Great Shinobi Wars

One might presume that nature would be merciful to shinobi, that for their incessant physical exertion, they would be able to have salvation in a few hours of sleep. Of course, one would assume wrong. We are not so blessed by any means. In fact, things are quite the opposite and though we may be exhausted to the verge of collapse, if we sleep we dream, dream I say because there is no word that describes the action of having nightmares. There is no rest in repose for shinobi.

We battle others all day and turn on ourselves to wage war the second our eyes fall shut. We see the men we killed today in gruesome detail, from the deathblow through the throat to a gash across the cheek from their falls to the forest floor.

And we see our husbands who haven't slept beside us for the entirety of a month, who we see steeped in blood, asleep forever somewhere far too far from us or our wives screaming as they stumble from another hit landed by an invisible enemy and death and emptiness steal them away into darkness.

And it makes us want to sleep, once more beside our husbands, want to fall into inescapable death, follow our wives, pay any cost to be with them, let our devotion be ripped from our throats until we wake bathed in perspiration.

Even the young cannot escape.

Visages far too youthful contort with pain as mothers and fathers are driven through and dyed to death, lost in a never ceasing tide of the gone forever, seize each other by the throats and hold tight until they fall, or even turn on them, their child, and tell them it will be just as safe on the other side, baby, just as safe, before the family line is destroyed.

We mock ourselves in sleep because we never told him, never told her, never told them I love you and none can hear I loved you.

We see our children and the cycle starts again, our tiny offspring alone in the streets, the monster, death, approaching all too fast and we know, the cycle never ends, we know that man with a whole through his throat and a scratch on his jaw had little ones too who roam through different streets but look with eyes filled with pain our own know.

He had a wife he dreamed had died.

He forgot to tell his parents, his sensei, he forgot to say I love you.

But we drag ourselves awake, claw for a ledge to stabilize us in reality and latch on to the same scene of heat and stealth and metallic scents of a war that will not die only to stagger back to sleep and curse our lives as our eyes close against our will.

And I, I dream of them all.

The husbands, the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the dead men, the parents, the children, the children, the children.

The blood.

The children.

My child.
I dreamed of it last night, faceless, as of yet unborn. And it was alive, in my arms, alive. And laughing.

Laughing.

All my children were laughing again. And I wondered if I was asleep or awake. But I think… I must have been dead. And I laughed with them.