Children of the Earth

“Comrades, to arms! The iron eagle of the west has set its sights on our homeland! It seeks to devour our souls and destroy our works, all built in the name of the proletariat! It wishes to bring our revolution to an end. It wishes to see us crushed under the foot of fascism. It calls us inferior, It calls us weak, It thinks we will be easily disposed of, like the refuse of the world. It is wrong, my brothers and sisters. This cowardly attack, hidden behind the facade of peace, will be punished. We will show these fascist aggressors that their cowardly invasion was ill conceived and doomed from the start. This affront to peace will be punished by our mighty Red Army, an army of the people, an army of righteousness. We will march on Berlin, and take those murderous villains in chains. They will feel the fires of justice cleanse their hate from this earth. We stand united, with the peoples of our Soviet Union and with our western allies, we stand united for freedom and when this Great Patriotic War is over, we will stand united in victory!”

2

Everyone shouts and cheers, enlivened by the fiery rhetoric from the Bureau of Propaganda; everyone except Nikoli. No one questions why, they know his mannerisms now; he doesn’t speak unless he’s confirming a given command or relaying information that no one else knows. He is alone, he is separated, but he is being watched this day.

Across the 3rd Army Group’s western front encampment, a young lady, very familiar with Nikoli and his ways, monitors her person of interest. She sees the young man, excluded by and because of himself, and wonders what might bring him back to the world. The past is no guide as far as she’s concerned, their previous lives together have seen him tunneling progressively further into despair. She decided it was time for them to have a conversation

3

After the radioed speech ended, Nikoli left his commander’s tent. He had heard the words of war, felt the vigor in the voices of those ready to die for their comrades, but he remained unmoved. This place was not his home; his brown skin and lack of interest in party affairs made him an outcast, even among the hardest Communists. Still, this was not the main reason for his exclusivist existence; he had lost purpose in his life, and without it he was nothing more than a phantom, constantly searching for release, constantly denied the rest of death.

His part in this world eating fight is a last ditch attempt to find meaning in the turmoil that is his immortality, to bring morality and righteousness to the forefront of his consciousness once more. He had heard what the Nazi German forces were capable of; They routinely engaged in the slaughter of those innocents deemed “inferior”, fighters and non-combatants alike. Men, women, children, whole villages even had fallen in the warpath of the German invaders.

The men in Nikoli’s outfit in the 1881 battalion, were willing and capable enough to repel the German incursion from their homeland, this did not worry him. What did worry him was the fate of the people in the outer reaches of the Union if he and his comrades should fail; he knew he couldn’t take anymore death coming about from his shortcomings. This time, however, he felt utterly lost and underprepared to confront the threat.

4

Ta’shia was on guard duty. She paced the perimeter of the encampment, looking across a frozen tundra towards an enemy hiding out in the void. This didn’t frighten her, the unknown in her eyes had always been a welcome sight, a respite from the doldrums of a life that had seen its fair share of mundanity. Besides, this was not the first time she had signed up to fight an insidious force that ate at the world she had increasingly grown to love.

This time was unique though; within the very same camp as she, was the man that loved her, an occurrence that was a complete coincidence. She hadn’t seen him since sometime after they had left that asylum together, and now here he was, yet again lost, yet again a stranger to her. Now, the details of their life together were shrouded in shadowy memories; bits and pieces came to her from time to time, but until her current assignment, she had thought of these visions from the past as nothing more than her imagination.

She knew this young man, his loneliness gave him away. Ta’shia could look in his face and see the sorrows that burdened him, furrowing his brow with grief and anticipation of trouble. Yes, she knew him, but she wondered, did he know her?

5

“Hello, comrade.” Nikoli turned around to see the young woman, pale and wrapped in her heavy coat, standing before him. She took a seat beside him in the small trench where he sat, a place with a view of the white void that would soon be a battlefield. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she was surprised by his words. For years the rumor persisted that he was a mute, unable to communicate with those around him; it was one of the things that gave her the courage to confront him, though she didn’t know what she would have done if the rumor had proven itself to be true. “Yes, I think it looks nice,” she replied.

They sat in silence for a moment, both staring forward at the snow covered world that lay before them. Ta’shia felt a twinge in her heart, she needed to know, “Do you remember me?” her voice was quiet but clear, “Do you know who I am?” “I do, my dear Moon-Born.” He sounded exhausted as he gave her the revelation she had hoped for. “I knew it was you the first time I saw you reporting to pick up your weapon and rations. I’ve wanted to speak to you for so long. Unfortunately, I also wanted to spare you from seeing me like this; broken, confused, and resentful.” She took his words to heart. Ta’shia too knew this feeling of self-loathing. There were days in her life when she had barely been able to look herself in the eye, all she could do was hate and deride her being, calling herself demonic and cursed. Other days, she merely coped with herself, avoiding thought and self reflection in favor of vapid conversation and engaging hobbies. Now, though, she could only feel indifference, with self-hate being too costly and self-love being a distant dream. She shifted closer to him, positioning herself inches away from this love she thought she had lost.

“This frozen land is familiar to me. I’ve been sitting here, looking out into it since we arrived a few months back. I don’t know why but I feel like this is the place that should have held all of the answers I wanted. I needed this to be where I found out who I really am so that I could stop feeling this way, so dead on the inside. But now the snow is just another reminder of disappointment for me.”

He continued, “The fighting and posturing, the self-destruction and constant need for reflection, all of it just keeps going. The worst part is that I can’t stop whole heartedly hating myself because even now, aware of the never ending monologue that has become my life, I can’t seem to parse out any meaning. And, if I haven’t found any by now, well, that just makes me pretty pathetic, doesn’t it?”

She leaned his head onto her shoulder; his words were bitter reminders of how similar they were to each other. As they sat there, home behind them and pale nothingness in front, she wanted to tell him what he felt was real; but she didn’t. Ta’shia knew that didn’t really matter anymore.

Nikoli didn’t need to be reminded of what they were and where they came from, and he didn’t need her to comfort him. Looking at him as he really was, perhaps for the first time in their long lives, she knew that what he needed was to need himself. This predated even the Temple to the Sky, and more than likely contributed to his eagerness to sacrifice himself for the good of a people that wanted to die. But then, what does that say about her?

Her time in that asylum had taught her that self actualization was possible, but only when she placed him as secondary to her own growth; the Tokugawa Shogunate had shown that she could be just as cruel and ruthless as the species she had so readily disassociated herself from; the Temple to the Sky hinted at her inclination to allow others control over the outcomes of her actions.

Looking into that great, white void, she questioned what it was that had sustained her throughout time, what it was that had made her feel like she had found some purpose to fulfill. Then she realized, the answer was nothing. She had just gone with the raging flow of life’s directionless current, mistaking detachment for elevation, dependence for duality, a change of scenery and people for progress. “We are two incredibly fucked up people.”

Artillery rang through the air, sending out a call to arms. The 3rd Red Army Group sprung back to life and readied itself for a war that had been a long time coming. She and he raised themselves, grabbed their rifles and packs, and fell in line behind the armored divisions.

He took her hand in his, and together they walked forward, through the well trodden snow.

Next Chapter: Brief Things