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!!b5IxBuu9REZ 02/25/12(Sat)02:00 No.18090268Ema finally tears herself from the typewriter in front of her. Once more it's gotten clogged with sand, run out of ink, and needs oiling. It is a fine machine, even if it's army issue. Made of fine, heavy Voss iron, with a lustrous black lacquer and delicate lettering on it the color of gunmetal. A device that could write poetry, sonnets, ballads, memoirs, biographies, tales of heroism, maybe even, perhaps a love story. But this heavy, noble black contraption in front of her has done no such thing since she's known it, if ever. All the words and emotions it has spoken onto paper for those far away to hear are the names and empty promises of heroic sacrifice of those now sown into the soil of this foreign land like the seeds of so much wheat.
Ema tears herself from the typewriter, and sees her Captain, so frail and sickly, her emperor, but a boy, new faces young and old, men and women, digging too many graves in the soil with shovels too small. Her mind and fingers numb from writing the same words with different names so many times suddenly gives way to a vast empty pit deep inside her. She looks down at the paper in front of her now. Axel. He was just a kid. Didn't he have a sister in that tank of his? She wants to vomit suddenly, the realization of mortality, considering what she would feel losing even her most distant sibling. Her vision swims and the ground sways beneath her. "xjhyjwa7y" is typed onto the crisp white paper, ruining the letter as she steadies herself. The fragility of life suddenly too much of a burden to possibly bear. |
