Only Fools Rush In [to be edited]

A New Language

His veins pulsed in strident beats as he heaved his body onto the surface. With his one good hand, he managed to hold himself long enough for his back legs to swing up beside him. Gasping and coughing, Brennan rolled onto his chest and forced himself up into the standing position. The battle ground he had just been on was filled with a haze of smoke and the strong, irony smell of blood. Staggering among the overgrown sward, he counted the bodies of both sides as he tried and search for Tien. His heart grew heavier as, with each step forward, he couldn’t find her.

From his right ear, he heard grunting and mumbling of a foreign language. Grabbing the hilt of his large knife, he pulled it out and, without thinking twice, hurled it at the slumped over figure clawing his way. While the knife soared through the air, Brennan got a glance of his suspect. And before he could do anything except process that the bent over figure had small hands and long, dark hair, the knife perpetrated into the chest. The once living being keeled over and a dark flow inked over the body. Brennan shook from a chill. His chest rose and fell as his lips cracked from sudden dryness.

Breaking into a run, he shouted, “Tien? No, Tien!”  He dropped beside the body and turned it over, expecting to see the girl’s face. But, to his surprise, the body was a young boy whose long black hair had come out from its knot during the attack. Letting out a shivering sigh of relief, Brennan covered his face with his hands and wept in the sadness of what might have been, as well as the joy of it not being his Tien. Sniffing the tears away, he looked down at the whitening body and said with a small laugh, “Should’ve known it wasn’t you by your uniform.” Standing up, he placed a hand on his chest and turned around, his eyes falling on the face he believed he had killed.

“Shi?” Tien said meekly, holding his broken watch in her hands. “Chien.” She pointed a limp hand towards the body.

“Chien?” Brennan blinked in confusion and walked towards her slowly. “So, that wasn’t you Wallace saw?”

Tien took quiet steps towards him as she explained the best she could. “Ong la anh trai cua toi. Chien.”

Brennan stopped in front of her and carefully took her hands in his maimed ones. “It was your brother? Family?”

She nodded her head before dropping her head onto his chest, crying. Her hands slipped around his waist and she pressed against him. Brennan slowly enclosed her with his arms and rested his face in the gathering of her hair on her shoulders. As they stood among the dying smells and burning scent of fire, they felt no other feeling except the ones they had built for one another. Indeed, Brennan still questioned his feelings for her, and wondered if he really meant it when he confessed his love for her; though, deep down in his soul, he knew he would never be able to deny his affections for her. As for Tien, she knew for sure if they could never speak to one another like she could with her kin or his with his kin, she was certain that the language of regard was all she needed for him to understand she would never leave him.

Brennan’s brows furrowed and he felt the ground beneath him tremble and his hair whipped against a force not made by the wind. A huge shadow came over them and he knew what it was. Looking up, he saw a forest green helicopter with a large red cross on its side hovering above them. A medic was let down, and upon his landing, he shouted to Brennan, “Corporal Shiloh Brennan, is it?”

“What?” Brennan hollered back, cupping his hand behind his good ear.

The medic walked up to him and said again, “Corporal Shiloh Brennan, right? We’re from Fox Base, Wallace sent us. Anyone else with you?”

“I don’t know, sir! I can’t locate Bobbs or Nelson.” Brennan replied, clutching Tien to his side, as if his rescue meant his loss for Tien.