I’m a soldier. That means I confront death every day, in the simplest way: inflicting and avoiding it whenever I’m asked to. That’s right, I stay alive today to murder tomorrow. The pay is more than acceptable, it’s just that I’ve very few things to spend it on: whatever I need is already supplied to me in large amounts due to being strictly related to my job. A more comfortable cot, new gloves, fancier meals, a file to sharp my fire axe. It’s fundamental not to jump into battle with a wireless axe; a man with a relatively unsmashed head is most likely to hold a shotgun and hit you in the very same point, but with a pretty different outcome.
Oh, and then there’s the fire machine. Now that was a discovery. It’s amazing what technology has been able to achieve: a belly full of petrol, a pump handle and two three-foot long steel barrels, parting to meet again at the end of the path. One screeches, the other grumbles, but when they meet they scream with joy standing in front of their creation, for nothing is greater than fire. It’s a legacy from the Ancient Gods, an element so magnificent that it can annihilate everything, making it at the same shine brighter than it ever has at the point of its life. Fire can destroy you with a small expenditure of time, though you can’t even touch it, just like a deity. A gun engulfed in flames will explode, and a scorching axe can’t be held.
No wonder they call me whenever an accurate and effective work is to be done. Like a firefighter, I move from one point to the other behind the first line to plug any leak. But I’m much superior to a firefighter, for I do not fight fires: I let my unwary enemies do it.
It’s not like everyone would be fit for this, though: you need good reflexes, the ability to improvize, a good sprint in case your enemy is trying to escape their fate and, of course, a bit of heat endurance.
As if it weren’t hot enough in this damnable desert of rocks and lizards. Who knows, perhaps it was a huge forest before the arrival of someone like me.
Still, I’m not complaining, the last model of uniform can retain the inner temperature quite well, and the gas mask filters any harmful elements. In fact, this mask is pretty comfortable. And they still wonder why I never take it off.
Being that the climate hardly ever varies makes the perception of the flow of time quite difficult; not that I really care, to me one month is as good as the other, I don’t keep calendars or diaries in my room. Also, I’m the only one in my team not to take leaves during the rest days; unlike the others, I have no place to go back to. And not even a name, I think.
I still remember how everything began, though; memory, it is known, holds any bitter, embarassing or gloomy thing. Anyway, everything began when I was a kid, and it ended in the same phase. Indeed, it appears that I’m still a child inside: the whitecoats back in Seattle used to say so and once in a while the expert from the Company confirms it. But given that nobody is already moulded at the birth, there must have been a particular event. Perhaps that journey to Goa during the summer of ‘67. No, that was more like the killing blow. Then it must have happened in San Francisco two years before, during the great acid wave. There was always that song from that emerging band playing in the background, how was it called? A Spoonful of Love, or something like that. And I’m the one who’s being childish?
As I already said, let’s leave names aside, only facts matter. And the fact is I did believe in magic, as that song always asked us. I believed in it more than everyone else, it’s just that I couldn’t find a way to convey it. Then I figured out that fire is the noblest magic we can create. When you expand your mind you do not see flames anymore, just many colorful stars. The world is full of flaws, and fire is the way to get rid of them. It’s more than obvious, and yet I’m the only who got it so far.
I don’t remember much about the process. There was only my father, plus some former magic buddies who were looking at me like I were some exotic animal. My mother and my siblings didn’t come, not that I cared about it. Facing the judge was simple, but I was unable to make eye contact with my father. When I somehow managed to I didn’t regret it, but it still hurt. He didn’t hate me, he didn’t blame me, he wasn’t silently wishing something bad on me. While sighing, he was just wishing he were in a different reality, one where he had only a son and a daughter and I was never born: I read it in his eyes. On the other hand, I believe that event had little or no influence on him compared to what he had seen until then. My father always looked like he was disappointed in me.
Luckily I didn’t have to put down roots in prison: not even a month after my interment a lawyer came to ask about me. He claimed to work for a leading Australian tycoon, a certain R.M., and promised me that he could get me immediately out of that place had I accepted to offer my talents to their company for the rest of my life. Even if I had known exactly what I was getting into, I wouldn’t have refused. Still, I ignored an entire country could end up at the mercy of the fights between the armies of two private companies competing for the control of deposits of some extremely valuable mineral. This is not what we’ve been preaching for years, is it? Where’s the love, where’s the peace, where’s the freedom, where’s the understanding?
But most of all, where’s the magic?
To change over from kerosene to petrol wasn’t a big deal, in fact I completed the training in record time. They said I was born to hold a flamethrower, but I bet that’s what they tell everyone to avoid them fleeing in horror after spreading magic on their first target. But for me it was different: I was enjoying it. Perhaps it’s my destiny, and who am I to dispute it? I have other things to deal with.
My teammates, for example. Now and then the newcomers, that is the ones who replace the injured and the fallen, murmur something, don’t know if they want me to hear them or not, regarding the fact I never show my face.
Indeed, when I have to consume my meals I just stay in my room, and if I am on a mission I just make sure nobody is around me. True, it would be extremely unsafe for a common soldier to be on their own near the first line, but I’m carrying a flamethrower.
Similarly, I visit the showers a bit earlier than dawn, to be sure nobody sees me. I once overslept till it was past 7 AM, so I decided to wash only my body, with the gas mask. Too bad the engineer, the one from Texas, suddenly came in, but at least he had enough good sense to take his baffled face somewhere else. But I’m pretty sure he has gossiped about it for months back in the quarters.
Once a week, I have the opportunity to make everyone focus on something different from my lifestyle: the thursday night Hold’em. In fact, it’s thank to it that I can still measure the flow of time. It’s the perfect game for someone like me: you tap two fingers on the table to chell, you raise with a hand gesture and you exult with a subdued laugh behind the air filter.
Also, nobody can catch me if I take at glance at the hands of the players next to me.
Sometimes I lose, obviously; the Frenchman sure knows his stuff, and when he smokes he makes the magic melt away. Fire is a gentle vision, smoke it’s just the evil-smelling scent of the day after, when you wake up from a dream as much interesting as blurred.
Not that I mind losing some money, the others sure know much better than me how to spend it. Well, more like they just know how to spend it. To me, banknotes are just inflammable objects. As I said, I have nothing to spend my pay on. This job is all I have, and it’s more than enough. Fast cars, good clothes and precious wines mean nothing to me.
That’s why I send almost everything to my family, more than an ocean away. It’s the only tipe of contact we share, I don’t attach any message to the transfer and they don’t write me any letter. Well, to be fair, they did write one. It was three months ago, I believe. Obviously there was a date on it, but I’m not gonna search for a newspaper to calculate the exact gap. I don’t read newspapers. Why should I care about the bad news from all around the world? I’m too busy bringing the magic to my small piece of desert.
The letter merely reported that dad had passed away, a few days before; heart attack, mom had written. I had told her he was being too idle, and he who doesn’t make a move can’t seize the magic. No, belt whipping does not count.
