Wait and Hope
By Simply Shelby

"Hope is a waking dream."
-Aristotle

It was cold. Freezing. A man, a British officer by the looks of his uniform, was seated heavily upon his cot. He should have been sleeping, but he could not find the courage to close his eyes and face his nightmares. Instead he was writing a letter home. A letter that would most likely remain close to his breast without any hope of being sent off to his loved ones.

My dearest family,

Oh! how I've missed you so. Indeed, the trials here seem so much easier to withstand when I remember that you all are my reason for being here in this hell. I receive no news of England besides snippets of reports given to my commanding officers. I have not seen a newspaper in months. However, I do know of Hitler's blitzkrieg in London. I hope you are all safe and well and saving a smile and a kiss for me when I return home.

The man flinched slightly as the ground shook with a rapid volley of grenades. His pen blotted against the paper. "Damn," he murmured with a frown and simply continued.

Helen, darling, you are often in my thoughts and in my dreams. Some lonely nights I find that the memory of your face, of your scent, of your presence is all I have to sustain me through countless nights of fear and insomnia...

The scrap of cloth that served as a door flew open in the wind. The papers in his small notebook fluttered softly as he closed his eyes for a moment and remembered his wife. He remembered the feel of her soft chocolate hair between his fingers. He remembered her strong features which reflected her determination to succeed as his wife and as his children's mother. And what a job she'd done. He remembered her delicate little mouth, the way her lips looked when her lipstick was blotted by his own lips. A smile alighted his face as he remembered his children's laughter at the sight of lipstick on his mouth. His eyes opened and he put the ink back to the paper.

Peter, my brave and responsible boy. No. I daresay you are no longer my little boy and must be by now a remarkable young man.

The father wrote these words with a sort of remorse. He had left a child with his half of culpability; certainly too much for a boy his age to bear. Yet, he remembered putting his hands upon the boy's shoulders and passing everything over to him. Those clear blue eyes had looked back at him with a far greater understanding than the father had expected from him. Peter had grown up too quickly. That terrified the man far more than any impending war ever could. However, he'd pushed aside his feelings of misgiving and seemingly carelessly tousled his eldest son's wheat-blonde hair.

Where on earth had the boy gotten that hair, anyways? he thought. Peter's fairness of features was shared with neither his parents nor his siblings. It had always been an old quandary for him and Helen to ponder over during the late nights. Inevitably, the discussion was always inturrupted by Lucy's knock on their bedroom door.

Lucy, sweetheart.

What more could he say? Sadly, the only details he could seem to remember about his youngest were her cherubic feace and bright smile. She was his family's joy, their hope for the future. She was the child everyone cared about. She was innocence. And his family would do anything to protect that innocence. He held his daughter's image in his head, trying his best to remember.

Short shouts of orders echoed around the camp. Responding was the echo of return fire. His head ached and he lowered it to be supported by fingers numbed by the frigid air. His body was quaking with a fear he couldn't afford to indulge in on the battlefield. Prayers were said between gasps of breath. He felt dirty. He hadn't had a bath in days, but that was hardly the reason. He should be sleeping. Not writing to a family who may or may not be alive. No! he denied that thought and refocused.

Edmund, he wrote, be strong. You have the strenth to withstand everything aimed to bring you destruction.

He stared at those words. Why had he written those words? For a moment, it felt as though someone else was guiding his pen. The thought terrified and comforted him. The last time he had seen his youngest son, the boy had been struggling to find his place in life. Perhaps, sending him away for school hadn't been such a good idea. Helen had suggested, in hushed tones, that perhaps Edmund had been having problems with bullies. The sweet, sensitive boy was a prime target for anyone bigger and meaner than him. In hindsight, he should have given his son more support, should have paid more attention. Before he'd left, Ed had seemingly slipped into an angry and isolated boy, unforgiving and easily aggravated. He could only imagine how the War was taking it's toll on his little boy.

Susan, gentle nurturing daughter.

When Edmund had been born, she'd declared that the infant was her little baby. She'd helped to feed him, clothe him, wash him. As he grew older, she read to him when he became bored, comforted him when he awoke with the tendrils of nightmares plauging his bed. When Lucy had been born, her maternal instinct had compounded and she took those duties quite seriously. The picture of Susan dressing his little Lucy and pushing her around the house in a pram amused him. How he longed for those days. His heart broke a little.

"Pevensie! Brickman! Ellington! Daniels! Hiller!"

He jerked back from his memories and signed the letter. Quickly folding the paper and stuffing it against his chest, he stuck his head outside his building. "Yeah?" he yelled back for all the men inside.

"Pack up your gear! We're moving out!"

For a fraction of a second, the man held his breath. The man, a father and a husband, remembered that out here he was first and foremost a soldier.

Still, the letter weighed heavily upon his heart. He hoped someday to mail it.