Thanks to Allie Marie for pointing out that Lili's name is spelt with two i's and not a y. My bad!
Chapter Four: No Man Is an Island
Vinyáya blows smoke from the tip of her gun. Every now and again, it makes her feel better to indulge in a little cliché.
Goblins leer at them from the other side of the barricade, smoke clogs the air and wreckage springs up out of the floor, seemingly from nowhere, making walking treacherous. All in all, her day off has not ended being all she had hoped and dreamed it would be. But what's a girl to do?
Trouble has the officers playing relay with the few guns they have. Half shoot, half stay out of the way, resting or helping to heal their colleagues in the makeshift hospital. Eyeing the line of current shooters, Vinyáya notices an anomaly. A glint of gold at the very end of the line. She frowns, and begins picking her way forward.
'Weren't you one the last shift?' Vinyáya asks Lili as she clambers into the niche the Corporal has dug herself.
'Mm,' Lili replies.
'Shouldn't that mean you've got a break right now?'
'Do you see the Goblins taking breaks?' Lili replies, shooting one of said creatures between the eyes.
Vinyáya blinks. Hadn't she heard that Lili Frond couldn't hit a dwarf's backside? 'No-o,' she replies cautiously.
'Well then,' Lili shrugs.
'I never took you to be the, ah, self-motivated type,' Vinyáya comments.
Irritably, Lili blows her bangs out of her eyes and licks her dusty lips, 'I just needed to keep from thinking, that's all.'
'I don't see how shooting Goblins is going to keep you from thinking about how Goblins may end up taking over Haven,' Vinyáya remarks conversationally.
'Yeah, well, maybe I have other things to think about,' Lili shoots another unlucky Goblin, this time in the stomach.
Vinyáya winces but perseveres, 'Like what?'
Lili sighs, putting down the gun and stretching her aching back muscles. Squatting on the ground like a common foot soldier, she takes a sip of water from Vinyáya's proffered bottle. 'What are you trying not to think about, over there on your end? I notice you haven't been taking breaks either.'
'I'm trying not to think about how certain people could be dead,' Vinyáya admits after a moment, gulping water as though it were something much stronger. 'And wondering how anyone could believe they would betray us.'
'Seems like we've got more in common than just stamina,' comments Lili.
'You don't believe it either?'
'Not for a minute,' Lili reaches for her gun once more, flipping her dirty hair over one slender shoulder. Vinyáya wonders that such fragile beauty can find purchase in so harsh a landscape and bloom no less beautiful than before.
'Since when did you get to be such a good shot?' Vinyáya asks, as she rises to go.
Lili shrugs, adjusting her grip, 'I'm not, I'm just really, really desperate. Like those mothers that fight trolls to save their children.'
'Well, just be careful,' she puts a hand on Lili's head and the young woman looks up at her, wide eyes grey and dim in the dusty light. Vinyáya sighs and thinks how out of place Lili Frond looks in a battle ground, even covered with dirt and grime, with eyes as lifeless as the best of soldiers'. The girl did not belong here and they both knew it. Vinyáya can do nothing but admire her perseverance, as she always has. 'There'll be other things to live for, when all this is over. So try to keep yourself alive until then, alright?' she says.
Hours later, Lili climbs out of her hole, nearly catatonic, tentatively licking blood from her cracked lip. She trips over something in the half-light and, looking down, sees that Vinyáya left her the water bottle and she'd never even noticed.