For the first time in two years mom was thanking me for the money, that would have sure come in useful waiting for the other two to graduate from Harvard. And to forget who paid them the last years of study and made them access their eminent careers, am I right? That’s how it’s always been, a filthy job behind every illustrious life.
The letter began with the name of a stranger. For a moment I thought the postal service had made a mess and my father was still there, waiting for two of his three children to give him a prideful elderliness. Then I realized that was actually my name. More exactly, it was my given name before I came here and became simply the guy with the flamethrower, the Pyro.
The letter met the fate it deserved, immersed in magic.
At first, it was a lot of fun. But even a pure in heart like me was starting to feeling besieged by the gazes of those who were unlucky enough to meet me. It didn’t bother me during the day, but at night it’s easier to feel alone, and by alone I’m referring only to the good company. I’ve talked about with the whitecoat during the inspection, and he asked me if I simply wanted to leave. To leave? Where for?
Much to his surprise, I told him I didn’t, I just wanted something to make me go on, forgetting about everything.
They contented me, and I’ll never be grateful enough for them.
They just had to put another small cylinder on my back, next to the nitrogen one, and a thin pipe to connect it to my gas mask bypassing the air filter.
I was skeptic at the beginning, but my distrust melted away like ice under the sun when I saw those bright green hills, the giant lollipops, the balloonicorn and all those rainbows.
They were so easy to swamp with my rainblow-throwring brass horn. After a while they asked me to turn off the small valve near my left hip, and they mentioned my primary role in the capture of the outstation. It appears I had eliminated most of the enemy soldiers, even though I couldn't recall having done it.
Since then, I’ve turned on the valve tons of times to switch on the magic cylinder at the beginning of every mission.
When I’m sure the cylinder will last out until the next refuelling from the HQ, I switch it on every day off; I must have visited the Enchanted World, with its colors, its music and its magic at least fifty times. Just like that summer in Goa, I can live the whole day in the real world and go back to the fake one only at night, for sleeping.
It’s the most beautiful thing to ever happen in my life so far. Perhaps I’m happy, now? I need to think about it.
Apparently, they took the engineer too. The enemy expedition seems to have enlisted some really tough guy, he’s said to be so big he brings a whole machine gun along with him on the battlefield, and somehow he’s managed to destroy the automatic turrets the Texas guy had placed in defence of the settlement. Plus, the Texan, and one of the two platform used for teleporting to the first line.
Don’t know why I’m the only one in the team not to meet human beings on mission anymore: I only spot little angels wandering around the battlefront with their tiny wings. Not that I’m complaining, they are a lot nicer: when immersed in magic they burst into laughter.
My task today happens to be the recovery of the other teleport platform, so that the enemy team won’t seize it. It’s not my first time visiting a battlefront after the end of the mission, but it’s not someone you get used to. The clash of arms may be gone, but the scent of death isn’t.
Oh, here it is. Let’s bring it to the base.
In a week’s time a van of the Company will pick the platform up. Since I have the afternoon off, I’ll just stay here in the warehouse. Here is the valve, let’s turn it on...Oh, how nice: all these supply crates are actually many chocolate cakes!
Hold on a second, let’s do a roll-call. This one is the Marzipan Hill, those are the Cotton Candy Trees, farther on there’s the Lollichop Fields and the Candied Hedge is halfway...then what is that light?
There’s also a whirling noise coming from that direction, like the one made by the engineer’s platforms. Could he be here in the real world?
Wait, the light has extended, it has reached that giant lollipop. Hey, why did that candied bush move? Didn’t sound like a rustling, on top of that...maybe I’m just tired, where’s the valve? They might need my help in the fake world.
Okay, I filtered the mask. Wow, it sure is dusty in here. Uh, the platform is rotating? Is it turning on? No, it’s getting slower, and there are still some flashes, it must have teleported something less than a minute ago.
Wait, what? The other one has been destroyed, how could it work?
Well, one problem at a time: the noise came from the left, from that bush, I mean, from the crate.
It is open and detached from the line, whatever went out of the teleport must have fallen into it.
No, it can’t be. I take a glance at the valve above my hip: totally turned off. Then how is this possible? This is the fake world, it can’t be here.
...Haven’t I already seen something similar? Right, the balloonicorn. But this one is different, it’s all blue, the horn is shorter, the eyes are much wider, it’s got a mane and a tail, both white.
It looks like...a horse? No, it’s smaller, a pony then. But its muzzle is not stretched, and the colors aren’t those either.
It is groaning? Okay, now I’m sure where I am; nobody cries in the real world.
It has stepped back to a corner, maybe it’s scared? Wherever it’s from, it must dislike this place. Hey, we already have one thing in common.
Judging from the haircut and the eyelashes, it must be a female. Wait, all these things are totally unrelated to the fake world horses.
By instinct, I turn my head towards the teleport platform. What has it been linked to? And who did it?
Mph, I’ll think about it more calmly later. Now it’s better to hide all of this. Luckily, my teammates hardly ever come to the warehouse. My room is on the rear of the base, I just have to go out in the backyard and climb the stairs.
Okay, I have the revolving light-casting plate, but I’ll have to take the pony with the whole crate to avoid any kind of questions. Moreover, if I took her in my arms she would get even more scared. Wait, what the hell am I saying?
“Hey, you alright?”.
The blood in my veins freezes for a long, endless second. I turn around to meet the gaze of the team captain, standing halfway between the backyard and my room with a shotgun on his arm and an inquiring look on his face.
It’s a mercy that the mask hides my nervousness. I just mutter gibberish while touching the teleport platform, hoping he will understand I was entrusted with it.
He does.
“Uh-hu. What about that crate? You took it from the warehouse?”.
I mustn’t tilt my head, he would realize I’m thinking of an excuse.
Mumbling once more nonsensical words throught the air filter, I slowly stomp my right foot on the ground.
“New boots? What’s wrong with the ones you’re wearing right now? Pwah, are you a soldier or a ballet dancer?”. Annoyed but persuaded, he heads toward the exit.
Phew. Quick now, before someones else notices me.
Better hide the platform under the bed. I don’t think anyone will look for it, but you never know. I just hope it doesn’t teleport here other coloured creatures, they would sure get a headache if they materialized right there.
The crate, instead, it goes on the desk: let’s see how our guest is doing.
She felt asleep?
Oh well, I guess puppies of any species need a lot of rest. Here I am alone again, then.
Summing up, what did I just come across to?
I knew the platform for mass teleporting to the front line was a great invention, but a gateway to other dimensions? hell, maybe the love of money isn’t that bad if it pushes science to reach such goals. But how am I hiding it?
Yes, there’s no other solution. If I report this finding, there are thousands of possible consequences, none of them positive: pent up in a laboratory for biological experiments? Killed by some wacko who thinks of her as an aberration? Imprisoned in a zoo for the rest of life? And why not kidnapped by some rich and spoilt madman who isn’t satisfied with a tiger in his garden? And if she ran away, she wouldn’t go far, so small and in the midst of the Outback.
