Daily writing prompts from June 9th, 2008 to December 31st, 2022
Thursday February 1st, 2018
The exercise: Having escaped January's clutches, write about: casualties of war.
4 comments:
Anonymous
said...
The Casualties of War
It’s not the generals. It’s not the politicians. It’s not the money lenders. It’s not the factories, nor even the mines that dug the ore that would transmogrify into armaments. Strangely, it’s not even the medical teams, because battle enforces new discoveries to aid future generations (as needs must).
Dead bodies - soldiers, civilians, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, friends, neighbours and babies. You and I can become a statistic anytime. Prisoners of war, some dead, many starved, all somehow harmed for the term of their natural life.
Buildings of incredible beauty - a testament to Man’s ingenuity - lost. Rebuilding feeds the money lenders and the history is gone - destroyed and remade. You can’t replace that beauty, we just don’t build like that anymore. What measly treasures are the spoils of war? Naught, compared to what is lost.
Trees poisoned, that orange stuff left residue for generations. The air, the water, the very earth on which we tread - irradiated, never the same. Animals stranded, burned, their dens destroyed, too, just like our homes.
These are the casualties of war. Innocence lost - we’re never the same as we once were.
“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” (Edwin Starr).
It's perhaps a sad coincidence that this prompt coincides with a headline today about a 12-year old girl accidentally shooting two of her classmates in America. And intriguing that the news article linked to it wasn't "should gun control be improved?" but "should teachers start carrying guns?". [Also: an apology. I managed to type Mohave Desert yesterday instead of Mojave Desert. I can spell (usually) but switching several times a day between cyrillic and english for typing is doing bad things to my touch-typing in both english and russian!]
Casualties of War Snake knelt on the floor of the Tesseract. Even though Sberychev had somehow managed to bring it close enough to the real world for him to see from one to the other there was still a purple tinge to everything. He wasn't completely sure how he was managing to kneel there either: he'd found that he could push his hand through the floor of the Tesseract with a little bit of effort, and he'd even picked up a handful of sand until Sberychev had mentioned that it was quite dangerous to do that. The Tesseract was moving, and Sberychev had started explaining how it worked, but Snake had stopped listening after the words "Gradient flow in directions of local curvature." Slightly more disturbingly, it passed through things that should be solid: rocks, scrub grass, and at one point a goat. The goat had died, but it looked cooked rather than anything else. Sberychev was lying on the ceiling as though that was completely normal, gazing down. "There's a track off the road," he said, pointing. Snake had to look up to see where he was pointing, then in that direction. His head span slightly as though he'd stood up too fast. "Do you have to lie on the ceiling?" he said. "And why are there roads in a desert anyway?" "It's not actually the ceiling," said Sberychev. "B-" "Don't tell me! I don't want to know, I just don't like looking up and finding you looking down like some Old Testament God." "Fine," said Sberychev. "Don't look up then. There are roads, since you ask, because people want to cross the desert and cars are more fuel efficient than camels." "Or goats," said Snake, thinking back to the one they'd killed. "Exactly. But there's a track here, and it looks like it's been used recently. I'm going to take us down it." There was no sensation of movement but the direction that the ground was sliding behind them changed. "Can anyone see us in this?" asked Snake. "Or even see this from the outside?" "I don't know," said Sberychev. "It's all a bit experimental. The goat didn't seem to see us." "What if we hit a person?" "We'll pass through them," said Sberychev. "Well, unless they have a dense Laplace Trans-- ok, ok. Probably pass through them." "Killing them?" "In this case they're probably the ransomer. So it would be a casualty of war, and I think that's allowed." "You're not the bloody Geneva Convention!" Snake shook his head, staring at the floor. "Hey, what's that?" The Tesseract slid to a halt. A short way in front of them was a red pick-up truck with badly rusted sides and doors, and just beyond it was a clapboard shack that could have at most two rooms in it. What was truly odd about it was that it appeared to extend up two more storeys into the space that they were in inside the Tesseract. "How curious," said Sberychev, sitting up. He twisted somehow and appeared next to Snake. "That would explain the ransom they were demanding, I suppose."
He casually strews them behind him Easily ignoring their sad eyes And pining glances, their Reaching hands. Why should he care about The broken hearts of the girls he used to love?
4 comments:
The Casualties of War
It’s not the generals.
It’s not the politicians.
It’s not the money lenders.
It’s not the factories, nor even the mines that dug the ore that would transmogrify into armaments.
