Disclaimer: Dynasty Warriors isn't mine.
I know this really isn't a DW thing, but this peasant narrative is an uplifting piece I wrote. Failure is no stranger to us, but there's always next time and if not next time, then the time after that, etc. Hopefully, this snippet can bring you up a little if you need that boost. I know I need some uplifting words from time to time or I just forget the point. If you're also reading this for the heck of it, I thank you for dropping by. Now, on with the story!
~M. Wing
Show of Grace from the Fallen
I tasted the grit of defeat in my mouth many times in my lifetime, but this defeat had to have tasted worse then all those other times. It was stale and it influenced the bile that had risen from my gut. I felt like an individual stripped of my manhood as I crawled in the muck on my stomach and grubby knees; thrown into the elements of an animal. My hands gripped at slime as I blindly felt for my friend. The weather didn't help the circumstance. The copious rain poured so that the drops of precipitation were like pellets against the leather of my armor. My clothes underneath were heavier than I remembered. I couldn't carry myself anymore, so I resigned my heart and my fading spirit; my warrior code forgotten.
I heard the chaos behind me, beside me, and in front of me, but it all seemed far away. It all seemed a different time, a different place, and a different life, but I was still in me, the body that my peasant mother and peasant father gave me. My position, splayed in the mud, was an unfamiliar place for me, yet here I was to substantiate just how unfortunate any human being could be. At the lowest point surrounded by carnage, I stretched in defeat unable to find my friend for console.
The leather in the muck made a sucking sound as I felt myself raised from the lowest. Someone had pulled me out of the grime by my damp collar and set me to my feet. To my relief and astonishment, he shoved the hilt of my friend in my dirty palm. I raised my friend perpendicular to myself as I glanced to the gleaming steel and to the petty soldier like myself, who had dragged me out of my sickness.
He gripped my hand on the handle of my friend and I strained to meet the coal-like eyes of the petty soldier. He calmly said to me, "Do your job. There's always tomorrow." He pointed to the arsenal that was up in flames. I watched in awe at the outline of my commanding officer on his war-horse, spinning his sword in the air. The flames behind him roared and the smoke spiraled around us as he called for a retreat; the echo of "For Shu! For The Middle Kingdom!" followed. Then, I had remembered, indeed, there was always that promise of tomorrow.