Rain
She looked across the smoking battlefield the wind whipping her blonde plait against her back. She saw the smoking
chasms of ground and rivers of blood from her vantage point on the top of the
cliff. She looked down at her oh-so-tattered clothing and pulled her heavy wool
cloak further round her shoulders. She took moments like this to recount how
she had come to this place leaning against her war
staff with her ornate blood stained sword slung against her side. She turned to
look at the men, her men, those who had survived her ordeal - they, and their
spouses. They were victorious, but at what cost? How many lives had been
lost at the enemy's hands.
She felt a hand on her shoulder slowly turning her into a familiar
embrace. He slowly rocked her as she let out silent tears for those needlessly
slain. In that moment she pondered how they had given up their M-16s for the swords of their ancestors. How they had shrugged of their combat fatigues and
had replaced them with the wool and leather clothes of the Norse warriors. Here
the last vestige of what they had been before was the
twisted ribbon like gauntlet on her right wrist that glowed softly.
Here in this place was their last stand. Here was the last of
them. So many had died but this 200 or so had been saved; not by acts of god
but by blood, sweat and pain which left them here in this place. She turned to
the 6ft man behind her, "take them back to the
shelters, the rains are coming." Her old ally led the
others back to the basic structured that had been their homes for the
last couple of months.
She sat on the edge of the cliff and swung her legs out
over the edge, staring a point that was indistinguishable and unremarkable
unless you know where to look - and what you were looking at. She was staring at a
grave on the opposite side of the cliff. The grave was simple: a pile of rock
over where the body lay, to protect it from being dug up by animals and a sword
identical to hers stuck in the earth at the head. The grave was that of her
soul mate, the one and only person that completed her.
Her job was completed, she had saved them and now she would return to
her mate. To him. She started walking along the cliff to the bridge that she would cross to get to the other
side. She passed her two friends, they watched
but did not try to stop her; it was her time to go. One had once sworn
allegiance the enemy and the other had died more times than she could count,
but still survived.
"Good bye, Samantha Carter. We
have stood together in battle many times, and I have had the privilege to call
you a friend. I will truly miss you," the tall man
said.
"Sam, I love you, you know that. You've been the greatest
friend ever and we won't be the same without you. But, I know you have to go."
She hugged them each good-bye. "It's right for you be with him," the smaller
man added. She turned away and started her trek across the gorge.
Their relationship had overcome so many barriers only to be
separated by death on the lonely battlefield. Soon they would be together in
the Summerland and then be re-born to find one another again.
She turned around to look one last time at the sunset and felt a drop
of rain on her cheek. She felt the rain fall down soothing the tired earth as
she knelt before the grave, safe in the knowledge that the human race would
survive. Hell! if they survived
parasitic aliens they could survive anything.
"We came together in perfect love and perfect trust and them were
separated too soon. I call upon the fates to reunite me with my soul mate in
the Summerland so we can be re-born and come together like we have done since
the dawn of time. As I will it, so shall it be!" She cried into the rain, tears
running down her face, as she lifted her sword and plunged it into her breast.
She closed her eyes and fell forward.
…
She rose above her body into a place between the worlds that cannot be
named and started running without moving. She saw herself with him in each
incarnation until she reached the end that in another place was the beginning -
when the two that were destined to be together for all eternity were born into
the world. And there in the place that wasn't a place she saw him standing
across form her just as she remembered: dressed in clothes similar to her, a cloak round his shoulders and a sword slung across
his back. She walked towards him and they embraced, she pulled back still
holding his hands.
"I love you with all my heart…"
"That the floods cannot drown nor death conquer…"
"For all eternity."
With that they fell forwards into each other, and, in a time that was
in the indeterminable future with a scream they were born, in places that were
as far apart as the time that separated them in age; destined to come together
as they had before - and they would again.