2021-05-09 - The Page Between

August isn't out. Not just yet. He will be, eventually; he'll wake up in a dead clearing. For now, he's here, in the place he saw in the door.

He's somewhere else too.

> Some people got the real problems

In contrast to the beauty around him, there's desolation; a city under siege, its ruins stretching in every direction. People are bundled up against the cold. He is as well, but the difference is he's in a grunt's military uniform. And he's young; god, so young, not even old enough to buy liquor in the States. Taller than many of his unit, lean and nimble. (In less than two months he'll be half dead on a chopper heading to Landstuhl.)

He remembers this, vaguely; they'd been asked to help guard while patients from the damaged wing of a hospital were evacuated to the MASH unit at the airport. So here he stood, scanning the area, listening closely for the sound of an incoming shell, as opposed to one which would only land nearby. He was good at catching the change in pitch now, less prone to ducking unless they were within a city block.

His shaping Glimmer--he doesn't know it like that back then, just knows it's something weird about himself--is slowly crawling back out of hiding after Markale. Poking and prodding, getting a feel for the living things around him.

An older woman rolls by on a gurney; she reaches out and snags August by the vest, making the orderlies stop. "Moje drvo," she says, pointing back inside. "Nisu je donijeli. Moje drvo..."

August stares at her. He can recognize a word here and there--my...they...tree. Tree?

> Some people out of luck
> Some people think I can solve them

He tracks the direction her arm points back inside the damaged hospital. One of the orderlies shakes his head at August. "Is dead," he explains in broken English.

Is it dead, though? August nods to the orderly and they wheel the woman along, but once they're out of view, he swaps posts with someone inside.

Darkness inside the wreckage of this hospital wing...like so much of the city...like the darkness that swallowed the man.

The woman's scream is swallowed by a shell landing close by. August's comms light up with traffic. They need to get finished and move, now. He can feel it though, just ahead. There's a sliver of life left.

"Roen, Sullivan, Jacobs, let's go."

August adds his voice to the yessir chorus without thinking, yet doesn't turn back to that brilliant exit. Sully pauses as they cross paths.

"Where're you going?" His Virginian accent is a mix of humor and worry.

"Just gonna double-check we didn't miss anyone in this hall."

"Well okay, but hurry the fuck up."

"Yeah."

He glances back; the woman disappears as Sully does when August turns a corner.

> I'm just a man
> I do what I can

There. On a windowsill, silhouetted by dusty, gray light from Soviet-era windows: a brittle tree, some sort of young fruit sapling. Apple? Tangerine? Hard to say, August is not yet a botanist.

It's not dead. There's some life in those roots; he can feel it clinging. He gathers up the small pot.

"Roen, where are you."

"On my way, sir."

As he walks through that dark hall he teases at the little spark of life inside the tree. It's like getting coals to burn again. Come on. You can do it. Get back up.

Not since Markale has he dared use this power. Even now his guts tremble at the notion of it, of the pain lurking on the other side.

This is a power that could have saved the woman; staunched the bleeding, healed it over--at one point, they say, regrown the hand itself. Could save several people around this crumbling city, except for how August has no real idea how to use it that way.

But she's somewhere, somewhen else, and August is just a kid, not old enough to know how to use the shaping to do much except heal an old woman's tree. That woman dies, and this tree lives: its bark fills back out, leaves unfurl, twigs and branches straighten. Some sort of cedar, perhaps, or cypress. By the time August emerges from the darkness of the hospital's ruined wing, it's as healthy as it ever was.

A shell lands close by; he and everyone else half-ducks. The slowly come up as chatter over comms confirms where it landed.

August calls for them to hold up the ambulance that the old woman is being loaded into. He gets more than a few dirty looks for this, at least until he produces the tree and she smiles, pulling it to herself like a long-lost child. The orderlies relax, a few seem relieved.

"Hvala ti, hvala ti," the old woman says. Darkness falls on the young woman, the dying one.

August ducks his head, managing a small smile. "Not a problem, ma'am." Some of that leaden weight lifts off his heart. A small fraction. Kindness shown in hell is still kindness. It might be the closest he's come to feeling like himself--whoever that even was--in a long time.