A/N: Writers Anonymous One-Word Prompt Challenge.

Precious

When I was a girl my father took me into the barn and let me help him birth a calf. He said that if I brought a life into the world I might begin to understand its value. We sat with that heifer for an hour until she was ready, and fifteen minutes later I was wiping down her daughter. She was beautiful—strong and steady on her feet not five minutes out of the womb. I looked up at my father, and he looked down at me, and from that moment forward I understood the unspoken graces of faith and God and motherhood. And I'm really not sure why the thought of it all strikes me now, but between the rifle rounds cracking above my head, the mud and loose twigs twisting through my hair as I press my face into the dirt, and the blood pouring from the gaping hole in my ass mixing on the forest floor with the blood pouring from the gaping hole in Knute's head, I'm starting to think maybe I didn't quite understand the lesson that calf was supposed to impart.

We're holed up in a small ravine smack in the middle of the Kloden Wildwood—miles of forest so deep you could wander in and get lost for days. I always wanted to see forests growing up—I didn't know then that trees were nothing but cover. Didn't realize something so green and full of life could hide so much.

Someone shouts, but I'm behind our squad's .30 caliber machine gun, and that means I don't hear much of anything. What it really means is I'm going to be deaf before I'm seventeen. I already hear the ringing. Night. Day. It drones, even in sleep.

With my finger pressed to the .30's trigger I ride the steady thump of its recoil. Get lost in it until Ramona smacks my shoulder. "Goddammit, Cherry!" Her mouth is almost pressed to my ear, but she sounds like she's a mile away. "I said hold fuckin' fire!"

Without the .30 pounding everything's quiet. I hear mumbles here and there—people looking for magazines or reloading. Checking to make sure they weren't shot. Those who were groan. It's probably louder than I give it credit, but it feels like everything's underwater, and will for a long while. I ask Ramona, "What's up?"

"What's up," she says, "is you're wasting ammo. We don't have the guns to win here, we just need to hold. They're not shooting at us, you're not shooting at them. Clear?"

"Totally." My body shivers. It's adrenaline cutting blood flow, and the best way to get rid of the shakes is to take control—keep yourself occupied. I try counting through how many belts of ammo we've got left for the .30 when a dull ache hits my butt. "I think I've been shot."

"What?"

"Am I shot?"

She looks me over—concerned at first, but then she smiles, and means it. It's a good sign. People don't smile like that when you're bleeding out. "Didn't know you took it in the ass," she says.

That's another green flag—a joke. In basic they taught us to downplay injuries. Let a guy know he's going to be alright, especially when he's not. But Remmy wouldn't do that with me. She'd tell me straight. Probably. "How's it look?"

"Fine as ever. Bullet went in and through, all meat." She pulls out her medkit—mostly empty—and grabs a bandage. We have to pull my pants mostly down to patch me up, but it's not like anybody cares. Someone else screams murder down the line. Whoever it is, he's the star of the hour. "It hurt?" Ramona asks.

I'm not sure if it's adrenaline or shock but I tell her, "I don't know."

"You will." She rummages through her medkit but comes up empty-handed. "Hey Corpsman!" she yells, lifting her head just enough to see the commotion down the way. "Corpsman!"

No response. Then, "Hands full! Priority!"

Ramona puts more pressure on my wound. It stings a little, maybe. Feels thick. "When Doc catches a moment I'll get her over here. See if she can't shoot you up with something, yeah?"

I say, "Yeah."

"Yeah." She sniffles. "Can you still shoot?"

I don't say anything. We both know I don't have a choice.

It's quiet for a moment. Then the screaming starts again. The ring in my ears picks up. Lower pitched now, and constant. But over all of that I hear a new sound—a groan rising from somewhere in No Man's Land. Some poor bastard crying out in agony. And I know who it is.

I shot him in the stomach not three minutes ago.

Dad let me raise that calf we birthed. He took me into the barn a few days after delivery and sat with me in her pen. "You're responsible for this animal," he said. "I want you to feed it and take care of it, and make sure everything's on the up and up like." He dropped his chin to look me in the eyes. Smiled. When you're ten nothing warms your heart like making daddy proud. "Think you can do that?"

I was a sweet girl back then, but I may as well have said, "Oh, fuck yeah." I asked, "Can I name her?"

"Good cow needs a good name."

We sat in the pen for a few minutes, me and dad and the cows. His smile faded a little—the kind of fade only a daughter would catch. He coughed once, then cleared his throat. "Just so we're clear here, this is a chore, Cheryl. You need to start learning how to help run the farm. This cow is livestock, not a pet. I just want you to keep that in mind, alright?"

