by Henry Joseph Buell III

Created on: August 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 01, 2010

Moments In The Fire...

A man stands at the edge of a long wall.  To either side of him the rough stones stretch into the distance, disappearing into haze and smoke from the fires.  The ground is wet, illuminated in that bizarre manner of things lit by multiple fires.

He looks up, searching for a moon that is not to be found.  In the darkness and emptiness that surrounds him, his thoughts turn to the violence of his life that led to this moment.  Memories, like deer fleeing a hunter’s bow, dash haphazardly through is mind.  His arms, now stretched out to the wall before him seem to seek support from the solidity of it's stone.

Head bowed, with hair and face wet from the heat of this night, he wishes only for forgiveness.  His eyes are closed, and when he sighs, it carries with it the weight of an avalanche.

The voices of children echo down the long dark corridors of his mind, bouncing from halls long since abandoned.  Remorse and sorrow grip this once proud and sure man.  War, he wishes, could be forgotten, but the cries of those he has left behind, as always, ring in his ears for days.

He fought for his country, for his beliefs, and in the end, for his life.  He fought until there was nothing else to stand for, and then he walked alone and into the waiting desert, leaving his conscience and the dead behind.

Everything in his life had changed, his laugh, his smile, even his once light humor.  Though he had come back to his country, he had lost the way home.

Reaching down he wraps his powerful arms around a small figure.  Warm, wet tears glisten down his cheeks, as memories he cannot share dim in the comfort of her embrace.

She fits against him as only one woman has.  There are no words spoken.

Her tears mix with is as she rests her head against his chest.  So long she had waited for him.  He knows this, but has no words to express these things.  It was for this moment that he had come across the desert and back into the world of the living.  For her, it is enough.

Nearby the fires are lit anew.  Singing can be heard in the distance as the harvest celebration continues.  Winter will soon come, and with it the bitter cold of his homeland.  He will take time to soothe his wounds, perhaps a lifetime.  For all the moments he had lost with her, and all he had sacrificed, this time by her side was enough.  He would ask no more.

In time he would find the strength to write of these things.  His words, whether kept on a dusty shelf or published for the world to see would be her doing, as without her he had nothing to write for, and no moments other than these to keep.

…

Their home was a simple affair.  Run down and worn, as homes in the country often are, but well maintained.  It sat nestled in the arms of two mountains, with a virgin forest towering behind it.  This time of year the trees were lit with every color of the rainbow.  Mornings were simple, with her slippered feet quietly moving about as she prepared breakfast and he stared off into the forest.

All the long years he was gone his typewriter had sat unused, and now he feared it would perish beneath the deluge of words that flooded his mind.  Her hand had cared for him well.  He had grown, both in spirit and in strength.  Now, as he sits in a once familiar chair by the fireplace, the smell of fresh coffee stirs long forgotten memories.  Once more he begins to write…

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