The Sweetest Thing – Part 2

It’s been hard to write my blog lately.

It feels like I’ve had nothing to share but bad news.

Writing projects have stalled on the copious rain that keeps hammering away at me from every quarter.

I can’t imagine that’s very fun to read, either.

I’m not going to hide from my problems.  I won’t stop using this space as a chance to get things on paper and sort through what is good and bad about my struggles.  That’s important, and I’ve helped more than one person by sharing them.  That’s essential, as we can’t get through this alone and I have a lot of struggles that I have something to say about.

All that having been said, I’m going to try and lighten the tone a small bit.  I think that would allay at least one of my growing worries that I’m driving people away.

So!  That having been said, I’ve had a lot of time to bat around more Sweetest Thing writing.  I think I’ve got a good direction to go with it, so I’m just going to pursue that.

Onward!

The Sweetest Thing – Part 2

Agnes’s steady presence and alert eyes kept Sargent McDowell from harassing me any further as the morning seconds dragged on.  Eventually, I heard the sweetest sound I had heard since it sounded the previous evening: a deep and resonating gong which drifted through the military base like a fog of sound.

That would be Janet’s doing, of course.  Why waste money on PA systems when an audiopath could do that for you at a bare fraction of the cost?  Audiopaths were fairly common too, so even when the Hunger claimed Janet, there would always be a steady stream of replacements.  I sagged against Agnes, who was beginning to lose her sense of reality as the gong hinted at a reprieve from her suffering.  Her arms dropped, but I simply clung to her shoulder with all my feeble might as my legs shook.  I doubt she even noticed.

McDowell barked out an order for us to begin marching.  We didn’t break into a sprint, barely.  A few beatings and nights with the shamans had taught us that such disobedience would not be tolerated.  Still, I was not alone in wobbling my way towards the armament tent.  Soon.  It would be over soon.

We made it the thirty meters from our pathetic excuse for a parade grounds to the armament tents.  I was whimpering softly, huddled against myself as a sudden cold took me.  The men inside the tent didn’t have the cruel streak of Sargent McDowell, and as soon as we arrived and stood mostly in line, they hustled out to give us each our morning rations.

As the gruff man gently pushed the hexagon into my hand, I couldn’t help gripping his hand and stammering thanks to him.  He wasn’t unkind in breaking my grip, but he didn’t look at me or meet my eyes as he moved down the line.  I’d done that every day, three times a day, for the two years I’d been enslaved in 1st Mage Battalion.  I stared down at the hexagon, anxious and excited, hating myself for wanting it and wanting nothing else all at the same time.  A whistle blew out, indicating it was time.

I fell forward, my mind and soul spilling into the thin sheet of metal.  I swam, an otter freed into the river of his birth, bathing myself in the small pool of energy which had been stored by the shamans in the metal.  It wasn’t enough; it never would be.  But there, in those few seconds as I absorbed the power I needed to do my work at the front, I was free.  I was whole, alive and well.

The last drops had been drained, and I reluctantly left the small oasis that was the only home I knew.  I gasped, mind snapping back into my thin frame with the subtlety of a brick smashing a window.  The sunlight was a thousand shades of crimson and and gold.  My uniform a million threads that I could feel weave themselves about me.  My body…  I could feel it all.  All the abuse they heaped on me.  The half starvation, the beatings, the denial of a full measure of my abilities.  I wept, alive for the first time.  I wept, knowing that even in that bright moment, I was dying.  It was slow, controlled and measured so that they could get maximum value out of me before the Hunger claimed me.

I could not endure this much longer.  I wept, desperately wishing someone could come save me.  I wept, knowing that all the cavalry had long since died trying to free us.  I wept, because no matter where I looked, I couldn’t see a way out.

With the power filling me, I couldn’t drown out the sound of the others, weeping tears as bitter as my own.

To be continued…

Hexfully,
Justin