Yeah, dad. Sure thing. Whatever you say.

I named the calf Alaine.

It took Mina twenty minutes to make her sweet way over to me with her medpack, and holy shit Remmy wasn't kidding. You don't realize how much you'd give to make the pain stop until your ass is in it. Everything I hold dear? All yours. Everything in my heart? Take it away. I'll sell you the soul of my first born if you promise to make me numb.

The man between the lines understands. He hasn't stopped moaning since I dropped him.

Mina sets her kit aside and looks me over. Cocks her head. Smiles. "I didn't know you took it in the—"

"Fuck you!" I can't find air to scream, but between grit teeth and tears I give her what I've got. "It wasn't funny the fuckin' first time!"

They laugh. I cry. The man I shot groans. Ramona nods down our ravine. "Is everything alright with—"

"She's dead." Mina checks me out, and all the while she puts a lot of effort into avoiding Knute's body. It's almost like he isn't there. In a sense I guess he isn't. "Everything looks alright here," Mina continues. "Long as you don't take another bullet you aren't dying yet. Not much more I can do for you."

I took the round in my butt but the pain radiates. Splashes over me like water from a canteen. "Painkillers."

Mina doesn't reach for her kit. Instead she breathes deep. "You're toughing this one out."

I say, "What?"

"We're bled dry, Cherry." She looks at Knute for what might be the first time. Or maybe the last. Either way she doesn't look long. "I've got some bandages left but that's about it. Got nothing for you until someone pulls us out."

I laugh, and if I focus really hard on the ringing it almost sounds like the dying man between the lines laughs with me. "How long?"

Ramona says, "We've got reinforcements coming soon," but her tone says They should have been here forty minutes ago.

"You gotta be shitting me."

"Hey, you're tough, kiddo." Ramona lifts her rifle. Mina has already packed up and left. "You got this. Just got to tough it out a little longer."

I don't expect her to understand—she's never been shot. "Yeah."

She flags down the nearest warm body—Wavy, about five meters to our right—and beckons. "I've got to go check in with the Lieutenant but I'll be back as soon as I can." When Wavy hobbles over she says, "Cherry here caught a bit of a boo-boo," and throws in a wink. "Think you can distract her for a hot minute?"

"I can handle that," he says.

Wavy is a father and I can see that in his smile. But he isn't mine, and that smile doesn't bring me joy. The only warmth I feel sears.

Ramona runs off and Wavy takes her place. "We have plenty of time, and you're not running away." Setting his weapon down he continues, "Let's see if I can't finally teach you something you can't learn from a fashion magazine."

But all I can hear is that moaning.

Wavy believes the mind is a man's most precious resource. You might live in poverty or squalor, but with a healthy mind you can store a fortune of knowledge at the ready to recall and spend at a moment's notice. He treats his like a temple. Reads tomes and treatises between patrols and cease fires. All the boring classics, from literature to philosophy. "A fact a day," he says, "will keep you rich the rest of your life."

I wonder what good wisdom did Knute when that bullet dropped the better part of his beautiful mind over the front of my uniform.

Wavy talks a big game, but I know the truth—he's a fraud. Not that he's not smart. He totally is. But everyone in the squad thinks he's some hotshot Professor of Theoretical Whatever from Being-Fucking-Smarter-Than-University. He definitely isn't.

One of the perks of being a sweet, blonde sixteen year old girl with a perky rack and doe-eyes is people like to talk. I like to talk back, and if you gather a few Divisions together you've got someone from everywhere.

Ran into a guy not too long ago who knew of Wavy growing up. He told me the whole shebang. Wavy rants and raves all of thirty hours a day about the value of an education—turns out the motherfucker didn't even graduate high school. Dropped out when he was fifteen.

He is a teacher, though. That much about him is true. So what does Preceptor Wavy, Herald of Man's Precious Knowledge teach? Math? Philosophy? History?

Gym.

I took an IQ test when I was twelve. People had always looked at me different. Most of the time they wouldn't say it to my face, but I heard them when they thought I wasn't listening. Things like, "Look at little Cheryl thinking she's too smart to drive a tractor," or, "There goes little Cheryl, thinking she's too good to put calluses on her precious little hands." It only got worse when my score came back.

Results: Nobody likes a know-it-all. I've pretended I'm like, totally vacant ever since.

Sorry, Wavy.

Wavy's halfway through laying the groundwork of axiology when Ramona returns. She brings Jane and Emile with her.

Jane is good people, but she's also kind of a psycho bitch. Most grunts see service as a duty. Bare arms for your country and whatnot. Wave the flags. Thank you for your service. I don't think Jane knows what patriotism is. Sometimes I think she just wants to watch things die.

