Grain. Pebble. Stone. Cobble. The rock-hewn from great cliffsides was now laid along a road cutting through the town. With it came an ensemble of footsteps, all marching in unison. Faceless soldiers of a grey make. Brooding trench coats, rifles of wood and stamped steel, boots stained with dirt and grime.

Their masks kept their face from the cold. Their pupils were forever wide, beaming like headlights.

Droplet. Dribble. Downpour. The rain that flowed between the cobble brought with it a traveller. She weaved through the procession elusively, just like the rainwater through the sullen stone.

I watched from my bedroom window as she approached. She did not break a single soldier’s stride, not once, only stopping to check the sign above our door.

She looked at me. Stared in my direction. Two glowing marbles, dyed with everything that one could imagine when the word autumn was whispered into their ear, oh so delicately.

I panicked and tore myself from the glass, ran past the guest rooms, and fiercely descended the stairs. I stopped halfway, crouching enough to watch my mother in the lobby, greeting the lady.

Trench coat, dirty boots, wood carved rifle.

But she was different. She was beautifully distinct, despite her deadly appearance. Touchable. Fathomable. Down to earth. Gleaming, drenched orange hair and a marking on her cheek. A tattoo.

“That’s Fourteen pieces for the night. Would you like breakfast as well?" my mother asked.

“No, thank you. I keep breakfast light.”

My mother took the woman’s coin and handed back a key.

Her hands. The grime under her nails and between the small folds in her fingers. She did not wear gloves like the others. Skin. Human flesh. She began to approach, and for some reason, I ran up the stairs again. I ran to my room and waited, but I never heard her walk past.

As quietly as I could, I knocked on her door. Three-o-seven.

The rain had subsided to a drizzle but was still clinging to the window, begging to be let in. The grey had made way for moonless dark, and the soldiers had long since passed, perhaps achieving glory on a far-flung battlefield, or maybe the one I could faintly hear when I bought bread in the mornings.

“Come in,” the woman said.

I pushed open the familiar doorway and entered the familiar room I had cleaned just that morning.

“Supper. On the house,” I said.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” she said, not sounding appreciative. In fact, her words carried little emotion. She kept on wiping the internal magazine of her gun with a white cloth, carving the silver gleam back into the steel. She had taken off her trench coat, leaving only a wool singlet to cover herself. Her left arm was also marked. Maple leaves from her shoulder to her wrist. The tattoo under her eye was clearer now. A whale, diving.

I placed the tray down on the desk next to her, feeling my way around wherever was too close to her, and too close to the edge. A mug of watered-down tea, a stale biscuit, and a note expressing my mother’s well intentions.

But I did not want to leave.

She took notice after three seconds exactly.

“If you’d like to make yourself comfortable,” she offered.

“No, no. Sorry for the intrusion.”

“By all means, it’s your own home after all. I’m simply a passer-by," the woman offered.

“You paid for your room and-”

“And you seem unwilling to leave. Am I wrong?”

I could not argue with her. I felt as though if I did, she would give in and make me the fool.

I moved over to the bed and sat down, careful not to crinkle the sheets I had ironed the night before. The oil lamp by her right arm kept the room in a state of suspension between the visible and the emptiness outside, and painted the wooden pillars and rafters hues of orange, just like her. It was as though the colour followed her wherever she went.

“I…” I started, unable to completely my sentence. The words getting stuck in my throat.

“Speak now or forever hold your peace. It isn't every day you get to talk to someone with a gun who isn’t trying to shoot you.”

She spoke casually, not even bothering to look at me while she spoke.

“I just wanted to know if you’re a soldier…since I want to be one when I grow up," I managed to say.

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She stopped her polishing for a moment and put the cloth down.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twelve.”

“I see. You’ve got a good seven years to make that decision, use them wisely.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted. Where was the motivation? The call to action? I wanted to hear it from someone who was right there, instead of from a monotonous, flat poster.

I tried again.

“Why did you decide to become a soldier?”

“I’m not one.”

“What?”

She picked up her rifle, putting one hand around the trigger guard, and the other along the handguard. She pressed the buttstock into her shoulder, and her cheek right behind the iron sights. Expertly did she perform this, not a single wasted movement.

“I’m not one, plain and simple," she repeated.

“Then what are you?”

“I’m a mercenary. I’m someone who refuses to swear allegiance to any nation, state, kingdom, empire, or theocracy, yet I still get paid for participating in conflicts.”

A job description. It was certainly helpful, yet it irked me.

“How does that make sense? Aren’t soldiers meant to fight for their country?” I asked.

“Like I said, I’m not one,”

“I know that! But doesn’t that go for anyone in conflict?”

She barely reacted, simply stowing her rifle, and placing it down once again. She reached for a pouch on the other side of the table, next to the stale biscuit. Delicately, she removed its contents, worth the mass of two balled fists. Bullets, all of a uniform size. I could not recognise them. They weren’t bullets my country's soldiers used. They were foreign. Undoubtedly so.

