Prompted 2: Bloody Sunset.
With thanks to misscatlady for the prompt.
Bloody Sunset
Some people don't belong in the woods.
Musket shot and yells. Drums to keep them all in step, failing miserably. The wounded. The dying.
"Everett!" His brother called him, and the poet ran to catch up. It was not so long ago that John and Everett Ogden had been so deeply divided because of the duplicity of a woman. Now, they were closer than ever, and every day he feared that John would be taken from him by the Spaniards. What were they even fighting for, so very far from home?
They had sold a lot for the muskets they held in the service of their queen. Lying against the embankment as he loaded his weapon with hands that had long since given up on shaking, Everett turned his eyes to his brother. Dismay was evident in his weary tone.
"John," he said, "I do not want to be responsible for taking a life."
"Neither do I, though I cannot see too many other options. They shall do the taking readily enough if we are hesitant. We just have to get to the other side of that hill."
The crack of the muskets firing. The sound of metal on metal, terrible for its proximity and its horrible end. Everett shut these things out as best he could and readied to follow his brother. They stood and tried to run through the woods. The poet saw them first--a pair of Spaniards coming for the pair of Englishmen (and everyone still too far from native land). He wanted to call out to his brother. He wanted to raise his gun and save their lives. He wanted to curl into a ball, throw up his hands and surrender, go back to the beginning and keep the Ogdens from ever getting on the boat that carried them to war. Everett did none of these things. Everett simply froze.
He wouldn't remember much. The roar of a gun. The searing pain as lead tore into his leg, destroying flesh and cracking bone. He sank among the fallen leaves, feeling the very heat of his life running from his leg and into the ground. The shaking had returned, but Everett had already decided that he needed to go somewhere else. Somewhere peaceful.
A field. Cool clean water in a large pond fed by a bubbling stream. Green grass in long, crisp, tickling blades. A warm day with a persistent breeze that pushed the spider-silk clouds across the bluest sky. The smell of ripe apples on the air, and the music of trilling birds and humming bees. Lying there, on his back, he could almost look into the sun and see the world reflected in her smile. Almost.
It was sunset when it happened. Everett did not see his brother kill those men. He did not remember being dragged back to the other troops. He did not remember dropping his musket or the moans of the terrified dying all around him as they laid him down on a blanket in a dirty, war-torn field. In their places, the poet remembered the waft of the clouds and the dance of the nimble sparrows in his imagined sky.
He didn't belong in the woods; he had always belonged in that field.
Not sure if I like it, or if I'll use it for anything, but apparently, this is what happened in Everett's brain when he got shot while at war. huh.