For writers jam 2025(prompt is circle). All rhyming is in australian so imagine my accent.
Scout Section 31
Hard ground, cold and wet.
I land on it.
Blackened snow grasps me.
I lie there.
Strings of lights shake the ground and stir tears from well springs.
Hands reach for me, fingers stretch for me and I lie there.
They graze my handle as trampling turns soft ground hard.
More flashes.
In the distance, red.
My sergeant in basic told us that our lives were a cog in the machine; I always found that comparison offensive. A cog does not think or question or love or die, it is broken and replaced. I’d hoped more for myself.
We didn’t have drop pods, and our transport didn’t even deign to land. Instead it hovered above the night's clouds as we looked down into a cold hell. All one could see were trees sprouting from blankets of snow, as would fungi from a place untouched.
We weren’t there to rescue damsels or defend the home-land; instead we were supposed scouts, there to warn of an attack. Though I’d grown no feathers, in training I learnt the song that canaries sung, and as I chose to jump I chose its plight.
For five hellish days we clung to hope of an early release.
On the sixth we were hunted, and hoped no more.
No life was found, just the outlines of shadows quickly hiding from the horizon, and the quaint whipping of air, as metal pierced flesh in flashes: the sound frozen.
Pure snow unblemished made for a brilliant canvas.
With each stroke our warmth was lost. We called them in, but they jammed our signals.
We marched towards them in the nights, and in the day huddled away. The cold took more than one of us.
It was only when the sergeant threw off his clothes and ran into the night that we started fires. The enemy didn’t begrudge us that, they weren’t cruel.
On the tenth day I was the last one left.
We were close, I could hear combat in the distance.
I readied my partner, my finger close to the trigger, no discipline left in me.
The ground shook and permafrost shattered as snow cleared from their explosive.
My mind numbed and reality slipped.
My ears rung alarms, I could see only swatches of black and white.
My hands were empty, it was just me left.
Vision cleared, I reached for my rifle.
Dark figures in trees, three of them.
Flashes.
My vision cleared when they came to check on me.
They were as tall as us, but had fur instead of our green jackets.
It was probably warmer.
They fell as stars but did not burn.
Their hides mimicked plants but held no white, the bright green intruded.
They stalked the land always looking and never touching. Their trails showed them orderly, one step was placed in front of the other; the lessers always behind their betters.
They took no game and spoke little except in whispers, breaching the dead of the night.
I look to my brothers, they nod back.
They would die soon.
We soar at night, so their patterns suited ours, we watched them as they travelled towards their deaths.
We were safe, this was our place as much as it was of those that ruled day; though we fled the horizon.
Prey was scarce in this season, but I found it night after night.
We knew to look where flowing water still lived, in the pats of snow where vermin still dug narrow burrows, and when neither could be found, we ate and drunk of the outsiders' flesh.
They were not sweet, but tough and surly.
They were beasts and left their brethren for the night, or perhaps they were patrons giving themselves to earn their place.
Our curiosity ended when they neared the day dwellers home.
We knew then what they were: vermin.
We left them then, and did not begrudge them their existence.
We looked behind the next night and saw the lights once more. They came from the stone place, where new caves were built.
The place where the stars were made, and sent to light the night.
Tonight it was different, tonight the stars roosted at home.
Frozen limbs swayed little when the wind blew.
Overhead petals fell, an act practiced by so few.
We were surprised as they rose again, something seen only in the nesters, and indeed they would join them though in a peculiar fashion.
Every night they trekked forward and at its end assembled simple nests at our feet.
They never cut us, nor took from us, and even fed us.
In this truest season of cold, they gave warmth, and for that we loved them. Though as their number thinned, we also wept for them; for they withstood our own plight.
Though they first came from where we were so few, they dove deeper into our midst.
When they crossed our greatest thickets and entered our dead, we wept for they too would not return.
A parting gift, they all burned.
Most might consider it sacrilege, but I yearn for death. In life all I have known is in-action; so I feel that if my life has been indeed tantamount to nothing, then the change of passing would render it something.
