Dmitry
"It's cold."
"Fuck you, it's cold. Make the damn run! It's your turn!"
"S' Vetrov's turn! I went two days ago, and my shift in the factory district was yesterday!"
Blackened flakes of fluffy-wispy ice drifted through the shattered basement window, past the oil rags tenderly hung as insulation. Swirling in a majestic dance above the heads of the arguing men, the snow—soot by another name—alighted on heavy shoulders, blood-puffed noses, and shattered spirits. There was fire. Black, greasy smoke slithered across the stained ceiling above, pooling upon the four inches of cement and plaster between Comrade Stalin's decrepit defenders and the devastated tenements above.
Men and women, children and animals, Bolsheviks and the Soon-to-be-Dead—all made a home down in the low places. The open air belonged to the Germans and the Burlap Ghosts, now.
And yet, despite the bleak numbness in neighbors' eyes; cracked and dirty hands; burnt and bloody clothing; cold and empty hearts, the First Citizen's once shining city held on one more day… and that was beautiful.
Truly.
The Beautiful Underground, Stalingrad.
"Vetrov? Dmitry, are you awake?"
A Burlap Man never sleeps, Lieutenant. You know…
"Dmitry… Soren's right. It is your turn to make the run."
Pile—he referred to himself as a 'pile' now, as one was wont to do in light of the most recent starving—righted himself at his superior's command. The woman slumped nearest him cast a sympathetic look, and Pile took it: took it right out the air and kept it within himself. She wore the uniform of an infantryman. These days, it was hard to tell whom they belonged to—husband, son, father, brother—or if she was a fighter herself. Lord knew they needed them... more people to fight, that is… and husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.
The Run was also needed.
"Pack's in the corner, by the stairway… Want a partner?"
Every day people arrive: runners from different parts of the city carrying scrounged ammunition, weapons, and medicine. The supplies—whatever wasn't used on the spot—were consolidated into a large, woven pack to be worn by a runner and taken to the abandoned factory that the good Comrade Zaytsev made into his base of operations. Oftentimes, ammunition going to Vasily's marksmen was only entrusted to one of his former students: this was one of those times.
"Dmitry? Dmitry, do you want someone to go with you?"
Pile shook his head, rising to his feet from newspaper bedding and suckled-clean rat bones. He never took another with. One person's death was enough.
"All right, Corporal. Stay safe, eh? You're going to the House, today."
The House? Those poor bastards were still alive?
"Sergeant Pavlov will direct you from there," the Lieutenant mumbled carefully, moving away toward the small fire; away from Pile's gaze. He knew what he asked was sure suicide. The House was tenuously held by four men, surrounded by a buzzing hive of German forces. No reinforcements could break through, and they wouldn't be able to in the foreseeable future, but one man… one man could perhaps slip in and re-supply the tired defenders.
Pile cast his weary gaze about the room, gathering the feeling of his comrades in arms: the sight, the sound, the smell. He would need it, later, in the city. His eyes met Private Soren's, who at least had the decency to look sorry for him, but the marksman could see the relief behind his thin, sad eyes. He was only human, after all.
And no human wanted anything to do with the doomed souls in Pavlov's House.
The smell of grease smoke was worse toward the ceiling, and Pile coughed raggedly, tilting his nose down away from the cloying scent. He was eyeing the ground, looking for his weapon in the stack of newspapers he had lay beneath, when a tug at his coat prompted him to turn.
A gloved hand, dirty and swollen, held forth a rifle. It was the infantry-woman, smiling grimly. She was missing a tooth, and the skin around her right eye was bruised and blackened, but it detracted nothing from her beauty. Everyone in the underground was beautiful: beautiful because they were alive.
If he returned, Pile told himself he would let her know how beautiful she was; how beautiful they all were.
Stooping, he reverently took his rifle, turning it in the flickering light of the fire. It was battered, stained, and scratched, but it worked, and for that reason he loved it. Pile's fingers danced along the barrel; the scope. He checked the lever and reciever: both oiled and moving freely. The old Mosin-Nagant would be his only friend tonight, but hopefully Pile wouldn't have to use it on the run itself. The comforting weight of the small Tokarev handgun at his side and the cold bayonet slipped into a small slit in his ratty left boot meant little against fully-outfitted German soldiers, but perhaps he wouldn't run into any, as they were becoming a rare breed in and of themselves. Winter had come to Stalingrad, and the Germans were ill prepared.
Soon, they would be starving, too.
Pile slung his rifle across his back, the sheets of itchy burlap tied around its body scratching at the back of his neck. He crossed the room quickly, grabbing the heavy runner's pack from the corner. He lifted the green linen sack with a small grunt and set the thick strap on his shoulder. It was time to leave.
Silently, he passed men playing cards and children snapping rat bones in the dust: the men nodded to him, and the children wished him goodbye in small, airy voices.
"Bye, Dmitry."
"Come back safe tomorrow and we'll play 'sketch' together."