That is, if a stray bullet doesn’t hit her while she’s fleeing the war zone; only the base is safe.
However, she could leave the same way she arrived, through the platform.
But, how exactly? Perhaps she could tell me something, but I doubt a horse could ever learn to talk.
I feel two eyes weighing on my back and turn around. She’s awake.
She’s put the forelegs on the edge of crate, and she’s staring at me with an imploring expression. She’s too small to climb it over.
Before I can even approach her, the horn on her forehead starts glowing. Immediately after, she vanishes right in front of my eyes in a dazzling flash.
I don’t have the time to react to this insult to the laws of physics before she reappears a few feet in front of me, free from the boundaries of the crate.
Unable to take cognizance, I find myself sitting on the floor.
She gets closer looking at my right boot with a puzzled expression.
How old might she be? She barely comes up to my knee.
Duh, I know nothing about horse biology. Assuming she’s something to do with them.
I try to hold out a gloved hand, but she draws back.
Is she scared? Did something happen to here before ending up here?
Now she’s walking up and down the room at a slow and shy pace.
What, she doesn’t like it? I admit it’s a bit stark, but why should you adorn things in the fake world when they’re already perfect in the real one?
Only now I’m able to put two and two together: if she’s able to teleport herself seven feet away, she must have been the one to link up with the platform, but she most likely did it unintentionally.
That means there’s a whole world somewhere populated by similar creatures, am I right? I mean, someone must have generated her.
She’s coming back here, and her eyes are begging me for something again.
Maybe she’s hungry?
Duh, what does a colorful pony eat?
“Stay here, okay?”, I tell her through the air filter.
I feel a bit stupid talking to a creature out of who-knows-where in my language, which is unlikely to be known in her world. Assuming she’s able to decipher the gibberish coming out from the air filter.
She looks worried. Is she afraid I want to abandon her? I’ll be quick.
I lock the door. Nobody goes often through this corridor, but as I said you never know. I just hope she doesn’t start neighing.
The outer yard is always the same. A wide and squalid expanse of red rocks, with a clump of grass here and there standing out like an intruder. Indeed, this land doesn’t seem to have much of a potenzial, except as a battlefield. I pull out some grass and go back in.
Nobody around this time, after all we had some fcasualties in the last attack, and the injured ones have been evacuated to a private hospital in Perth.
I unlock the door and find her sitting on the floor with the hindlegs inclined forwards. I bring the grass near her face. At first she sniffs my hand, then the stems. It doesn’t look like she appreciates. Well, maybe she’ll get hungry later.
I take an apple from the food locker and pause by the window looking at the inner yard. Would someone be able to see her from the outside? No, she’s so small they wouldn’t spot her even if she were leaning on the opposite wall.
I feel something rubbing against my right leg and find there in front of me. She’s staring at the apple with her wide, humble eyes. I try to hand it to her.
She catches the apple with her teeth and takes it in a corner of the room.
Oh well, I tell myself while laying on the bed, I guess I’ll take another one later.
While falling asleep, I wonder wheter I have dreamed until now and this is actually the moment of waking up.
I’ve never understood the reason why my dreams are always blurry.
I never happen to dream what I wish for; I always end up in situations that seem like scrits made by a drunk director, and I’m able to recall them only when they are too odd or senseless even by my standards.
That’s why as soon as I wake up I immediately try to focus on something else, hoping that all those fuzzy visions will just go away.
The fake world sucks even when you dream.
This morning, however, I won’t have to make a big effort, since the target to focus my attention on is already here .
And it’s small, blue, with unusually big eyes and a bit too much large smile for the place where she is.
And she’s sitting on my chest, paying particular attention to my mask.
The hell? Is she licking it?
Mph, I forgot that mammals use their muzzle to touch. And I think I read somewhere that infants of any species need to sleep next to someone else.
True, what about her parents? Don’t know how it works for the fairytale ones, but I believe horses stay with their foals until they’re able to got their own ways. But where could she ever go, right now?
Better send her back home as soon as possible. Alright, today I’ll try to understand if she really can do what I believe she did yesterday.
“Hey, can you teleport yourself?”
Duh, eight in the morning and there’s already a dumb question in my archive. And not so much because I asked her if she can do magic, but rather because I talked to her through the gas mask again.
Fine, given the situation this is probably the only thing to do.
Locked door? Check.
Drawn curtains? Check.
A bit dark, considering the time. Who knows if young animals are afraid of dark as kids are?
Now, I think there was a strap here...there it is.
I’d better get out of her sight and come back when I’m done, else she may think I’m scalping myself or something.
Mph, I might be bald with my mask on, but beneath it a razor cut every so often would definitely do.
So we meet again, mirror. I think I’m the only human being in Australia to keep an axe near the sink, and the only soldier in the world to have their hair touching the neck.
Without my awareness, the thumb and the forefinger of my right hand converge on the axe I’m holding in front of my self, then they go up and down with the rest of my hand.
“Du-dun, dun-du-dun-duh!”
Boy, I may not have taken many guitar lessons when I could, but I sure had plenty of rock attitude.
You do get pale under a fireproof suit, don’t you? I guess I should be grateful to the combat medic for those vitamin D supplements.
I get out of the bathroom, two big purple eyes looking at me suspiciously.
She’s risen to her hooves and she’s slowly receding. Is she about to escape?
To reassure her, I grab the mask and put it before my face, then I hand it to her so she can sniff it.
She’s getting calmer.
I don’t manage to hold back a laugh. For two years everyone here has been afraid of their mysterious teammate whose name and face are completely unknown. Now that I finally show my face to a living being she gets scared. And she’s not even a human. I guess fishes out of water attract each other.
Now, where were we?
The feeble gurgling of the colorful pony’s tummy interrupts my thoughts.
“You hungry, little one?”
The crate, as I said, is too high to be climb over.
On the other side of the room, the apple.
“Show me that trick again and you can have breakfast”
This time, I’m not expecting her to understand my words. I just have trust in her ability to indulge her own instincts. Still, I believe she understood since she’s just shut her eyes and seems to be concentrating.
Once again, sparks spurting from the horn. So that’s where the magic comes from.
A cracke, a whistle and a brief but harmonious sound. Just like the last time.
Here, she’s disappeared from the crate.
I turn around and she already has her eyes on the apple near the wall, almost eight feet away from me.
Talking about magic, I seem to have an ambitious rival. hell, she’s younger than me too.
Can I hide her? Let’s see, the next mission is due in a month, until then several members of the team will be on leave. Right now it’s just me, the captain and the medic, but the former has the responsability for organizing the next operation, while the latter is always at his clinic for who knows what kind of researches.
