SOME DEATH

The night was long and stillness transitory, coming between instances of the amorphous reaching and slow pulse of the moonlit tide. Splinter cells crept in the dead of night, working toward flanks. We listened even as we slept, felt with our flesh for invasion. And then it happened: a true interruption. Noise. Motion. The landscape shifted as they moved across the lands, hugging the contours of the hills and the valleys. Moments of panicked cacophony, moments of individual agony, moments of labored breath; and then a heavy calm as the entire engagement was finished. I remember it all well, but it's the smell that haunts me. And now I spend my morning breathing fallout as you head to work.