Emile though—he's beautiful. Not handsome, exactly, though you'd be insane if you paper bagged him. I mean really beautiful. The kind of beautiful you don't get just for being hot. He's too frail to be called athletic, and probably not quite smart enough to be called a genius, but who really gives an honest shit about that?

I'll grant that I may be a shallow wannabe-slut, but I'm not that shallow.

I watched him paint a picture once. He deadass set up a canvas and easel right there in the Goddamn middle of the barracks. Kid went to town on that thing. Within a few hours he had a landscape of a farm—sunset, of course, with cows coming home to pasture. Done in the style of the impressionists. I could count the brushstrokes from across the room. Part of me still sees him standing there painting every time I look at him. It's a part of me I wish he'd notice.

A bigger part of me wishes they hadn't pulled my pants back up after wrapping my ass in bandages. Maybe he would have enjoyed the show.

In any case he's the first to ask me how I'm feeling when they roll up.

"It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood," I tell him, and it's only ninety-nine percent lie. I turn my head to Ramona and ask, "Any updates?"

She shakes hers. "It might be a little bit."

"Ballpark?"

Another head shake.

We sit in a silence that isn't quiet. My ears ring but that's the new normal. Over everything else the man between the lines hasn't stopped crying. It's been over an hour. "Can we do anything about that?"

I don't say what 'that' is, but I don't need to. Everybody here has seen someone die. Watched someone shot dead or blown apart. Knute practically exploded in front of me. It's scary how comfortable you can get around the blood and guts of a man's homecoming. But listening to someone die is another monster entirely—and I pulled the trigger on him.

I can't go deaf fast enough.

"What do you mean?" Jane asks. "Like shoot him?"

"No." But then I say, "Yeah, sure. Shoot him. If that's what it takes, yeah."

They look over the lip of the ravine—carefully, but not without hurry—and scan for a few seconds before dropping down. Wavy wipes his glasses. "I can't see him."

"No," Jane replies, "but I can hear where he is. About fifty meters straight out, maybe. Couple of logs in the area. They wouldn't stop a bullet, but if I can't see him I'd have to spray. He ain't worth the ammo."

Another resigned silence. From across No Man's Land comes a shout—what might be a name hidden in a jumble of words I can't understand. The man moans louder in response.

Somewhere down our line Hannes yells, "Shut up and fucking die already!"

I don't think anyone else notices Emile shudder. He may be Militia, but I can't see him ever wishing anyone dead. I want to tell him it's not his fault. It's mine, if anyone's. That guy won't make it home but you will. Your art is going to cover palace walls, and people three centuries from now will blow smoke from their pipes and think: You were something special. You are something special.

But the honest truth is there's nothing I can tell him that will make him feel better. That picture he painted with the sunset and the cows and the brushstrokes?

He gave it to Nancy.

And if I'm being really honest? In the deepest, purist part of me that I don't want Emile to see I wish that man was dead too.

Don't tell my father, but Alaine and I were best friends. I took care of her like dad asked. Made sure she was fed. Checked to make sure she was healthy. All that jazz. But what dad didn't realize is you can't give a ten year old girl a calf and not expect her to fall in love. Alaine may have been a cow, but when your closest neighbor lives a mile down the road—and the closest neighbor with kids is out another two on top of that—you take your companions where you can get them.

Dad got me working on other tasks—chickens, turkeys, ducks—but Alaine was my first, and your first is always special. When he wasn't looking I slipped into the barn to visit her between my other chores. I stroked her coat. Scratched behind her ears. Sometimes I just watched her.

In the summers I snuck out at night to sleep in her pen. At first she rested on my lap, but before long we had to lay side by side. Eventually I slept on her. Even though Alaine grew many times my size I always saw her as that calf. I didn't understand what was happening then, but I recognize now that raising Alaine was my first experience with motherhood.

And maybe being a mother is all I've ever really wanted to be.

The loudest part of getting shot at isn't always the gunfire. Gunshots are loud, for sure, but you might be surprised how quickly a report fades over distance. Sometimes the loudest part is the bullets themselves. The standard Imperial rifle round travels about 738 meters per second. That's over twice the speed of sound, and that means each and every one of them comes with its own sonic boom.

That means I'm going fucking deaf.

I don't know who shot first and it doesn't matter. There was one crack. Then two more. Then everyone started shooting, and that's just the way things go. Behind the .30 I can't tell individual shots apart. Everything's a sustained roar. Too constant to sound like fireworks. Too sharp for a waterfall. Far too great to endure. Really, the loudest part of getting shot at is shooting back.