Both their quarters are far enough from mine, due to my room being on the rear; and you can get out quite easily if gates are not policed by guards but only by security cameras, as it usually occurs during a leave period. Relatively easy to elude, given that the only thing I have to hide is a pony shorter than my arm. All I have to is hide her in a supply crate, and whoever will watch the security footage will conclude I just walked away to train with the magicthrower.
After all, she’ll have to breathe some fresh air when she’s finished familiarizing with the new environment.
The only important thing is not to teleport right into the office of the captain, but this isn’t something I could ask her with the certainty of being understood.
When you don’t have a place to call home, chances are you don’t have a place to spend your days off either. And when you have nothing to do on your days off, you find yourself thinking. That’s how thinkers are born. Like in prison.
I could draw, once. When was it that I stopped? Senior year in highschool, I think. I used to sit in front of a landscape and draw whatever attracted my attention. Some people would take a photograph, to immortalize them, as they said. But what does that mean? The landscape you photographed was identical a hundred years ago, and it will be the same in a hundred years. With paper and a pencil it’s different, no two drawing styles are alike. That means there someone in the world who sketches worse than me. And with less constancy? No, this is much less likely.
Could I communicate with the pony through drawings? If music is an universal language, sketches can be too. I think I can find all I need in the warehouse.
After looking at the sketch for a good minute, i turn the pad over so that she can see it. This time, I’ve put her up on the table.
“Here, this is a glimpse of the hill with the giant flowers. On both sides of the road there’s a row of lollipops, and up in the air you can see two big talking-floating plushies”. She moves her gaze from the sketch towards me with a puzzled expression.
“Is this the place you come from?”
Her expression does not change. It seems she doesn’t know that place more of the one where is now; tp be fair, the real world is not that recognizable when reproduced in black and white on a sheet.
So here I am again, flatly tapping my fingers on the table trying to think of a better idea.
Mh...
First of all, the horn. Then the mane, same colors but longer. And obviously a larger chest and longer legs. Now a hard-coated tail, a bit messy. A proud posture with a foreleg slightly more tilted forwards than the other.
“What do you think of it?”
This time I have drawn her attention. She’s staring at the sheet with pondering eyes, and repeatedly leaning her hoof on it.
She doesn’t understand it’s not real, or she can’t accept it? Anyway, I probably made a mistake. Better hide the drawing from her sight.
It sucks hurting someone when you just want to help.
Suddenly that thing comes back to my mind. I crafted it three months ago, wishing to interrupt my non-productive period. I never thought learning to sew your own tent and sleeping bag during the training course would have come in handy one day. Now, where had I put it?
The hard part was finding the latex: gloves for the gray back, mattress for the white belly, boots for the blue saddle. The horn was a true challenge. I had very little confidence at 90% of the work. Then I put the helium inside it and from the depth of a stamp it started to swell up, to become palpable, concrete. When it started bloating, I knew I had it made. It should be here, in the supply locker. A bit narrow, but at least it didn’t risk going up to the ceiling.
“Look”, I tell her holding it in my to keep it still, “do you like it?”
I grap the rope and tie it around one of the bed legs, so it’s suspended three feet above the ground.
“This is the ballonicorn. I mean, it’s a rubber reproduction of the one who lives in the Enchanted World. Do you want to play with it?”
It’s not like I was completely skeptical, but still I can hardly believe it: she can do telekinesis!
She had her horn spurting magic again, only that this time she directed it on the Balloonicorn, who was suddenly surrounded by an aura the same color of her eyes: that’s how she managed to pull it down so she could play with it.
She looks amused by my baffled expression.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, while she has fun making the balloonicorn tossing around the balloonicorn holding it with teeth. Well, as long as she doesn’t pierce it with her protuberance...
“So, you’re the versatile kind of wizard, aren’t you?”, I ask her waving a finger in front of her eyes.
She does like the new toy. Who knows, maybe I’ve crafted it thinking that one day it would have found this very purpose; many cultures of the world believe in premonitory dreams. But I can never recall my oniric trips, I could have dreamed the entire course of the upcoming year and not be the slightest bit aware of it. Not that being aware of everything is always a good thing: better keep your mind empty and your stomach full.
Speaking of which, it’s dinner time. But I’ll only eat a...
“Hey! Bring it back here!”
The bar, suspended four feet above the ground, covers in front of my eyes the distance between the locker and the other side of the room, ending up in her small jaws.
Looks like she’s enjoying it.
“You like chocolate? I believe you have little to nothing in common with horses...”
We sell products and get into fights...do they really believe what they write? Wouldn’t it have been more honest and meaningful to draw a dollar sign with a shotgun outline?
Whatever, after all it’s thanks to them my beloved and ingrateful family can eat.
I’m starting to enjoy the fact there’s someone in debt with me without the slightest idea of how to repay me: I only like magic, and sadly magic is not for sale. Or luckily?
Oh, the van has stopped, and there’s a whitecoat getting out. It must terrible to spend your life confined in the laboratory of some big city struggling to work your way up. Beneath the gas mask, I breathe fresher air than any white-collar burecreaut.
“Soldier PY-461?”
I nod, muttering a “yes” that turns out to be a “mmph”; standard procedure.
“We’ve been notified that in the September 14 expedition at the basin you managed to rescue one of the Telemax translocation platforms, which avoided distruction by the enemy army. Is this correct?”
This time I show him the palms of my gloved hands, uttering some random gibberish.
“Beg your pardon? Would you please express yourself in a comprehensible way?”
He must be new, he’s convinced I’m making a fool of him; which is in fact what I'm doing.
After another mphmm, I hand him a written sheet. Only a couple of sentences, sufficient though.
The agent from the company gives me a grim look while frowning, thus slightly lifting his helmet.
“Is what is written here correct?”
“Mh-mph Mh-phhh!”
“Would you please take your gas mask off? I wasn’t aware you were so zealous to wear them even in your spare time.”
“Mphhhhh-p-ph!”
He stares at me the way he would stare at a chimpanzee; then, fuming impatiently, he focuses back on the sheet.
“Is the signature on this sheet yours?”
I nod.
“So you confirm both connections of the Telemax translocation service were lost in the mission?”
Once again: up and down.
He snorts again. “Why did you not phone the headquarters as planned in case of either unoccured retrieval or certified loss of the second connection?”
“Mmm-mph-pm-mh!”
A few seconds of silence pass through his discomfort and my nervousness.
Then he mumbles something about not being paid enough and gets back in the van, ordering his colleague on the driver’s seat to put the vehicle in motion.
I wait for them to disappear on the horizon before going back to my room with a pace lighter than usual.
If they find out I lied they might think I’m a spy, but there’s no danger: no-one knows enough details to solve the puzzle, and I’d pay to see the superiors’ faces while they hear an employee eager to reveal the presence of a little blue unicorn in one of their marginal settlements.
She’s playing with the Balloonicorn again. She sets it down with the magic, then boots it so it goes back up to the ceiling and so on.
It’s a been while since I went to the real world, maybe it’s a good chance to amend.
