A place like Fort Briggs fosters rumor and legend well. Isolated and dangerous, it houses only a small force of soldiers at the very edge of civilization, all with little else to do in their downtime but look out onto their strange world and share what they saw there in the wilderness with each other.
Olivier was disgusted by the level of superstition when she arrived. One of the first things told to her, while touring the facilities and before even hearing any of the finer details of her new command, was a ghost story. An absurd tale of some mountain spirit spooking patrols and stealing supplies, told with great enthusiasm by the grinning lieutenant leading her through the wide cement corridors that made up the Wall.
"Ridiculous," she said sharply. "Bears, most likely. Perhaps even enemy spies allowed far too close to the fort. Blaming ghosts is simply an excuse for poor soldiering."
The lieutenant shrugged his massive shoulders. He looked old for his rank, despite obvious strength and capability, and seemed as unconcerned about that as anything else, but Olivier had already noticed that this was a common occurrence up here. Briggs was where they sent soldiers they wished to forget, not ones they wished to promote, and it was no secret to those on duty here. She had been well aware of that when they'd offered her the position.
"You know how these kids get, left out in the woods by themselves," he said with a laugh. "Think you actually startled some of them on your arrival, coming out of the snow alone like that. We were expecting you a few days later and with more of an escort. The boys probably thought you were another spirit come to haunt us."
She scoffed. "I prefer to see things as they are, not how they've been prepared for me," she said. "And I can already tell I've got my work cut out for me here, if I've inherited a fort full of soldiers more worried about ghosts than Drachman spies."
"They're plenty worried about both. It's what makes them so twitchy," the lieutenant said with another grin. "You'll see how it is up here."
She crossed her arms and frowned. "I plan to."
To put weight behind her words, she took the late watch herself those first few nights, nervous soldiers giving her station a wide berth as they scuttled along the top of the Wall, and after long hours staring out into that expanse of wilderness, the moonlight reflecting off the snow and casting strange shadows, a distant glow from Drachman cities beyond the horizon, the wind whistling through trees and creaking and groaning against the fort… Well, she soon understood the unease, even if she disagreed with the jump to evil spirits as an explanation.
Though she could admit, privately, that she didn't necessarily have a better one.
Olivier always judged things with her own eyes, and not everything seen from the vastness of Fort Briggs could be so easily dismissed as foraging animals or enemy troops. To her great annoyance – and perhaps, deep down in the pit of her stomach, the smallest twinge of fear – a trick of the light was the best she could tell herself sometimes.
It is a relief, years later, to meet Izumi Curtis and learn the truth behind the events that had sparked those first ghost stories. It is something simple and definitive that she can sharply explain to any jumpy new recruits who still believe the old rumors about their new station.
Of course, the dates do not quite line up exactly.
She holds her eyes to the midnight horizon and keeps that detail to herself.