The soldier

The sky was a brilliant blue, the sun glaring down from the middle of it like an angry master. The sandy expanse before him was a flat brown carpet, broken only by gently sloping dunes and an occasional cactus. The emerald blue stone on the ring reflected a shaky glint of the sun as the soldier’s hand shook slightly.

When he looked down, he saw the purest blues of all; in the depth of her eyes. His lips shook as he tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the streams of tears rolling from his eyes. He placed the ring on her chest, kissed her lips the last time and closed the unforgettable eyes forever.

The soldier placed the last piece of stone on the mound. As he turned his back to it and trudged through the barren sands of the desert towards the village, he thought with a mixture of disgust and grief about what had happened to his beloved motherland. The whole land was filled with dimwits who somehow seemed to thrive on war. Blood and terror were their sustenance. And money, lots of money. These greedy fools could never have enough of it.

That’s it, he swore. He would not fight for them again. He would rather die a coward in his house than a fool in pointless battles. They had taken his dignity, his humanity and most painful of all, his life. The life he had just left behind, lifeless and buried under a pile of rocks.

Rough sand grains struck his skin as dry wind blew across the dunes. He walked on oblivious to the hundreds of pinpricks on his skin or the glaring sun burning him alive. He was dead.

Surely, there were no savages there.

As he looked westwards, he thought of the land some people in the city talked about. There were stories of white angels and golden roads. People, he had heard, lived in castles there and no one died. It sounded like the kind of place he would love to go live in. Surely, there were no savages there.

He would go, if only he could have brought his heart with him. He looked back one last time, wiped the last tears off his eyes, turned forward and continued along the unseen desert road. Behind him, the wind quickly covered up the footprints he made.