not know where she was going, beyond the idea of 'forward'--away from this western front. She was reduced to nothing but a wanderer under these gray skies.

The man had guarded the paper with his body in his dying moments, clutching it to his chest in favour of his gun. Perhaps he had known that that day would be his last. Perhaps he was hoping for a soul to wander by, picking their way through the bodies and the debris to his lonely corpse, prying his fingers from what remained of the paper and holding it up to the dying sun to make out what it said.

She could only grasp at a few familiar words. 'Commander.' 'Liaisons.' 'Western Front.' Portions of the language were tantalizingly familiar, crafted in a way so similar to a language that she understood, that it made her pause. And then the scrawling note became indecipherable once more. 

It was all worth less than the paper it was written on, to her. But to the man, it had meant everything.

Maybe that was why she had slipped it into her pocket, removing his metals with a callousness he would have surely frowned upon, had he not had had a bullet in his skull. The metal meant little to her as well, but perhaps she could still garner some use from it. Hammer the pieces into something sharp. 

Use them to claim authority.

In truth, she had no idea if there was anyone left in this world. The silence was blissful, long overdue, and the nip in the air that promised coming rain was a welcome reprieve.

For a long while, everything was silent.

She wouldn't mind if this was the end of this world. She could feel it in the air, with every breath she took --this was the beginning of an end.

It wasn't a terrible prospect. To see this world in all of its natural glory, in perfect harmony right before a rapture, would be a true privlage. She would relish the opportunity, if that was the reason she was here. 

Though, that itself was unclear. Why was she here? To pry the note from the dead man's hands? To walk through the fields? To vacate the western front?

In the end, regarding traversing across a field of tallgrass under the clouded sky, philosophy would get her nowhere. It would be best to simply keep moving forward.

On the other hand, she was offered a good deal of free time when walking through an empty field. Enough time to stare at the remaining parchment, to puzzle through the linguistic patterns to the best of her ability, to fold and unfold and refold the paper until the creases were soft in her hands.

She learned nothing from this, other then how quickly ink would run when faced with sweaty palms, and what she could only guess to be a name--Basck. The name of a person, the name of a place, she might very well never know. She might never find out.

The wind began to pick up with a vengance, threatening to toss the dead man's paper off into the grasses. She tucked it back into a pocket in her garment, right as a great breeze swept through the plain.

For a long moment, the grasses bent downwards and her hair whipped about her face. She was left there, standing in a field, even the shield of the tallgrass ripped away and leaving her to feel almost exposed. 

Maybe if the sky had been brighter, or so much time hadn't passed, she wouldn't feel so perturbed. Now, in this empty field, she felt like an obstruction. An intrusion upon someone's, something's, final hours. It didn't feel right, to be standing in that field alone, but it brought with it a morbid comfort. The chill in the wind was a caress, a solemn hand on the back.

In the end, it didn't matter why she was here. She was. It was as simple as that. The dead man and his men were long behind her, and she was left with the dying world.

From on a ways off in the distance, almost beyond the edge of her hearing, she caught the beginnings of shouting.