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I'm not quite sure what this is. It's loosely based on the experiences of a group of us who went as cadet instructors for a JROTC encampment, but there's a lot of...hmm...fictional elements in it as well. I guess it's a fic segment/ficlet/snippet/whatever. Please do not repost without permission. Comments welcome to Gerald Tarrant at lordofmerentha@yahoo.com. Morning PT
Said good morning to him, blinking eyes heavy in the five 'o clock dark. Cadets are lines of faded white in the pre-dawn blackness. Superior officers further down the way. Calling cadence to the beating of my heart in my chest. The off-white stars twinkling above the clouds hum with an invisible melody. He turns and points to something insubstantial in the distance. Later, in uniform, he will be older, mature, a blue form of sharp creases and starched ironed shirt on the blue horizon, melded against the blue sky. Now, in shorts and t-shirt, in the misty light standing like an apparition out of the fog. Not yet. Insubstantial. Flashlight circles on the ground, highlighting grass with shadows sharp as knives. Gray-green grass like the gray-green of his eyes. I say we should move out soon. He nods once and smiles, more brilliantly than the flashlight beam one hundred times over.
If I had my way it would just be he and I, running infinitely into that place where time meets space and planes and walls melt into nothing, barracks and officers and cadets fading away. We would take the straight trail, winding up towards the sun, always almost meeting the dawn but never quite touching that final line. The moonlight at our backs and the scent of fallen leaves around us, like we are drowning in beauty. 2 April 2001
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