“You’re not from here. Why are you fighting in our war?”

“There’s money to be made. Plain and simple.”

I inhaled through my teeth, fully aware of the sleeping guests around me.

“How could you fight with convictions like that? They’re not right!”

“Who says yours are?”

“What?!”

I watched the woman produce several steel clips from her limp coats' pocket. With her worked fingers, she slid bullets onto each clip. Bullet, words, bullet, words.

“I saw a poster on my way here. ‘For your country! The birthplace of real patriots is in the army!’ written across the top. Is that your conviction?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a citizen of my country.”

“Why does that mean you should fight?”

“Because it’s who I am?”

“Who says so?”

“Everyone!”

“Why is that who you are?”

“Blood!" I blurted, "Blood connects me to my people, and my family connects me to the soil. That is why I want to fight for it."

She finished loading her second clip and lined it up neatly with the first, dangerously close to the magazine well. It was as if she wished to make her intentions clearer than they already were.

“Blood connects me to my father, but it does not mean I want to lay down my life for him. My soil two hundred years ago belonged to a different people, of different blood and soil.”

“Why does that matter?" I said, "It exists now, and I need to keep it that way. I need to be a good citizen to keep things as good as they are now! That’s what everyone says.”

“As good as they are now, huh,” she said, flashing a side eye at the cooling tea and ageing biscuit. She loaded her third clip, placing it next to the others.

“This country must mean a lot to you.”

“It does.”

“…have you ever been to another country?” she asked.

I watched her as she reached for another clip. “No, I haven’t,” I said, shifting on my spot, wincing as I felt the sheets crinkle.

“One day, hopefully, you’ll leave this town. You’ll see other countries, other cultures, other people, and you’ll realise they’re all the same. They all cry, laugh, steal, hurt and fight. They just do it in different languages. The only difference is how they interpret their own humanity. Because that’s what we are.”

She finished her fourth clip, leaving the remaining bullets on the table. She picked her rifle up again and took a clip.

“We’re all human, and we all have disgusting desires. Desires that trample on top of each other, crushing other desires under our feet.”

She loaded the clip into the rifle and, with her thumb, slid the nuggets of death into the cannon with a guiltily satisfying click.

“So we create societies, organise ourselves so as to not tear each other apart. Then we do just that, on a bigger scale. The only constants in the world are change and conflict. Those who follow the wind, and those who are left behind.”

She forced the bolt closed, sending a round into the chamber. The gun was loaded, ready to breathe death upon its enemy. I watched as her finger hovered around the trigger guard. The autumn orange had turned from the colour of an ageing leaf to the aura of fire. Fire that brought death. Would it bring my death, too?

“Twenty bullets. Twenty bullets I’ve committed to my rifle. That is twenty people who will fall to my gun, my desire. I have one life, so that potentially makes twenty-one. Do you have that kind of dedication? Do you have that kind of fucking dedication to take twenty lives and risk your own?”

I coiled backwards; my body subconsciously reached for the door. “Why?” was the only sound I could muster from my mouth, my attention intertwined with the gun’s invisible firing line.

“Why? That’s because my desire is more important to me than anything, even the lives of twenty men. Twenty men like you. Just like you.”

I felt her drilling through my flesh, burning bullet holes into me with those now recontextualised eyes. They were dyed with autumn, and that autumn had been dyed by the bloodstains of how many? Surely too many to count.

“Tell me, is your blood and soil worth that much?”

“Then….then what do you fight for?” I asked.

“I fight for something only I could wish for. I will gnash my teeth, tear my skin from my muscle, and rip my eyes from their sockets if it means keeping that desire alive. And I think that is perfectly fine.”

“You would die for your desire but not your country?”

She placed her rifle on the desk and checked the oil lamp’s reserves. Taking the biscuit, she swivelled in her wooden chair to look out of the window, at the water clinging to the glass.

Chasing her. Punishing her for what she had done.

“I’d like to see a world where humans have no desire, where they get whatever they want without trampling over others to get it. I always wonder if it would really be better than the world we live in," she said.

“Aren’t there those who fight for a greater purpose?”

She stood up and drew closer. I looked for the vulnerability in her face, her wrinkles, but there was none.

“Those who do must be fighting for someone else’s, and that someone else must be adept at leashing the fool.”

I stood up, unable to take her proximity any longer. The warmth continued to exist. The fact that she was still human drew me in, drew me closer to her. But I could not face her.

“Die for what you believe in. Thanks for the biscuit. I’ll see you again one day.”

And so she did. Across the wasteland, she was the water that made mud of my beloved soil, and made a mockery of my blood and the blood of a promised nineteen others. I fell face first, not to the enemy, but to her. Her beauty. Her beautiful ideals. Her, and only her. She at least granted me that mercy.