The Way Back Home

Chapter Two: To Be Human

CHAPTER SONG: "To Be Human" by Sia & Labrinth 

Something dripping on her forehead, cold and liquid...

Blades of grass in between her fingers as the feeling came back to them. ...

The faint roaring of airplanes flying overhead rumbled in her subcranium...

Schofield knelt at the girl's side, keeping a virtuous distance away of about a foot since placing her down onto a cushioned patch of grass beyond the farmhouse porch steps.

Blake carefully poured a small stream of cooling water from his canteen upon her forehead, trying to rouse the girl back to the land of the living. The sound of planes overhead certainly had both men on alert, trying to keep themselves occupied with this fair, female stranger...

"Her foot's bleeding." Schofield removed his roll of gauze from a back pocket, which had been previously used to bandage his injured palm.

He winced to himself, recalling how that barbed wire stuck itself to his hand when it got caught. And then it being plunged no thanks to Blake into the unfortunately placed corpse of a rotting soldier...

With all the luck Schofield had in the world, he would most likely die of an infection-induced fever than a stray bullet or strategically situated bomb.

He concentrated further on wrapping up the girl's foot and looking close for any hidden shards of glass in her injury. From what he could see, it was only an inch long cut where he managed to quell the bleeding, licking the gauze before enfolding it around the dainty joint that felt especially fragile in his roughened, war-torn hands.

The small groan emitting from the girl as she began to stir made Schofield look up in intrigue that was misguided to the cynical part of his mind...

"She's coming 'round." Blake's face lit up with a tiny relieved smile. He was probably just excited to be around a woman again. He kneeled closer to her as he placed his canteen back into his pack. "Miss, it's alright. We're not gonna hurt you."

After securely fastening the crude bandage together around her foot, Schofield placed her foot back down onto the grass. If he knew anything, the female gender was more delicate and required careful handling when touched...

Her eyes finally opened up, blinking slowly to take in her surroundings. Her head turned from side to side as she wiped away the mixture of perspiration and canteen water on her forehead. She felt a coarse, uniformed arm slide underneath her back to help her in sitting up.

Another man, more youthful than the soldier she remembered back in the house, locked eyes with her. He was wearing the same uniform as the other one that had caught her as she fainted before him like a foolish ingénue from a melodramatic romance novel.

Back where she had lived before, in her own time, she had never been prone to suddenly fainting...

"Where...where am I?" She asked for the second time, trying to keep the fear out of her voice as the younger soldier in front of her brought out his canteen again for her to see. Her throat cracked as though the words wouldn't physically come out of her mouth. With trembling and aching hands, she reached for the canteen, praying there'd be water inside.

"I'm Lance Corporal Blake." His voice was soft, almost as if he still carried the virtues of boyhood within it. He was definitely not one to go out of his way to harm her. "We're in Flanders."

Blake looked up to Schofield, who had stood up from his kneeling position at her feet. The girl looked up when she saw the taller soldier ascend the porch steps, keeping his gaze focused on something she wasn't certain of.