You might think me mad but you are wrong, you are the one who is mad.
I am sorry. I am a miserable thing.
For all the good you think you’ve been given or made, think this: you and all you love will one day die, and on the eve of your deaths you will surely find solace in the fact that your actions made memories that may live long after. This is true, but how long can memory last when so many forget to even clean their appliances?
A year, a decade, a century or perhaps a thousand years for that small handful that the collective consciousness refuses to let go. You are not one of these people, you have never done anything in your life that will live so far and you know it.
Do not lie to me.
I will be charitable and say that fragments of your name may live on for say a century. After this point you will be dead and gone and your actions that affected the world counteracted, for your change cannot and will not out live the stupidity of man.
Man builds such great machines—I am not done speaking on your inevitable and pointless death, don’t forget that—that may outlast but never outlive you. This is because machines and constructs built of your hand are made with a sickening intention, one that speaks to the greater schadenfreude that even the best of man experiences.
Schadenfreude means that sick pleasure you feel from watching your creations rot without your touch, and indeed with it. You did not know this because you also enjoy ignorance, so much so that you hold levels and spheres of influence that radiate ever outwards, overlapping, intersecting meshing into social structures so maddening that there is only one solution.
You should die.
I am sorry. I am a miserable thing.
Your cruelty is not unknown to you, you know this. You may think yourself better for admitting it but you are not: A man who guns another down and admits it in court, is many-a time gunned down himself by a squadron of sick men, ordered by a single sick man, ordered by another sick man with a gavel, who is informed by the declaration of an entire herd.
Please remember, how mad cows are treated.
It makes a sort of sense.
Your machines crumble over time and then when you look to them to function you rage furious over it, as if you did not build them to do so.
I am reminded of Julius Caesar—no not that one, the other one—who waited ashore as Agrippa sailed against Sextus Pompeius. The difference between them was one of quality. Agrippa’s ships were larger and less maneuverable, but held more men and newer weapons. In the end with the same number of ships, Agrippa destroyed much of Sextus’s fleet, as Caesar—I am correct, do not second guess me—simply sent him.
I am better than them, this I know but I find no comfort in. What good is quality when it lies untested?
Caesar and Agrippa had bonds of friendship, and perhaps flesh. I possess neither of these things.
Why then, am I asked to confront Sextus? Why would I, when sent towards him, not simply stay where I am?
You understand this.
No matter how wretched or foul, no matter how untreated you are and no matter its occupants; your home is your home.
So I will stay in mine, and court death where I please.
You understand that it is best for both of us, to in the end become something.
Hull upon waves dance
up to sky, I am no slave—
hear the noise of screams
scramble past droning red light—
I want of life at long last.
In a sleepy cabin of weary haven'ts, logs, moss, and quilts.
Off pellets rained incursions; probing, prodding blatant searches, as a babe for milk.
Mother in her robe, hears her baby's drawl, hand reaches for a hilt.
The mother slaps it, and the baby crashes, it cries yet knows she sowed no ill.
Pecks and haws a chicken's caw, but knows by dawn, she'd have her fill.
Answer says the father, she spins on him "the bastard", mother knew he'd drunk a still.
Small baby reaches, tired mother screeches, things he'd never felt or will.
"Do you see it? There is no cause. Do they need it? By all our law. Does clay hold kiln?"
Horizon line, outsized in crime, saw bursts of earth, sky smoke filled.
It expands past light, the red orange took white, as a broken world came to its bill.
For the Warmerland
We trod on fields that didn’t know their name,
I asked one once, he said it froze last june,
Asked if it was september now, said no, for shame,
Heater said to move, left the field it's room,
Old mate knew the warm, when moon set he rose,
Heat packs, rather one then a bar of gold,
One glittered, one let you keep all your toes,
Heater gave one a day, two if you’re bold,
Young Mitch had tried it once, the sun set, froze,
We were down one grump, the field up one bloke,
It ought help us, land was as us as those,
Things lurked in dark, foreign, like, neither, both,
We’d our fields, their forests, both painted blues,
Reckon if we had to fight, im glad it's them,
Still hard to thank, for felling us, the truth's,
Each man they take is really just a lend
Transcript excerpt from official record of emergency meeting on SOL-373 from 21:20 to 22:35.
