The Wind in her Hair at the Edge of the World
I sat on a smooth boulder at the base of the hill. Once, then not again, I had looked ahead, seeing, not seeing, the hidden objective. Just another obstacle beyond the crest. More enemies and more blood. But I couldn't look over the top of the hill, because from where I sat it was emptiness. There were no trees and no horizon, only sky and nothing. I'd seen that before, after the dust cleared. The lack of something important to me, then the crushing absence. It began there, with emptiness.
A short respite in the midst of my comrades. I stayed in the present, not retreating into my reclusive pockets. Outside of the job, I didn't much need to hide. I could look back, seeing where we came from. I could munch on the biscuits and sip the juice that our supply line staff passed out while we removed and cleaned our armor and weapons.
We lost a few, it was inevitable, but the losses were as a whole insignificant. The only way to reconcile loss is to imagine the end game. My way of dealing was to remove all meaningful connections. I did not mix, I did not converse, I did not share. To the others I was Plunkit. If anybody knew my first name, they never spoke it. Neither did I speak theirs. They were Blondie, and Stretch, and Goony, and Hagrid. There were more, many more that I had no names for. Hagrid was a mammoth of a man, nearly unstoppable, though he had a battery powered heart muscle. He never took up the charge, but came later, somewhere behind me. Sometimes I would see him as I swung and wheeled and fired my cannons. Hagrid was like a pawn, only moving forward. But if he was a pawn, he was the most lethal chess piece I'd ever seen. I didn't now see Hagrid, but I knew there was nothing in that last battle that could have stopped him. Maybe he was behind me, farther up the hill where I would not look. At the next advance maybe I would hang back, behind the behemoth, so I could shield the view... the vast emptiness like a crack at the edge of the world.
Quickly I opened a pocket and fell in, before I could imagine her swirling hair dissolve into the swallowing dust. My fist closed around the crackers in my hand, and I ground the salt and flour into a fine mist that kibitzed with the commotion and fled our imaginations.
