"are you in trouble?" - ben @ seb
There’s a calm about Sebastian as the men wait behind him, rifles low but ready. The hills are quiet…they always are, right before they decide how much they will take. Trouble, he thinks above all, is for those who believe the earth owes them mercy. He presses two fingers into the soil near his boot. The ground is dry on the surface, cracked like old skin, but beneath it there is weight compounded by memories. How to forget that this land has swallowed armies before… How many names has it taken? How many families have been subsumed to nothing? Anything from bones to prayers, it will never give them back whole.
The shots come from farther out, dull and careless, the sound of men practicing as if the hills were deaf to their actions. Metal and wood rattle as posted targets. Makeshift targets in glass bottles also burst. The dust lifts and settles again, as if it was never disturbed. And Sebastian feels all of this, the land shifting because of the actions of men. He has learned the breath of his land and its ground the way other men learn faces. Where it sinks without warning. Where it holds water like a secret oasis in the desert. The earth moves invisibly, yes, but it moves with purpose, and today it leans toward him, close enough that he can almost hear it breathe.
Behind him, one of his men laughs too loudly. Another adjusts his grip, uncertain. A bird lifts from the brush, then another. The air tightens. . The hills know him. They have known him longer than these men have known their own names...
“No, I’m not in trouble.” Sebastian responds, voice almost amused at the idea. He lines up a shot, lazy about it. “Those men…they’re like children with a stick, poking at a cage to see if something inside will move for them.” The rifle cracks, hot metal jumps with a resounding bolt through the air. “They don’t understand the danger of a caged animal,” he goes on, tone easy, unbothered. He lowers the gun, resting it against his shoulder. “So I’ll let them poke. Let them get comfortable in their prodding. Let them think they’ve learned the very shape of the bars.” A pause. “Then I’ll remind them why the cage was built in the first place.”