On a warm autumn day, it all began. Or ended, depending on how you look at it. Time can be funny like that. Beginnings are followed by endings, sure. But the endings are followed by beginnings in turn. Rather than the two ends of a rope, they share the sides of a coin, standing on its edge, eternally spinning. Beginning and end, revulsion followed by revulsion. As years go by, the two of them partake in their round and round, their eternal exchange more akin to a dance than a struggle. The order of it all might seem set in stone, at least to the one in the coffin. But step back a bit and things will begin to blur. Squint your eyes and you’ll find that it’s all a matter of perspective. Beginning will follow end just as easily, you need only try to see it.

Either way, the day was warm, and as of yet, nothing of importance had begun or ended. Sitting on a rock in the middle of the woods was a lone girl. Maybe woman would be a more fitting description, but the girl didn’t quite feel like one yet. She had yet to experience that mythological transformation that somehow turns a naïve kid into a cynical adult. She had lived enough years to be considered adult, but there had to be more to it than that, right? Because if the change had already happened, it sure wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

The girl left her pondering and angled her face towards the sun, enjoying the warmth that it was still giving. Her boots were off and she was massaging the soles of her feet. Her body hurt all over, but that was nothing compared to the pain in her soles. The last couple of days had been pretty shitty. Two nights ago, her sergeant had slammed the door open and ordered her team to be ready for march as soon as possible. That meant getting dressed in full combat gear, with a fully packed backpack. It supposedly wasn’t that big of a deal, just get dressed and grab the prepacked backpack. The only problem was that the girl’s backpack wasn’t exactly packed. To be frank, she wasn’t entirely sure she knew were most of her stuff was. They had gotten back from a long day in the woods and the girl had promptly chosen taking a shit and a nap over dealing with her muddy gear. It had seemed a prudent choice at the time, but in hindsight she was beginning to re-evaluate her priorities.

The sound of her sergeant screaming at the group next door had snapped her out of her half-asleep state, and the girl had felt a rush of adrenaline as all her training kicked in. Packed bag or not, she was the team leader and her job was to get her guys to where they were meant to be, at the right time and with guns pointing in the right direction. And she would be damned if she didn’t do it.

Her hands had moved in a blur as she darted about her bed and rummaged in her locker, mentally checking off the items as they entered the backpack. She had thought she got it all, at least all the stuff that she could find. It wasn’t as if she had time to go over things again anyway. Next order of business was getting dressed. There was a very specific order to it, at least if you wanted it done quickly. Shirt, socks, pants, shirt tucked in, boots, knife, filled water-bottle, body armor, jacket, combat west, backpack, helmet, gloves. It was a rhythm she knew well. Lack of time was the modus operandi in the army, and that meant always getting things done in a hurry. Yet there she had stood, fumbling about like an idiot. Where were her socks?

She had spent an eternally long second looking for them, before she had made a decision she was now sorely regretting. She had been lagging behind the others, and she still hadn’t taken charge of her team. It wasn’t her proudest decision, but she had resolved to save some time by skipping the socks. How bad could it be? Fifteen minutes or so of walking barefoot in her leather boots, and then a quick stop to grab her socks from the backpack as soon as the officers looked away. It had seemed a great plan, all the way up to the point where she had scourged her backpack for the second time. Where were her fucking socks?

That had been the shitty start to a shitty couple of days. They had gotten their coordinates and orders. It was a day-long march for her team, no motor support and full gear. That in itself was pretty standard, but she had felt a growing sense of dread as the march went on. For some reason they had been given an extra fifty liters of water to carry, in the shape of two twenty-five liter square plastic containers. The team had chopped down some thin trees to make carrying the water less of a burden, but on top of her rifle, backpack, ten-kilo heavy radio and her anti-tank weapon, those extra twenty-five kilos was really fucking unwanted. Sure, they took turns carrying it, but that didn’t mean a lot in an eight man team.

It had been a grueling walk, and when they finally had gotten permission to make camp, it had felt like the best thing ever. The feeling persisted as they set up their tent and it hadn’t even stopped when they were ordered to dig trenches. It had soured somewhat when the sky opened up and the rain began pouring down, but that was mostly because it made digging really annoying. The happy feeling had returned in spades when she was finally snuggled up in her sleeping bag, happy to leave a hard day behind her while she listened to the rain hitting the canvas. And it had only kept on growing as she closed her eyes and felt sleep approaching. But it had all been brought to ruin by two hateful words from her sergeant, the words’ malice made worse by the obvious delight in his voice.

“Brake camp!”

The night and day that followed had been a morbidly similar affair to the first day. She had woken up in a state of confusion, then madly scrambled for her still wet gear. The camp had been broken in a constant downpour, and the girl had been wet to the bone in a matter of minutes. The remainder of the day had been spent on walking, and they still had to carry the extra water with them. They had at least managed to drink some of it, so that was something. Her feet had been sort of ok after the first day, maybe a little sore, but the second day had really driven home the point of always having your bag packed. Her boots had been literally filled with water from the get go, and by the end of the day her soles had been burning. Every step she had taken had been absolute agony, and if it wasn’t for the rest of the group being so tired she would have had no chance to keep the pace.

