Hi all! This is very short and I don't usually read anything this short myself, but if you give it a minute you might be agreably surprised - I hope. I thought I might continue it one day, but it has been sitting on my computer for two months and it ends right, so for now it's a oneshot. Please share your thoughts if you can spare a minute.
Desert Clarity
She is fading. She fades as she lies on the floor of that cell, so far away from where she was, where she should be. Ironic, really, how her place revealed itself to her, the placeless nomad, only when it was no longer hers. So now she lies, her back, her spread arms and her twisted legs soaking in the coolness of the cement floor, its chill spreading mercifully through her aching flesh, reaching her limbs and soothing the angry throbbing. She distances herself from the sore, insufferable wound she is, rises until she isn't a wound, until she just isn't. She lets her mind course out of her body, through the path the cool, merciful concrete has traced for her, and allows it to pulse out into the floor, into the inert material under her, into the painless non-existence of being there. She feels her strength there, pumping with unknown energy, free of what her body bears, is bore down by, is subject to. She can breathe through her broken ribs, revelling in the wonderful extinction her mind dwells in.
Her eyes are closed but she can see it all. The golden desert light flowing through the window, its harshness softened by the ending afternoon into a glorious garment of gentle peace. The splattered, uneven concrete walls, reminiscent of so many other bunkers, of other times in Normandy and the Sinai desert and Afghanistan and Iraq and so many places she doesn't need to think about to remember. The tired seven inch-thick door that creaks and groans but holds its own, the rust gnawing it raw and exposing its metal insides to the world. She seeps her soul into the ground, letting it trickle out of her aching body, oozing through every bruise, dripping out of every bleed, percolating her multi-coloured skin and soaking in the thick, protective, restrictive floor and she knows. She knows she will be alright.