The second I turned on the valve, I see her teleporting to lay next to my right arm.
Here we are: the bed becomes a low-altitude cloud, the walls vanish to make room to flowery fields, and the medicine box turned into the balloonicorn. The real one, that freely and carelessly twirls between the Lollipop Fields and the Mint Lake.
I turn around to ask her if she wants to ride it, when I find out there’s nobody at my side.
To be exact, I perceive her through touch, I feel she’s near to me, but she doesn’t appear in my sight. She’s invisible.
Just like that time in the warehouse.
Oh well, she’ll wait for me in my bedroom. Anyway, when I go back I should start thinking about a name for her.
“Since I don’t have the slightest idea of what you were, I need a name to address you”.
Resting on my elbows, I lean forward.
“You see, I don’t have a name. No more, since at least two years ago. I’m just the guy with the flamethrower in the assault team of the Company, get it? The one with the flamethrower and the fire axe. The Pyro.”
After communicating my doubts to her I move my gaze out of the window, not looking at anything in particular.
My distraction is interrupted by a feeble and high-pitched voice; the kind of voice kids have.
“P...”
I move my eyes back to the little blue unicorn, then I look around the room: empty, with a locked door.
My stare at this very moment must be so intense to scare her.
She takes a step back. She must be thinking I’m scolding her.
“No, no” I tell her with my hoarse voice, moulded by two years in contact with asbestos.
“Say it again”. I’m smiling, it doesn’t happen often.
“P...”
“Yes?”
She’s stopped. Maybe she needs some help? I clear my throat, then I start talking pronouncing every word with care.
“Repeat with me: Pyro”
“P...”
“Yeah, like this: pie-row.”
“Puh...”
“Go on, you can do it. Puh-ee-row”
“Pa. Pa.” she says, with a few seconds of distance between a syllable and the other.
“...ee-row! Come on, puh-ee-row...”
“Pa-pa.”
I roll my eyes counterclockwise.
She’s still staring at me with her big piercing eyes, with that unnatural color; according to the nature of this world, obviously.
“Well, you can’t expect too much from the first word, can you?”
As the conversation ends I sit on the floor and start cleaning the magicthrower. When I’m done, half an hour later, she’s sleeping curled up on that very same chair.
I find myself in front the window again, absent-mindedly looking at the Outback.
“ ‘Papa’? ”
Duh, how many holes would it take? Can you see them from a distance? Perhaps it’s better to do them all on one side, so I can cover them with my body while passing through the gate.
“Okay little one, get in here”.
She slowly gets closer; not looking convinced at all.
“Today I’m showing you the world outside from here. I bet you’ll like it.”
Since she can’t make up her mind, I lift her and delicately put her down inside the crate. I’ve put some dry grass into it to make it more comfortable, but it’s not like she’s gonna stay there forever. We just have to reach the dead tree hill.
If I didn’t know there are cameras I’d think to be far away from civilization. Sometimes the wind rises or some dingo sneaks in to delve into the trash, but other than that this place is immersed in complete silence, which for some reason doesn’t look like the peace of the warrior between one battle and the other. I tilt my head both to the right and to the left as a gesture of irriverence while keeping still to be identified by the cameras. At the end, a gas mask it’s like a giant pair of sunglasses: you can look without being seen, in many senses.
They’ll just think there’s an extra petrol tank inside the crate, or targets; that is, if they’ll actually watch the footage, which is unlikely to happen unless an intrusion is reported.
“I’ve named this place like this” I tell her while lifting her up from the crate “because of that dead tree trunk, see it? It’s the only reference point in the surroundings of the base, the rest is just stones and bushes. Farther on there’s a few small reliefs, but not a single tree, as far as I know.
But enough about the base, let’s go back to us” I tell her gazing at her with renewed curiosity.
“Repeat after me: Py-ro”
She looks around herself before muttering an uncertain “Papà” with her squeaky but harmonious voice. Sighing, I walk back and forth under the sun; heat doesn’t bother me.
“Never mind, let’s think about a name for you. As I said, you need one that relates to what you’re able to do, like mine.”
I turn to her while my chest is facing the edge of the boulder. “Do you have any ideas?”
Suddenly my ankle get paralyzed and I lose my balance. The grounds moves away from my feet and the world makes two quick steps: one upwards and one to the left.
So I fall head over hells in the opposite direction. Ouch! Dumb rock, useless and harmful.
The biggest scientist in history will be the one who can turn sand and rocks in clean energy.
Stupid dust. When the whole unicorn thing is over I should definitely cut my hair.
A milky white flash and the pony reaches me on the ditch.
“Do you have to anything to do with this?”
She gives me a guilty smile.
Now that I’m sitting, I notice the rope who was tying my right boot to the left one, thus provoking the imbalance and the fall. The purple aura surrounding the rope vanishes quickly, until the latter get loose and falls on the hard ground under my legs.
She must have found it on the bottom of the crate.
Perhaps she just wanted to play, I tell myself scratching my neck.
Well, while sitting you can think as good as while standing, so let’s draw conclusions: we have a unicorn from who-knows-where, she’s come here because she could control her own powers and now she’s trying to master them step by step with tricks, some with less “horse sense” than others. Tricks...
I lift up, grab the rope and get closer to her. The ground doesn’t seem to bother her. There are tough hooves beneath the electric blue coat.
“What about Trixie?”
I think I’m reading some kind of awe in her eyes.
“Tricks, you get it? That’s what you’re doing now, you’re trying to tame your powers with many little tricks so you can channel them at will.”
She can’t have taken it all in, yet she seems satisfied with her new name. She lets me stroke her mane.
Now, I think I catched a glimpse of something during the fall.
It’s what I thought. The dead tree on the hill must have left some seeds, long time ago, and they have roamed in the environs driven by the wind, until at least of them has reached this ditch, that might actually be a dry river me. Here it’s grown in shelter of intrusive gazes, even the ones encamped less than a mile away.
I had a botany book, back in Seattle. This must be an eucalyptus, juding from the bark and the color; it hasn’t blossomed yet, but when it’ll happen it will be visible from afar, and whoever will be ending up in the surroundings won’t be able to ignore hit anymore.
Mph, thousands of miles of desert, and a single thriving tree in the midst that grows absorbing so much vigour from the few resources it can find around itself.
...There’s something oddly symbolic about this, I guess.
Okay, let’s put the mask on again and return the fold, there’s the pre-mission briefing tomorrow morning.
Something has changed.
But not the place, which is colorful and cheerful as always.
And not the cherubs either, they’re many and playful as always, and I catch them quite easily when I chase them with my giant lollipop.
And the magic hasn’t changed either, bright and joyful as always when I make it flow from the brass horn so the flowers on the grass can bloom.
No, I have changed.
I never thought I’d be saying it, but the real world suddenly seems...more elusive. As if the bond that I share with its essence had suddenly got much thinner and frailer. As if I had looked for a very long time at the photograph of a place, to find now in front of my eyes only a particularly accurate drawing.