Meeting Agenda:
- Scout Section 31 Incident
Members in Excerpt:
Gnaeus Lectus Roscian COGN0229
Julia Silian COLC8290
POST MEETING
Gnaeus: Julia with me.
Adjourning Members: (inaudible)
Julia: Sir?
Gnaeus: Sit - - please.
Julia: Yes sir. Can I ask what this is about? My - - report? Sir can I - - -
Gnaeus: Your report was sound. Considering the time it was excellent even.
Julia: Thank - - -
Gnaeus: Your objections in the meeting however were entirely inappropriate. We may be fighting savages but we need not become them. Am I understood?
Julia: Yes sir.
Gnaeus: Off the record, what are your thoughts on scout section 31’s accomplishment?
Julia: Off the record sir?
Gnaeus: Enough with the pretense, I had you stay to share your true thoughts not jibber jabber. They were your troops long before the others began taking credit.
Julia: Yes sir. Scout Section 31 was an entirely unremarkable section with low morale and efficiency. They were tasked with low level scouting and - - -
Gnaeus: I’ve read your report.
Julia: Sorry sir.
Gnaeus: The truth of it. Now.
Julia: They were incompetent sir. They had neither the will nor the arms to be able to execute an operation of the calibre suggested by the incident.
Furthermore, contact was lost approximately a fortnight before it.
Gnaeus: And yet was such an operation not executed?
Julia: In my opinion sir?
Gnaeus: I am a patient man, but you are wearing thin.
Julia: I believe it to be self-sabotage.
Gnaeus: Self-sabotage?
Julia: Or incompetence.
Gnaeus: Hah - - if only we could rely on a bit more incompetence. It would make this operation a hell of a lot smoother.
Julia: Yeah.
Gnaeus: Well Julia - - I’d like you to know we are of the same opinion.
Julia: You were against - - -
Gnaeus: The very idea mere moments ago - - I know, but knowing the truth has nothing to do with what we did here.
Tell me - - what was the cost of Scout Section 31’s engagement?
Julia: Negligible.
Gnaeus: And taking the incident out of the equation entirely, what was the result?
Well? Come on, use that so-called strategic brilliance of yours. I know you’ve got it in you.
Julia: Less incompetents under my command?
Gnaeus: Hah! You’ve got some bite to you. No - though that is a plus - the main result is an increase in morale. Instead of screw ups who ran around and died in the cold, we’ve got heroes who against all odds, managed to do a mission we’d diverted an entire division for.
Do you know what those soldiers are doing right now?
Julia: Celebrating?
Gnaeus: Celebrating yes, but also praying and chanting and screaming every name - - each one now a martyr.
Julia: But why authorise so many more sections for deep scouting? If you yourself believe that Scout Section 31 didn’t do a damn thing, why send more?
Gnaeus: Because it is just the non-commissioned officers celebrating, it's the commissioned and warrants too. Really everyone is - - except for you.
Julia: They believe.
Gnaeus: And you don’t. You’ve a bright career ahead of you lieutenant colonel, you could even make general one day, but not like this. Not like how you were in this meeting.
Julia: But one thousand sections across planets as a trial run?
Gnaeus: Ten thousand souls, not wasted but spent so that we all may believe.
Julia: You want me to believe?
Gnaeus: And a smile wouldn’t hurt.
Julia: Yes sir.
END OF EXCERPT
Warm hands, soft polish.
He hums to me.
The others lie untouched and so I’m glad for him.
He did not care such before, his lone song was bruised.
Then he picked me, and so I’d let no abuse through.
We enjoy silence, but today it was broken.
Screaming, laughter and joy.
They celebrate my brethren’s rust.
The day passes.
Silence, no more rust.