Strangely, it’s not even the medical teams, because battle enforces new discoveries to aid future generations (as needs must).
Dead bodies - soldiers, civilians, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, friends, neighbours and babies.
You and I can become a statistic anytime.
Prisoners of war, some dead, many starved, all somehow harmed for the term of their natural life.
Buildings of incredible beauty - a testament to Man’s ingenuity - lost.
Rebuilding feeds the money lenders and the history is gone - destroyed and remade. You can’t replace that beauty, we just don’t build like that anymore.
What measly treasures are the spoils of war? Naught, compared to what is lost.
Trees poisoned, that orange stuff left residue for generations.
The air, the water, the very earth on which we tread - irradiated, never the same.
Animals stranded, burned, their dens destroyed, too, just like our homes.
These are the casualties of war.
Innocence lost - we’re never the same as we once were.
“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” (Edwin Starr).
It's perhaps a sad coincidence that this prompt coincides with a headline today about a 12-year old girl accidentally shooting two of her classmates in America. And intriguing that the news article linked to it wasn't "should gun control be improved?" but "should teachers start carrying guns?".
[Also: an apology. I managed to type Mohave Desert yesterday instead of Mojave Desert. I can spell (usually) but switching several times a day between cyrillic and english for typing is doing bad things to my touch-typing in both english and russian!]
Casualties of War
Snake knelt on the floor of the Tesseract. Even though Sberychev had somehow managed to bring it close enough to the real world for him to see from one to the other there was still a purple tinge to everything. He wasn't completely sure how he was managing to kneel there either: he'd found that he could push his hand through the floor of the Tesseract with a little bit of effort, and he'd even picked up a handful of sand until Sberychev had mentioned that it was quite dangerous to do that. The Tesseract was moving, and Sberychev had started explaining how it worked, but Snake had stopped listening after the words "Gradient flow in directions of local curvature." Slightly more disturbingly, it passed through things that should be solid: rocks, scrub grass, and at one point a goat. The goat had died, but it looked cooked rather than anything else.
Sberychev was lying on the ceiling as though that was completely normal, gazing down.
"There's a track off the road," he said, pointing. Snake had to look up to see where he was pointing, then in that direction. His head span slightly as though he'd stood up too fast.
"Do you have to lie on the ceiling?" he said. "And why are there roads in a desert anyway?"
"It's not actually the ceiling," said Sberychev. "B-"
"Don't tell me! I don't want to know, I just don't like looking up and finding you looking down like some Old Testament God."
"Fine," said Sberychev. "Don't look up then. There are roads, since you ask, because people want to cross the desert and cars are more fuel efficient than camels."
"Or goats," said Snake, thinking back to the one they'd killed.
"Exactly. But there's a track here, and it looks like it's been used recently. I'm going to take us down it."
There was no sensation of movement but the direction that the ground was sliding behind them changed.
"Can anyone see us in this?" asked Snake. "Or even see this from the outside?"
"I don't know," said Sberychev. "It's all a bit experimental. The goat didn't seem to see us."
"What if we hit a person?"
"We'll pass through them," said Sberychev. "Well, unless they have a dense Laplace Trans-- ok, ok. Probably pass through them."
"Killing them?"
"In this case they're probably the ransomer. So it would be a casualty of war, and I think that's allowed."
"You're not the bloody Geneva Convention!" Snake shook his head, staring at the floor. "Hey, what's that?"
The Tesseract slid to a halt. A short way in front of them was a red pick-up truck with badly rusted sides and doors, and just beyond it was a clapboard shack that could have at most two rooms in it. What was truly odd about it was that it appeared to extend up two more storeys into the space that they were in inside the Tesseract.
"How curious," said Sberychev, sitting up. He twisted somehow and appeared next to Snake. "That would explain the ransom they were demanding, I suppose."
He casually strews them behind him
Easily ignoring their sad eyes
And pining glances, their
Reaching hands. Why should he care about
The broken hearts of the girls he used to love?
Dragonfly - enjoyed your take on the prompt, and found myself nodding along as I read it.
Greg - how do you accidentally shoot *two*... never mind. I don't want to know.
Also: ugh. I'd scheduled all these prompts ahead of time, so it's definitely coincidence. And, sadly, the headlines do not surprise me in the least...
Yup, Snake is a new favorite character of yours for me for sure. And now I'm eager to meet this mysterious ransomer!
Morganna - I was not expecting that final line, at all. Nicely done with the misdirection :)
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