At the end of the mission, I have been impatiently waiting for the return to the base, and for the moment when the gas effects would have faded. She’s not in the real world, and I can’t take care of her elsewhere than here. And yet she’s not the main reason.
I think I’m just growing tired of everything here. Of almost everything.
“And that one, dad?”
Looks like colorful ponies learn to talk quite fastly, and it’s nice having someone to chat with after so much time.
So far, though, I haven’t managed to make her say “Pyro”.
“That one, along with the other three below, is the Southern Cross. Try to connect the four of them with two crossing lines, see?” I answer her waving my right forefinger in front of her.
“And the ones there” she ask me pointing her hoof to the left “belong to the same group?”
“Yes! That one is called Canis Minor, meaning ‘smaller dog’”
“Why isn’t it named only ‘dog’?”
“Because there’s a Canis Major, see? It’s above the Canis Minor, and it’s got five stars more than the other. Anyway, the brightest star in the Canis Minor is called Procyon, meaning raccoon.”
“What’s a raccoon, dad?”
“Duh, you’ll find it out the day you meet one.”
“And what’s the other star called?”
“I can’t recall it: I wasn’t raised here, so I don’t know this sky well enough”
“Of course, but if we move some things get closer and others get farther. From my house you couldn’t see the Southern Cross, but you could see the Ursa Major, which has a lot of stars, you know?”
“But why were they named like this?”
“You see, by themselves stars are just...well, stars. But together they can assume a form, and that’s were their names come from.”
We spend some minutes quietly contemplating the rest of the vault.
“Can we take a closer look at the stars, dad? Are they like you and me?”
“Alas, we cannot. Stars might seem extremely small, but that’s just because they are very far from us; nonetheless, their light arrives here, because they are made of fire, that is magic; thus they are extremely brightful and can be seen from here. Do you know the Sun is a star too? And without the Sun we wouldn’t be here.”
“Why?”
“Duh, that’s a long story. Just think about the stars as the greatest example of magic.”
After another pause, my gazes goes back to the corner of sky we observed before.
“Look over there, Trixie, between the Canis Major and the Canis Minor. See those two stars there?”
This time I need to point her head to be sure she understands, since they are much less bright than the others.
“Those two belong to the Unicorn Constellation. An unicorn like you, you know? It’s not easy to see it, but it’s always there. Consider it your personal constellation.”
Trixie lazily lays on my legs. Perhaps she’s too tired to listen to me.
“If you say so, dad” she answers me yawning.
I gaze at Orion for a while before realizing Trixie is asleep. I’ll have to carry her to the base.
Hell, I’m not 26 yet and raising an infant is already my main task.
Stupid government, never giving young people good opportunities.
It is hot, today. Yesterday was hot too, but today is worse.
“Trixie, do you know what day is today?”
While thinking of an answer she gazes deep at me with her big purple eyes. Purple, like what you get mixing red and blue, the color of our uniforms and our enemies’ ones’...why do fight each other again?
“No, dad”
I move my gaze from her eyes to the patch of desert visible from our room.
“Today is December 25, and it’s a holiday. It’s called Christmas. It always snowed on this day in the place I grew up, but I believe it never snows here. Not at this time of year, that’s for sure.”
I turn around to notice she’s looking at me with a rapt expression, sitting in front of the bed.
“There are many families in the world that at this very moment are staying together and exchanging objects, named gifts, as a gesture of friendship. Well, I don’t have a family anymore, and I’m okay with this. I’ve learned to believe in fate, and believing in it means accepting it. When my father and I were together, and he was sober and unarmed-”
“Dad, what does sober mean?” she interrupts me.
“Duh, let me finish Trixie. My father wasn’t a bad person, it’s just that he could get angry easily. Just like me. The problem is people who often get angry always think they’re right, whatever they do. But sometimes they can make a gift too. My father once told me that when life gives you lemons, you should make a lemonad. Only now I can understand what he meant: you could leave the lemons as they are, or you could throw them away. But only by making a lemonade you’ll make your contribution, and this will benefit you more than the one who will drink the lemonade. Some people think tha-”
“What’s a lemon?”
“Trixie, please. As I was saying, there are people according to whom every man should plant a tree. You don’t do it for the forest, but for yourselves. The tree might produce flowers, or fruits, and they will be there only thanks to you. It’s your gift to the world, and the world will know how to pay you back, sooner or later.”
It’s still morning, but Trixie is already yawning, definitely not because of sleepiness. I sigh.
“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, as I said on this day people exchange gifts, remember? Very well, this is mine for you.” As I say this, I put a hand under the blankets to grab it.
Trixie’s expression drastically changes, her mouth open in amazement.
“What’s that?” she asks me in an excited tone of voice while I delicately place it on her head so it fits with her horn.
“This is a hat, Trixie. Similar clothes, but to cover your head instead of your body. Sometimes they’re used to protect the wearer from cold, but it’s never cold around here, so its only purpose is to smarten you up. The company rulebook impose us to wear a specific uniform, but it doesn’t say anything about headgears, so many get carried by their imagination. The combat medic wears the very same officer cap he was awarded more than twenty years ago.”
Trixie tilt her head forward to make the hat fall, then she uses the magic to make it levitate so she can examine it in her own good time. Its purple, with five-pointed blue and yellow stars drawn on it. It’s a bit large and the tip leans backwards, like the wizard hats from the Medieval folklore.
“Do you like it? Stars will inspire you every time you’ll try to use the magic.”
She nods with a enthusiast look.
“Is there a gift for you too, dad?”
“Yes, there is” I answer displaying the new replacement for the fire axe. It has costed me a few sleepless nights at the works, but it was definitely worth it. The main issue was finding permanent white and pink dyes to paint the spiral. The rest was easier: you don’t have to be a genius to forge a round and sharp piece of steel and to attach it to a wooden stick.
“It’s cute! What is it?”
“Oh, I call it the Lollichop.”
“And what is it for? You’re eating it?”
“Nah, it’s more like my lucky charm.”
“It’s very nice, daddy!” she tells me with a big smile.
Such an innocent soul, she’s definitely here by mistake. It would be a big trouble if they discovered her. The medic has conducted experiments on human beings during the last war; Heaven knows what he would give to lay his hacksaw on the defenseless body of a creature from another world. I’ve already instructed her to hide under the bed whenever she hears footsteps getting nearer in my absence, but the longer I stay away the greater the risk, and she can’t go on like this for the rest of her life. She must find a way to turn the teleporter on again and go back to the world she belongs to.
I wished to look, but I’m not sure I wished to see.
It was something utterly different from what I’d finally got used to.
The brass horn was in fact my old flamethrower, the flowers on the grass were burst of flames digging their way into the wooden walls, the cherubs wandering through the Plushie Village were nothing else than the soldiers from the enemy team on whom I ambushed again again to smash their heads or burn their backs.
