It's a warm, budding April noon but some won't see the sunset. Being a soldier, you can foretell things. The death of a commoner is one we can always predict. Some of us place bets on how many will die by sunset, or if that band of children who throw rocks will live by supper. I, myself, in the three years of being a soldier and the top game of the league, have never killed a man in my life. I was just in the wrong place, wrong time.
Lots of pretty women in the fence ahead. The weather was warm and stuffy but all of us were swaddled in heavy scarves and two leather jackets with Timberlands. Our rifles were cradled close to our chests as we watched them satisfy themselves with buttery cheddar cheese biscuits, fig jam and ham sandwiches, or grilled chicken glazed with pinepaple sauce and various coulis. A woman nimbly carried a chocolate and caramel tart covered in rasberries and vanilla creme fraiche. I licked my chops as I ogled at the saccharine pie, envisioning grazing my tongue on the crisp honey-glazed crust or my teeth chipping off the twisted caramel and chocolate pie, then imbibing the taste until my mouth watered from the sugary sensation. Even better, a woman feeding it to me seductively.
Were they trying to manipulate us by cooking great food? Try to make us soldiers pine our families and children? My eyes went soft, flickering away from the dancing people and succulent tarts or pies. I glanced at the direction a few soldiers were scrutinizing with a taut jaw. A couple of boys in ragged buttoned-up shirts and rocks playfully thrown in the air while they looked at us. My eyes follow the rock, up into the humid air then back down into those slender long fingers of his.
"Hey," Byron, a soldier with a tight jaw and broad shoulders tilted towards me, our helmets clacking, "a little pretty is looking at you." He said.
He was a very poetic and elegiac man unlike most uncivil and brusque soldiers here. A sensible and contemplative pacifist. A "peacenik", we call him.
My eyes look towards where his head shifted towards. Over the twined fence was a young woman, quiet and timid-looking, who was looking at me. When our eyes met, a breeze of electric, stimulating passion fumed in my nostrils and scorched my eyes until they watered. I tasted the metallic zest of foreboding aurguries that something will ruin this moment. Without worrying she was staring back, I scrutinized her.
She had acute asian eyes but a white woman's face. I always wanted to marry a blonde woman named Blanche from France, but this woman was actually very dainty... and a blonde woman named Blanche from France was a very meticulous wish. Her hair looked as fine as leather and as red and brown as baked terra cotta. I've never seen red-brown hair before, which made me fall even more in love with this little lady. Is there any imperfection on her?
My eyes fell to her chest, then her hands. She was like a melodic lullaby that could lull anyone to rest. Even now, while bundled in sweltering layers and cramped between large men, I felt like I never wanted this moment to end with her. Suddenly, her soft face formed into a stupor, then an anticipated gaze. She was--
"Schon!!" Byron's calm and deep soothing voice became aggressive as his large hand jerked my collar.
Byron had a bruised and cut cheek, as if a stone bludgeoned his face...the ! I already smelled the briny taste of danger and peril, and the red sweat from all of the soldiers who were panicking inside. The gathering of merry and festive civilians became a mob violent savages that were reaching their claws over the fence. Someone was shot. Just a few minutes a go, a group of young girls were handing food to us over the fence, sticking it in the hole gracefully.
As I aimed my rifle toward the people after stepping back, I asked, "Who was shot?"
"A kid who decided to throw a few stoned at us." Byron answered calmly, but his face was that of a killer.
I looked in front of me, my eyes flickering from here to there in search of her. Behind the shouting men and weeping women, was she. She stood there, in a catatonic gaze. Looking at her people with judgement, perhaps. Slowly, time began to slow down. The flustered people had long shouts and their tears were visibly blowing off their face from the movement. She began to walk towards me with a sad face, one you could barely see. She found her way to me, her head over the fence.
Her face, I thought. Her face is beautiful. Like the damp scent of a garden after a wet rainstorm, the odor of spring lingered on her along with the whiff of mossy patchouli. She was looking at me with a apathetic gaze, just neutral. Then, the emotion showed when her eyebrows furrowed in sadness and her lips pursed. With angelic delicacy, she raised her hand, filled with hydrangeas and hostas in the muzzle of my gun. I frowned in bewilderment and pressed my teeth against each other, trying to look into her eyes. She was too focused on what she was doing, her long dark eyelashes covering her eyes. People were staring and frowning at her, asking what is she doing.
What is she doing, I thought. Coming to a soldier, putting flowers in his gun, then shaking her head? I was shaking. Her touch, her scent, her stare was too mucuh for a mediocre man like me. Why shall you love a man who would shoot down your brother? The fence rattled from the claws of those savage people, putting on an act for us. To manipulate us and try to soften us. Not a chance. In anger and confusion, I rose a knife from my pocket, to her throat. Was she manipulating me into love? Shaking and sweating, I lowered it into her hand.
"What are you doing son? Calm these savages down!" A soldier yelled, too feminine for Byron's voice.
She backed away from me, gripping the knife. She's going to kill me. That is what they do. That is why they are on that side of the fence. Her face was still beautiful to me, manipulation or not. A hand grabbed my soldier. Byron. He shook his head at me, then looked at the girl with a nod of her head. Suddenly, she ran like a ewe who's seen a lion. Running from the predator. Running from people like us.