amand_r

I should be writing the book, but instead I'm reading the new HP-SS wave stories, a great deal of which, so far, are...meh. They are all post-war, and so it got me writing. I had thought to hop on over to HP100 and do a drabble, but the theme this week to me is cheesy, and I get verbose, especially when I'm listening to the Waterboys. But there it is, 300 words of a drabble that is HP/SS. And that is all I can say about it, except that I love the imagery.

I Think of You in War

I have the same dream all the time, now that the victory celebrations are over and you are not here in my bed. I see you running across that famous field, the one where we finally defeated him. In the dream, I have repaired your clothing, when by this time in the day, you had been ripped at and torn up and nearly wadded into a ball and thrown across the field like so much discarded parchment. I had already been laid to the ground, limp and tired and brought so low I could not take in much breath at all.

In that section of life that I craft into dream, no matter how pristine I make you, how removed of blood, waste, and all the flowing paints of war, I cannot change what I saw: you running forward into the bare flat of the plain, an expansive palm ready to squeeze itself shut. Your feet are already moving so fast they are a blur, solid and sinking into the earth for grip, and I think for one minute that you are god, streaking tall, robes billowing behind you like great black wings.

I see it exactly as it happened: the explosion sudden and red, and you moving so quickly you hadn't even time to duck, lay flat or raise your arms. Instead, you seem to defy gravity and logic, arms flung out as you are lifted from the ground and into the air. In my dream you are held aloft far longer than you really were, the spells flying from your wand so that an aura of green enshrines the air that encases you. I hold it there in my head, and though I know what happens after is not deserving of your heroism, in that second before the fall I understand something intrinsic about why you were a man of conflict.

I cannot tell why I think fondly of you in that moment, why when I think of you in love, I see not your face in passion, but your corpse sailing above the war we made.