[PAUSE]
That’s the moment everybody, right there.
Look at Lizzie, standing in a crowd, just one face in a darkened mass. Her hand in the air like an over-eager kid. Look at the three soldiers, sizing up this nearly-middle-aged woman, the first of eventually quite a few from her community to say yes. Look at her and Al meeting each other’s eyes for the first time.
[FAST FORWARD]
Don’t worry, I’ll hit [PLAY] for the important parts.
Me, in training, learning how best to use a crowbar to pry at a creature’s breastplate.
Al and I chatting in our mess hall, in the days before we left my tunnel together.
Al and I talking by candlelight in another dark space. He’s trying to get me into a conversation about politics but considering I was never interested even when we still had a government (before our president was impeached or assassinated or whatever by the creatures) I keep cutting him off. He keeps saying that, in a way, the creatures had totally brought the social revolution with them and that money and politics didn’t mean shit now and “take that, one-percenters” while I and some neighbouring members of Not-The-North-American-Continental-Troops keep telling him to “shut up, hippy, we’re trying to sleep”.
Al, Steve, Fred and a few others admitting to me and the other newest recruits that our organisation’s true number was closer to two hundred than six hundred and twenty-nine and justifying this “exaggeration” as a recruitment ploy. Skip ahead one scene to see me punch Al square in the nose and you only have to go one scene past that to see our first kiss (he’s got tissue shoved up both nostrils). Only in the movies, folks.
Al and I, Steve and Fred and many others, fighting side by side, risking a little moonlight, having learned enough to not die in its merest glow.
Me holding Al, standing over Steve’s body, both of us crying, knowing she had died to save us, to save the part of us growing in my belly…and before you say “geriatric pregnancy” let me point out that the odds of me falling pregnant at forty were probably significantly shorter than the odds on day-dwelling creatures almost wiping out humanity or me falling in love with someone who explicitly stated on numerous occasions that The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go” represented the pinnacle of mankind’s creative endeavours.
Me standing over Al’s body, holding the hand of our daughter, telling her everything was going to be alright, that her father hadn’t just given me her, he had given me the understanding that life would always be worth fighting for. That surviving and living were two different things and that it was our duty, while we had breath in our bodies, to fight for our lives. She sang that Calling song at his funeral and…well, it’s a good song, right? Typical Al, changing my mind about things even after he’s gone.
[REWIND]
Keep going…bit further…further.538Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt7jfXVameM