It’s not like I had no awareness of it, but I had managed to closet it in the furthest corners of the brain, so that my consciousness wouldn’t have been able to grasp it anymore.
But now I have seen, for the first time in ages.
Other than that, we had to withdraw since we failed to seize the load. The captain is blaming it on me for my unusual lack of bravery. I obviously can’t justify myself saying that shooting flares and blowing bubbles into someone’s face isn’t the same thing, he wouldn’t get it. And even more obviously I can’t tell him I deliberately avoided exposing myself more than necessary, because if I had died today in place of our explosives expert, Trixie would have found herself alone in a definitely hostile world. But this doesn’t make bearing the survivor’s guilt any easier.
It’s been only three days, and the Poker night is much tenser than the usual. I think some of them mainly have it with me. One of the new recruits is just twenty and carries out the scouting role. The reckless and impetuos kind of guy you often found in this job. He’s new here so he’s missed my empathiless time, and unlike the other ones he believes I’m not someone with a creepy past but only one who doesn’t enjoy expressing himself in public; I hate those who bash you because they think they have found an easy target, like the stray dogs who attack you only if they perceive the scent of fear.
It’s funny though: when I had few to none secrets I was dreaded and respected, now that I actually have something to hide nobody is interested in me anymore.
The heatwave is finally coming to an end. February is gone and that means summer is almost over. Duh, I’ll never get used to it.
It’s been almost eight months since I found Trixie. I never thought I would have ever touched a calendar again and restart to keep track of days.
The time for oblivion is definitely behind me: the time for doing the right thing at the right moment has come.
Here’s the platform, which has been patient enough to stay hidden the whole time. Well, let’s get to work, today is the day.
I place it on the floor at a short distance from Trixie. She’s still wearing the hat, but it’s leaned forward and partially obstructing her sight. I lift its brim and sit cross-legged next to her.
“You see Trixie, talent isn’t everything in life. Luck often matters, and this is relatively known. But few know there’s a third quality: magic. I’m not talking about your ability to move an object or yourself, magic is something elusive, abstract, invisible, and yet it’s omnipresent.
It’s something we wanted to substitute to the false values the world is based on. It’s hard to look back at the past and recall an age of overwhelming optimism. Have we thrown it away? Was it all in vain? I don’t think so. But this is not about me, it’s about you” and to conclude the speech I point her the portal with a gloved hand.
“You’ve been training a lot with tricks and games, but I know you can do a lot more”.
Trixie is uneasily staring at the portal. She seems to understand what she has to do, but I’m afraid she doesn’t up to the task.
To repeat at will what you’ve done unconsciously is no piece of cake.
“I know you can do it, Trixie. You just have to believe in magic.”
The small unicorn tilt her head forward and closes her eyes.
“Gnn...”
Her horn is starting to spouting sprinkles. The platform is still motionless.
“Now that’s the spirit, go on...”
“Gnnnn!”
There are no more sprinkles, but the platform seems to be rotating. Very slowly, but it’s moving, like guided by an invisible hand. Or hoof?
She’s concentrating. It should be impossible, but her cheeks are in fact reddening from the effort, like the ones of a human being.
The horn is glowing again, but this time it’s the whole horn, not just the tip.
It’s like a sunray, but it’s not golden, it’s white as innocence, and it’s extending and multiplying until there are three, ten, a hundred of them.
It’s nine in the evening, but the room is floodlit.
At first I hypothesize it’s a hallucination due to excessive exposure to the gas, but after blinking three times I keep seeing it. On the right flank of Trixie, above the hind leg, something has suddenly appeared. Is it a mark? No, it’s more accurate, like a tattoo.
A sky blue, right-facing half-moon, overlapping a star attached to a stick...that is, a magic wand?
My mind unintentionally lingers over the curved blaze of the magicthrower overlapping the handle of the fire axe.
I glance at her other flank to find the very same picture, just backwards.
Only now I realize the platform has drammatically increased its motion.
And above it something has appeared: not an object, an image.
A moving image, like a video. A window to a different reality. It’s day time, and I guess It’s a few feet above the ground. There’s a mountain, with a stream running between the rocks until it flows into a lake. And there’s a lift bridge by the lakeside, serving as an entrance to a castle. But this one is different from the ones I’ve seen on a journey to Europe. It’s snow-white, with brighter shades in a boldly rounded, baroque, almost arabesque style. And despite that, it’s not disharmonic or brassy at all: it seems to be all in one with the lake, the mountain and the rest of the landscape.
Then I notice the beings wandering on the road that leads to the castle. They look like horses, but with a round-shaped muzzle and coats of vivid colors, and smaller overall. They must be ponies then, but not like the ones of this world; this can’t be anything else than Trixie’s world.
I move my hand towards the apparition. When I cross it, I hear some sort of an electrical noise, but feel no pain. I can perceive the fresh and limpid air from the other side of the portal.
It’s all true, then.
Trixie doesn’t say a word, she’s just standing in front of it with an even dreamier expression than mine. Then she turns her face to me.
“Dad, we’re friends, right?”
I stroke her mane. Her horn is still faintly glowing with a soft, purple light.
“Of course Trixie. And friendship is the highest form of magic. No wait, second highest after rock ‘n’ roll.”
I don’t know if she heard me. She keeps looking eagerly at the image above the portal, until it started to swiftly contract, turning into a prismatic spark before disappearing.
She’s yawned. This time it’s tiredness, I’m sure. I take her in my arms while she closes her eyes.
No future is brighter than the one of my little Trixie.
“Someday we’re going there, are we Dad?”
“Of course, little one. We’re going there together, if you keep on believing in magic”.
I smile at her. How I wish it wasn’t only a lie.
Half a lie, let’s say.
It’s over, and we failed to prevent it.
Apparently, the whitecoat from the Company with whom I talked about the platform was actually a spy who was ordered to infiltrate our laboratories by the enemy company, so that they could discover the location of the peripheral bases and attack them one by one.
I wasn’t prepared for this.
The intruder alarm has an acceptable volume, and we get trained once a month to react and carry out the anty-spy procedure. But the frontal attack alarm would roust a dead-drunk guy who just fell asleep. Besides, I don’t think anyone here has ever heard it ringing before. I had to cover Trixie’s ear until it stopped.
Then I told her to hide under the bed and stay there until I had called her by her name.
But locking the door won’t be very useful against an armed squad, and I don’t dare to think what would happen if they decided to set the base on fire.
The top priority is to report the assault to the general headquarters from the Command Center, then I can take Trixie and the platform and hope to slip away through the rear gate.
From the picture window of the western corridor you can spot the front gate: it has been knocked down, and one of the automatic machine gun has been shattered to pieces.
How long can the other one withstand?
Yes, I do remember you need to climb the stairs at the end of corridor, then there’s the ammunition store, and after that the infirmary.
I’ve just entered to ask the medic to help me with the transmission of the dispatch when I find him sitting on the floor, propped against the left wall. His broken glasses are lying next to his right knee. Between the neck and the legs, the coat is colored red. He must have taken no less than fourty bullets to his chest and stomach. Minigun bullets.