The sniper smiled and turned away, mounting the narrow stairway to the surface.
Frozen moonlight spilled through the cracks of the broken city. Twisted girders and broken mortar littered the black streets, and dust shifted and fell from once gleaming towers of Soviet prosperity: now bombed-out hulks of metal and cement. It was from one of these fallen giants that Pile emerged, boots shuffling anxiously in the snow. Popping, roaring gunfire could be heard to the east, a testament to the German line; and to the west, silence. The Germans hardly ever shelled at night anymore—too much chance of friendly fire.
Pile looked around, standing still at the edge of what used to be a support column for the building above. An overturned car lay nearby amongst the scattered bones of three horses. He knew it was three—picked clean by the men and women of the resistance. He'd counted them while on watch in one of the rooms above.
The bones of three horses… and one man.
Nothing was wasted in Stalingrad.
Making sure the street was clear on either side, Pile quickly stole across and into an alley between an old butcher shop—also picked clean—and a department store. The freezing night air bit at his face, raising his skin red and mocking him with its constant feeding and sucking of all warmth, but he kept on, moving quickly east to the next street, and the next.
The House was some miles away, yet: further than Zaytsev's Factory. It was going to be a long morning. Hopefully, the sun would not yet be up when he got there. It would make sneaking inside much simpler. The wind blew, and Pile stopped, hunching inward on what was left of himself. There hadn't been much in the way of food besides rats for the last few weeks, and it was beginning to show. Pile was thin before, but now his ribs were much more pronounced, matching his pale, protruding cheekbones and hollow eyes. He was so starved his body had stopped growing hair. Pile's face remained smooth in the stinging cold.
His father had always told him that Siberians could survive any measure of punishment. Stepping over the stripped, frozen body of one of his darker-skinned comrades, he knew now that wasn't true. Pile saw his own face everywhere he looked, mouth open in silent scream, filling with bloody snow, dark eyes open wide, and he was no longer frightened by it. He sometimes wondered if he was losing his mind, and the thought filled him with no small measure of comfort: the insane feel little pain in the end.
They imagined things, and were so caught up in their own reality they didn't feel the hunger, the cold, or the bullets. It was beautiful, almost more beautiful than the warm bodies that hid below. The insane truly lived before the end.
Crunching lightly along the alley, Pile imagined a forest: huge hardwoods reaching toward the clear, cloudless sky, raking it like some unearthly, angered beast in search of food. Green sprouted from pure-white snow, a blanket broken only by the tracks of predators and their prey. There wasn't a building in sight, and everything was quiet.
Yeah. Insanity might be nice.
Pile didn't know how long he thought of the forest, but when he reached the edge of an alley and heard hushed, brusque voices and the crackling of a fire, he stopped. Peering around the corner of the brick building to his right, he spotted a group of soldiers huddled on the street corner around a garbage can: Germans. He must've been getting closer to the Eastern Line… or the Line was getting closer to him… whichever came first.
There four of them, all armed. Pile glanced left: the street was clear, aside from scattered mounds of rubble and a small car missing all of its tires—rubber was a commodity, it seemed. He looked back in the direction he'd come, weighing his options. The sun would be coming up soon, and he didn't want to waste time trying to find another way around. Briefly brushing his hand across his handgun, the sniper quickly ruled out a direct confrontation and began to edge his way across the alley toward the wrecked automobile.
He would sneak around, and continue down the street a few hundred yards north of the Germans.
Not a problem.
On another world, it seemed that the sun was always shining, and just living wasn't just beautiful; it was easy…
And Pink was an extremely popular color.
"Pinkie!"
A small, exuberant creature twirled on one blunted, pink hoof, giggling to herself and smiling in the middle of the cobbled street outside her home. It was nearly noon, and the breakfast rush had ended half an hour ago, so she was no longer needed at her post behind the counter at Sugarcube Corner, her place of employment and current living arrangement. Ponyville was a small town, and everyone was so nice, so oftentimes she didn't even have to sleep in her small apartment above the bakery, but she paid rent nonetheless. The Cakes, her employers, needed the money: they had foals, after all.
"PINKIE!"
"Yes, Carrot Top?"
"What are you doing?"
"I. Don't. Know," the creature—an earth pony by the name of Pinkie Pie—smiled, stopping her skipping and twirling for a moment to focus on the pony who'd addressed her. "How are you, today?"
"Oh! Just fine, Pinkie," the yellow and orange mare—really named Golden Harvest, but she was too polite to mention it to the eccentric, pink mare—tittered from behind her carrot stall. "Sales have gone up since last week. I may actually get rid of my entire stock by the time winter rolls around!"
"Hey, that's great!"
"Say," the carrot vendor mused, leaning over her stall conspiratorially. "You and Rainbow Dash are good friends… you think you could talk her into holding off on the winter weather for an extra few days?"
