My lungs burned, legs aching and feet screaming. The shoes I hadn't bothered with were miles behind me now. Finally, I could see it. In the distance, between me and the sunrise, the blood began well before the bodies did. Like a pyre to the sky, their bodies raising in one last vain attempt to reach peace in heaven. Heaving, I couldn't slow now. I passed men, decapitated. Passed mothers reaching out to the body of children only a few short feet away. Death did not discriminate here today. Finally, I climbed to the top and, squinting my eyes against the heat of the rising sun, I screamed her name. When no response came, I screamed again and again and again. Trudging down the pile of bodies, moving further into the carnage, I stopped no longer than a couple seconds in between to listen for a response. I searched, tracing my way up and down the miles of blood shed and gore, faces familiar and foreign staring wordlessly at me, and I screamed. The heat of the day intensified and began to ebb. I flipped over bodies, dismantled the piles, I screamed. Hope was one thing I couldn't give entirely away. She'd believed in me at every opportunity she shouldn't. She showed up when no one else could or would or even should've, and she did so without fail. I will show up for her. I screamed. She did not leave me and I will not leave her here. I screamed. I'd searched every inch of that battlefield and still, she hadn't responded. I ran as fast as my painful body would allow, into the nearby forest. She's smart, she could've made it out in the forest. Maybe she'd just not heard me. I screamed louder. My throat raw, my words rasping, I screamed with everything in me, everything between us, everything she still has ahead of her, I screamed. I didn't feel the gashes in my feet as much as the rocks and sticks that got caught and slowed me down. I didn't feel my body anymore, but I searched for hers, between the trees and bushes. I pictured her face so many times, but if I couldn't see her face again, eventually I'd forget. I screamed. I can't stop. I won't stop. I have to find her. I have to keep screaming, even if every sound I rip from my throat takes another piece of hope into oblivion with it.