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Somehow they had managed to complete the march and had taken up defensive positions, awaiting further orders. Which for some reason never came. So they had kept on waiting, happy to catch a break after two nights without sleep. It hadn’t been long until she heard some of her guys snoring. She had decided to let them off the hook, this was only practice anyway and they had worked hard the last couple of days. She had kept her head up as more and more members of her team fell, fighting back the urge to sleep so that she could wake up her team at first sight of officers approaching. No problem, right?

Apparently, the person that had screamed her awake didn’t share her assessment. It had taken her a lot of groggy squinting until she had been able to read the screamer’s nametag. As comprehension had come to her, her pulse had skyrocketed. The one who had been screaming at her for a good minute or so was a major. That made him the boss of the boss of the boss of her boss, which was the sergeant that was standing next to him, grinning happily. At least her obvious fuck-up and the huge gap in rank had left little choice for her in terms of answers. Yes major, no major, yes major, and that was it. It was probably the weakest yelling-at that she had received during her entire year in the army. All in all, the girl hadn’t been too bothered by it. Given how little they had been allowed to sleep and the amount of time they had been left to stew, it was clearly a set up to teach them the dangers of falling asleep at the wrong moment. The major had probably been there with the sole purpose of adding a little extra edge to their embarrassment. Besides, the ability to really dole out shit seemed to drop off significantly as rank rose. It was almost as if people higher up in the food chain had other stuff to do than to check if the inside of an air-duct had gotten its daily dusting.

Anyways, she had gotten yelled at, and then they had been given meaningless tasks to keep them occupied until the last stragglers had arrived. In an unexpected move they had been given a paper assignment, and then they had been instructed to take the rest of the day off, just recuperating until the next morning. The twist was that they had to spend the night alone. They were quite a lot of soldiers, so alone was maybe stretching it. She was sure that if she where to shout out a “Marco”, more than one “Polo” would have been shouted back. Still, she couldn’t see or hear anyone at the moment, so it sure felt like the real deal.

The girl let go of her soles and stopped reminiscing. She hadn’t read the assignment yet, so she grabbed it and gave it a look over. Apparently they were supposed to spend the night in introspection, to consider the last few days and their own role in the military. This sort of new-age mannerism was hardly typical for the military, and it made her very unsure of what she was expected to do with it. Seeing as she had the rest of the day to deal with, what harm could it do to leave it for later?

The rain had stopped since several hours, and the day had turned pleasantly warm by the end, even though the forest was still soaking wet. The girl had a nice little fire going, and she was currently roasting her feet over the fire. It felt as if her feet had gotten about as much punishment as they could take before they took permanent injury. The problem wasn’t abrasion in itself. She didn’t have any blisters or anything. But it was as if how wet her feet had been for such a long time had made them extra sensitive to the way the skin normally moves when you walk, or something. It hurt a lot, and she had the worst case of raisin-skin she had ever seen.

Roasting her feet probably didn’t help, but it was cozily warm and it sort of felt like treating herself to something nice after all the hardship. As she fed the fire and the day grew dark, the paper mandated soul-gazing more or less happened on its own. Sitting by a fire in the woods, alone under a star filled sky have a way of making sure of it.

Thinking back on her time in the army, it was mostly filled with good memories. She knew that it wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life, but she couldn’t really see herself do anything else. The officers where recruiting for a mission in some backwards country, maybe she ought to give that a shot? It was probably just a naïve delusion, but she had always longed to get a taste of reality, to do something that was bigger than a paycheck.

The girl let go of her soles and made herself comfortable next to the fire. Above her was a vast expanse of stars that shone with unusual clarity. It was a sky that you couldn’t see in the city. This was the sky of the countryside, and it was the sky of her childhood. She jumped between the different constellations, high on the slow and bitter-sweet ride that is the melancholy of nostalgia. Faces and odd conversations surfaced in her mind, and she absently watched them dance as she laid there. She wasn’t really thinking about anything, but at some point she noticed a star falling. She followed its path as it fell, noticing it’s distinctly slow pace. At first it seemed as if she was imagining things, but it soon became clear that the star was quickly becoming bigger. The falling star shifted into a ball of fire, which in turn growed into a blazing inferno, easily obstructing most of the sky.

Whatever happened afterwards, the girl would have to take someone else’s word for it. She sure wasn’t left to witness it. That moment marked the end of her life, regardless of how she felt about it. It didn’t matter that she was barely even adult yet, and it certainly didn’t matter whether she had been good or bad during the few years she had lived. It might seem unfair that she died so suddenly, but death comes to all, and ultimately it treats everyone as equals. It might not be much in terms of consolidation, but if the girl had known it at the time, she might have found some comfort in the fact that she did not go into the darkness alone. That autumn night, Death did not sit idle.