Pinkie put a hoof to her chin in faux-thought. "Well, I don't know. The weather schedule is kind of a set thing…"
"Oh, please!" Harvest pleaded. "Couldn't you at least ask?" The pink mare smiled, reaching a hoof up to ruffle the other mare's voluminous, orange mane. Golden Harvest snorted and shook her head, glaring at Pinkie with mock resentment.
Pinkie already knew that Dashie wouldn't delay the weather, not even for one of her best friends, but she decided to put Harvest at ease anyway. It would make her smile, and that was all that really mattered in the end. "All right, Carrot Top. I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, Pinkie," the yellow mare giggled, beaming almost ear-to-ear.
The baker returned the smile, fulfilled for a moment, and began hopping, skipping, jumping down the cobbled road toward the center of town. She had decided to go visit the Ponyville Library that day, but not to check out a book. No, she was there on much more serious business.
Princess Twilight—hehe, 'Princess', that still makes me laugh a bit—hadn't been seen outside in days, and Pinkie was elected by her group of friends to go find out why. It would be a rather simple task, considering Twilight never locked her the Library door.
The walk was short, and the sun was shining. It was a good day.
Ponies waved as Pinkie passed, and she waved back, sharing kind smiles all along the way. The large oak tree that housed Ponyville's one two major repositories of knowledge soon loomed above, however, and she found that she was already there. Sliding to a stop on the doorstep, Pinkie took a moment to admire the red tri-cut frame doorway that her friend had installed the year before. Slowly, she raised a hoof to knock… and promptly barged right inside.
"Heya, Twilight! What's up?"
There was a bright, lavender flash and a muffled curse.
Pinkie was immediately bowled over by a blast of frigid air and lay sprawled against the doorframe. Her body felt all tingly and shivery, and something soft and cold alighted on the tip of her muzzle. She opened her eyes to find a small pile of snow forming on her snout, and she smiled.
Snow! Winter wasn't for another week at least and there was snow!
"Pinkie!? What in Celestia's mane possessed you to… to… are you alright?"
The pink mare shifted her glee-filled gaze away from her muzzle and toward the distraught mare before her. Light purple fur and feathers crowned with a nubby, spiral horn stood above, and twindigo—heehee—eyes stared down at her with concern.
"Pinkie?"
"Yes, Twilight?"
"Why are you here?"
Pinkie took a deep breath: "We-elllll I was just in the neighborhood and you haven't left the Library in almost a week and we—I mean Applejack and Rarity—were really worried that maybe you were freaking out again and your eyes were all wonky and crazed since you have a whole bunch of new responsibilities and all, meaning you are probably really stressed out and need a massage or a cupcake or a hug so they told me to come over and—"
Wow, Twilight's hoof tasted good! It must've been the hardwood floors…
"Pinkie, stop," the lavender alicorn chuckled, "I'm fine, see?" She gestured to herself with a wing, she displayed that she truly was in the right state of mind: perhaps in need of bathing, but a pony couldn't be clean all the time. "I've just been working on this really complicated spell and I can't quite get it right." Another tip of the wing revealed a painstakingly painted pentagram and pestle, wreathed in a circle of blue candles on the tasty Library floor. "I just about had the spell matrices fitted together in my head when you came in, but I still think I got it a bit wrong."
"What's it for?" Pinkie queried from her position on the ground. The snow on her muzzle began to melt from the heat of her breath and was soaking into her fur.
"It's supposed to grant the illusion of a pony's last wishes: sort of a last-rites kind of gift used in some of the more modern hospitals," Twilight answered. "Ponyville General doesn't have a mage qualified to do it, and I thought that if I could learn it then, well…"
Pinkie frowned—she hated doing that—and nodded sagely. "I understand," she sat up and encircled her royal friend in a comforting embrace. "Immortality is a bitch."
Twilight locked up, her wings clapping to her sides as she snorted into Pinkie's cotton candy mane. After a second, she began giggling quietly:
"I'm not immortal, Pinkie. You know that."
The earth mare simply nodded once more, tightening her already tight hold on her little princess. "It's still a filthy bitch." She stroked Twilight's withers lightly with one hoof. "Filthy."
The alicorn couldn't hold it in anymore, and what was once a chaste giggle rose into uproarious laughter. Pinkie shook about as her friend writhed in her forelimbs, and the small dollop of fresh snow on her muzzle slid off: right between Twilight's wings. The purple mare yelped and broke away from her friend, shivering.
"Oh, yeah… what was up with the snow, Twilight? That, uh… that probably should have been my first question."
Twilight examined the solidified dihydrogen oxide for a moment, scanning the floor for other errant piled of the stuff. "I'm not sure," she hesitantly proclaimed, trotting around the table in the center of the main chamber. "It might be magical feedback, I guess. The spell is supposed to be targeted to a specific pony, but I have no idea where I directed it just now... someplace cold, apparently."
Both mares stared at the slowly melting snow, spreading quietly and inexorably onward across the floor.
Twilight sighed.
"I'll get the mop."