Mara's Nightmare
It starts at different times, the day before in the village, nursing her Son, that evening when the skirmish line collapsed and the last of the defenders were slaughtered, or in the bloody reaping of the militia troops who had murdered all she had known. This time it starts at the end.
She found herself at the improvised aide station the Enemy had assembled, mostly from plundered medical supplies from the clinic that still burned all these hours later. There was one surviving militiaman left, a large lout of a peasant Hare. He wore the common clothes of a farmer, with only an armband and billed cap of the Enemy to show his allegiance. His trouser legs were split to accommodate some improvised splints, likely a burst of gunfire had torn up both legs mid-shin, and he sat up on a scrounged mattress on the bare ground. Like all too many of the Enemy, he was likely little more than a simple neighbor, driven by artificial envy and false outrage to be unleashed on the "alien other" that lived in their midst.
His eyes went wide in horror when she appeared, soaked in the blood and less noble fluids of his comrades. Up until this moment, her path of destruction was within the perversely cool calculation of a job that needed doing. As terrible as it was, she had hunted down and destroyed the dispersed troops with a dispassionate efficiency.
He held his hands up, with the kind of frightened smile a cub might make when caught sneaking a treat. But this had never been a fight where prisoners were taken. She was prepared to at least make it quick. She was no monster, it may be kill and be killed, but she had never been cruel, never abused, or exalted in the pain of others.
Then she saw what was in his breast pocket.
In her culture, when a young mammal had her first estrus, she was then considered a maiden rather than a cub, and given tokens of that status. A necklace, strung with little charms for protection and purity in the day and fertile motherhood in the future. Mara had been given an ancient cord, said to be woven from the tail hair of a distant ancestor. It was strung with carved stone, tiny iridescent glass, and silver items spanning centuries.
The Hare had several necklaces, fancy silver chain versions, humble things, little more than a sting with simple pressed clay elements, others not so different from her own. Then she saw, and smelled, even over the reek of gore on her, the stains on his coat and trousers.
Something happened.
She drove the long bayonet through his belly, the mattress and then into the ground, pinning him like a bug. He lay there stunned at what happened then looked to her as though asking why in the world did she do that. She then drew out the auto pistol she had taken from an Enemy officer and emptied the magazine into his face. And the next full magazine, and the next. He wasn't dead enough, but she was out of bullets. And in that, she screamed.
She screamed for the ache of milk still in her that her Son would never suckle.
She screamed for the touch and smell of her mate she would never share again.
She screamed for the unburied dead that had been her people and were no more.
She screamed knowing she could never kill all the Enemy.
And, finally, she screamed because that was the only thing left she could do.