TWO LIKE US

CHAPTER 3: DYLAN

“Turn around”
It was the voice of my attacker.
I slowly turned around looking for the face of the one who was making an attempt on my life and I saw nothing new from what I had been used to for three very long years now. He was a young man, about my age or perhaps a few years older, he had blond hair that the sunlight made look like threads of gold, eyes the color of ice, penetrating, deep, so much so that you could get lost in them; he was tall and had a much more powerful physique than mine, which the uniform definitely did honor to. My eye fell right on his uniform; it was different from mine and looking carefully at the details, I realized that the symbol he wore on his left arm was easily recognisable. He was a German soldier. An enemy.
Despite the height difference, I didn’t show a moment’s hesitation or fear towards him; I had experienced that type of situation many times and the most likely thing that could lead to your death was fear.
“What are you doing in a territory that doesn’t belong to you?”
It thundered calmly and completely coldly
“These territories have no owner, they are no-man’s lands, they are lands that both armies use to fight and to bury the fallen, you have no right to anything here and like you, neither do I”
His face relaxes into an expression of surprise, I don’t think he’s used to receiving such dry and cutting responses to his intimidation.
He lowers the weapon he carried with him and places it back in the leather sheath that hung from his belt; then he looks back at me
“You’re brave for be a dwarf”
He says it in a way that I can’t decipher, with a serious but at the same time mocking tone, as if he were talking to someone he’s known for a long time, even though we didn’t even know each other’s names and as if, literally, two minutes earlier, he hadn’t tried to put a bullet in my head
“Courage is the first of the human qualities, because it is the one that guarantees all the others”
I have had these words imprinted in my mind since the President of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, pronounced them during a very important meeting, one of the many that would decide the future trends of the world and, from that moment on, I had made it my life motto .
“You are a true hero then, the world will overshadow famous heroes like Superman, Spiderman or Batman because you will surely be there to outclass them”
I have no idea why those words, which should have hurt me, actually didn’t do it at all, in fact, far from it, they caused me to giggle slightly; in addition to killing people then there was someone who still had a human part, I now thought I was the only one who liked, every now and then, to delight in thinking about something that had nothing to do with loading a weapon or by aiming for the head of one of his peers to explode his brain.
“As a hero, however, I would need a villain at my height and I must say that your face would be perfect to play the role of Joker”
“You have some spirit, dwarf, I must admit, too bad we are in a war where the only spirit present is the one that abandons your comrades on the battlefield, once they have crossed paths with my rifle and my infallible aim but you will have a career as a comedian if you can survive, success guaranteed”
I was about to respond to yet another provocation when I started hearing voices and seeing too much movement in the distance, near my trench; I didn’t even have time for a last look before that young German had disappeared, exactly as he had appeared: in the shadows. By now the sun was high and we had to get back to work; the next day would be the last of the brief respite and the day after that the nightmare would begin again.