It's hard to describe the power of a machine gun. I can't lift weights or do pullups, but none of that matters when I shoot the .30. It's a tool with one purpose—to help a girl like me transmute Goliath into a fine, pink mist.

I can't see the enemy but I can guess where they might be—nested in the crevices of the forest floor, or the nooks behind stumps. The .30 doesn't care. It turns everything to pulp.

I fire in bursts and with every press of the trigger something downrange explodes. Branches tumble to earth. Tree trunks fragment. Bark grows wings. When the belt I'm feeding through the gun is spent I grasp for another.

Before my fingers are around it the ground erupts in front of me in a blast I feel more than hear. It pounds through my sternum and to my spine, and I tumble back into the ravine. Another hits—closer this time. Someone yells, "Mortars! Incoming!"

If my .30 could mutilate a tree and leave its body for the buzzards, a mortar would evaporate one and leave nothing for scavengers. The shells that don't touch ground bisect trunks and drop entire halves of trees into free-fall. You can hear them on their way in—wailing a siren's scream before loosing a Titan's roar.

A shell finds its home in our ditch. It showers me with dirt and stone. Something tears into my arm. I grab Knute's body, roll him over me, and bury my face in his neck.

Yesterday Knute was my friend, and his friendship was precious. Today he's cover. It might be profane, but as the world shatters, every rock of his body against mine brings comfort. Maybe what I valued in his friendship isn't what I need from him today. Maybe what I hold dearest changes with the weather.

I cradle Knute tight. It feels like I might be crying, but if I am I can't hear it. The earth fragments around us and tracers rip overhead like meteors burning through atmosphere.

When I was a girl my mother told me that life was a blessing, and no life was more precious than the life of a child. She nested me in her arms and called me her greatest gift. Such a good girl, gracious and vestal.

Mom believed you don't need to be smart to live a perfect life. You don't need to be accomplished. You don't even need to be healthy. All you need is to surrender; The Shepherd protects his flock. Cultivate purity of soul and mind. Of body. Spurn lust. Worry not of raiment or nourishment or flesh, for faith alone brings salvation. So what then does God's Precious Gift wish for when she lifts her gaze to Heaven and counts a thousand shooting stars?

Honestly I just want to live long enough to get fucked before somebody pops me off.

In the spring after my thirteenth birthday I woke up one morning to a buttery breakfast casserole and a heaping of mom's fresh apple crumble. They were my favorites, and I smelled them long before I crawled out of my covers. A loaded plate of each waited for me at the table. I'd learned to eat fast, but dad stopped me before I reached for my fork. "Take your time," he said. "Enjoy it. There's no hurry today."

We sat and ate, him and mom and me. Dad and I rushed our meals, but maybe the one rule our family had was we ate together. Always. Whether a meal took you three minutes or thirty you would show your face at the table.

Dad finished first and took his plate to the sink. "Meet me out behind the barn when you finish, but you can grab another helping if you want. I know what momma's cooking does to you."

He smiled. I melted.

I stuffed my face with two more servings before leaving to meet him.

The morning air was crisp, but the sun warmed my face like embers in the night. There's something special about a fresh day in early spring just before the trees bud and the flowers reach through the dirt. Something invigorating in the smell of the world rising from winter's ashes.

Alaine waited behind the barn. Her hair shimmered in the first rays of morning light, each strand its own glistening prism. What I remember is how wet her nose was. How large her eyes. She looked up at me, and I could swear she blew a kiss.

And then there was dad leaning against the shed, holding a knife in one hand and a captive bolt gun in the other.

So much for not getting attached.

I don't know when the shooting stopped. All I know is every nerve in my body is on fire. That means I'm alive. I roll Knute's body away, and vomit.

The shakes set in. It's not the first time I've had them. Not even the first time today.

It is the first time I've had them and been afraid I'm actually having a seizure. I need to do something. Anything. Take control.

The .30 sits mangled at the lip of the ravine—a tangle of broken iron and smoking metal. I crawl closer, reach for my rifle, and peer into the space between the lines. The forest is covered in a blanket of smoke and dust, but from what I can tell there isn't much left to see.

Then I see him. What cover he had before the shelling was blown away, but he's alive, somehow, and whimpering. Clutching the stomach I'd shot out what feels like months ago.

I shoulder my rifle, but shiver too hard to aim. Need to calm down. Focus on something steady. The ringing.

I take a deep breath. Then two more, and cradle his head in my iron-sights like a mother nursing a newborn. Alaine was supposed to show me this man was precious, but how can his life be a blessing if it led him to this?

When I put finger to trigger he speaks. Every word is nonsense, but I understand. He coughs. Sputters. Chokes.

And I pull.