My thoughts are answered by an echo of gunshots from the front yard. Fast, direct, accurate. They know where to attack and what to hit. They must have planned this for a long time.
7-4-1-8-1-3: hermetically sealed door opened.
The world map hung on the wall shows the position and degree of both companies: ours is the nearest base to the core of the desert, therefore it has the longest supply lines. However, we still control four basins in the area, two mineral deposits and the whole town of Kalgoorlie.
Could that be the reason we don’t have an appropriate line of defence? To make the outpost relatively easy to regain in case of loss ? Are we mere cannon fodder?
Very well, another reason to leave this place as soon as possible.
Fortunately, the transmitter is still on the desk.
Now, emergency code plus cause for call plus base initials: CQ-AST-D204.
Beeeeep-beep-beep.
One long, two short, perfect. Dispatch forwarded and received.
Now I just need to take a jeep from the underground parking lot, with a tent and some canned food. The closest bases can’t be farther than 80 miles. They’ll probably exempt me from service for a week or two, and I should have enough time to convince Trixie to cross the portal.
My thoughts are once again interrupted, this time by a deep, harsh laughter coming from the corridor where I walked in. A laughter followed by taunts in a vaguely Russian accent.
Flattening against the wall, I take a look around the corner.
It looks like the captain was ill-fated enough to follow the medic. And the guy hired by the enemy team is indeed as big as they said.
The captain is coughing blood, but is still holding the shotgun in his hand. But at the very same time he’d decide to pull the trigger on, the machine gun discharge would annihilate him without giving him even the time for a last breath.
He’s decided to proceed anyway. A real captain is never taken prisoner. Right above the nose, slightly deflected to the right. But his enemy has resisted the temptation to cover his bleeding face with his hands and instead blindly shot in front of himself, eventually hitting his target.
The noise of the minigun is deafening, wonder if Trixie heard it from the room. Maybe she’s crying?
I need to think quickly. I didn’t take the shotgun with me, I just have the flamethrower, that would take too much time to reach him, and the...
I’d pay to see the face he would make when, with the only eye he’s left, he’ll see a giant lollipop separating his head from the body. But I guess I will enjoy the scene for free.
Well, I have one single chance. I can’t fail, and I won’t.
No triumphal cries, for goodness’ sake. The Hussars era is over.
His face definitely made the action worth it. Too bad he pressed the trigger as soon as he sensed the air movement; before falling, the head on side and the body on the other, he managed to lean the barrels of his steel beast to my abdomen and activate them for four or five tenths of seconds. At least ten or twenty rounds, all in the stomach. Without any air to make resistance.
Had I know today’s lunch was my last meal I would have eaten some more. Maybe those energy bars hard as marble would have absorbed the impact.
Okay, legs still working. I’ll leave here the flamethrower, I would not be able to carry it. The lollichop on the other hand can still come in handy as a support.
I open the door without calling her. There are worse things in this world than getting scared for a few seconds. I can’t believe that one day I would have found the air inside the gas mask unbreathable. I take it off with renewed energy. I’m glad my arms are not going up in flames like my stomach. An istant later I’m bent over in a corner, throwing up a reddish fluid. I try to cover it up with my body, I don’t want Trixie to see it.
“Dad?” she asks me emerging from under the bed.
“Trixie, where’s the pl...atform?”. I feel like my lungs are closing intermittently, which is somehow a good thing because it keeps me from howling in pain. Anyway, I don’t need her to answer me. The platform is right next to her.
“Trixie, turn the platform on.”
She’s trembling. Am I making her uneasy?
“The portal, Trixie, make it appear as you did some evenings ago.”
She’s focusing. A few seconds and I start hearing a mechanical, regular, almost hypnotic background noise at my back: the platform is already rotating. I bet that the first time is the tough one.
The portal seems to be at ground level. I can only see grass under a cloudy sky, with a drizzle coming down. It never rains in the Enchanted World.
Her hat is at the foot of the bed. I carefully put it on her head while her horn stops emitting sparks.
I crouch at her left. Who knows if I would have enough strength to rise up again. I have no idea how much time I have left.
“Trixie, go beyond the portal.”
She doesn’t move. I guess she’s understood I’m not gonna follow here. I just can’t, but there’s no time for explanations.
“It’s all right” I tell her strokeing her colorful coat one last time, after removing my glove. It’s smoother than I thought. “It’s all right, you’re still my favorite filly. But now you have to get to the other side: cross the portal.”
“Are you not coming?”
“Yes, I’m coming. Just not right now, okay? I’m coming later.”
Her silent perplexity is followed by violent blast noises coming from the inner yard.
Have we forced them back?
Or are there other ones coming? How near are they?
“Trixie, please, you simply must go. I’ll promise you we’ll meet again. Not today, but one day we’ll meet again, okay?”
“When, dad?” she asks me, her voice cracked with emotion. She’s frightened, but not only by the battle noises.
“One day, I promise you. Now go!”
She refuses to move.
Well, I have no other choice. I must make her jump through the portal by hook or by crook.
I seize her flanks in my hands.
“Trixie”, I gently whisper to her left hear “do you believe in magic?”
I don’t give her any time to answer. With a delicate but firm push, the portals sparkles with a splash-like sound, while Trixie falls on the rolling mantle of grass in front of the portal.
Before she has the time to turn around and come back, I rise up with my last energies and take up the lollipop shaped axe. In a strident sequence of piercing, metallic noises, the components of the portal bounce in a hundred and more directions, forever destroying the window to the other world.
Mph, the faces they’ll do when they’ll arrive here. They’ll see a pyro who had enough time to get his mask off before falling on his mission, then a giant lollipop sharper than a sabre and finally a teleport platform shattered into a thousand smoking pieces, and they won’t understand a thing. They couldn’t understand.
Anyway, I killed the big one, so if the base falls I’m not to blame, right?
I’m coughing blood again, and my knees are giving out.
I need to lie down.
My stomach no longer hurts, in fact I feel like I don’t even have it anymore. But every other part of my body hurts like hell.
...That’s strange, I think I just heard my father calling me, but there’s no one around here.
Footsteps. In the corridor. They must be pretty close. They’re advancing slowly, though. Are they checking one room at a time, or do they just want to be sure the way is clear?
And what uniforms will those be? Red or blue?
Duh, does it even matter anymore?
Our base will fall, the survivors will retreat and ask the general headquarters for more mercenaries to reconquer it. When they’ll get killed too, they will be replaced by other recruits. That’s how it is for a soldier.
I just hope they don’t dig me a grave. I want to be burnt and become one with magic.
There, now I’m only seeing blackness; nothing else than dark. I’m okay with this. Black is a color of peace. There’s a lot of black behind a gas mask.
I feel like laughing. No, I mustn’t, it would be odd if they found me while I am smiling.