Bodies drop one by one to the ground within each second around me. They are like dominos, triggered by the previous person and falling immediately after them, and the cycle repeats. It seems as though everyone is on the list but hasn't been taken yet because it is still not their turn. Which brings the grand question into my head: why, since I am surrounded by all of this death, am I not among the earliest fallen soldiers? What have I done to merit survival up to this point?

I suppose it has something to do with not being complacent with my circumstances. I have not waited for the bullets to strike me, rather been constantly vigilant and aware of my surroundings. I allowed nothing to go by me unnoticed, except for that one unfortunate explosion that I couldn't have avoided anyway.

But now I warrant my own brief vacation from all the fighting to instead focus on something much more horrific -- the loss of my best friend. I hold him tight in my arms, delivering one last hug before I say goodbye forever. Soon his face will be drained of its usual warmth but suspended in a freeze frame of his youth. I never want to be around a quiet Anatole, even if his silence is a side effect of death. That's just not who he is, and it would hurt too much to see him that way.

Anatole was the one who convinced me to enlist in the army, and now that he's dead, where is my ambition? He was the only person keeping me here, just because I didn't want to abandon my childhood friend and spend my entire life pondering where he could be if he didn't come back home. Why don't I just leave? Actually, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I wouldn't be the first one to flee the army, and since I'm so low in the ranks, they wouldn't have any clue whether I died or lived, let alone if I ran off. Since I am already near the edge of the battlefield, it isn't so difficult to slip away without being seen by too many soldiers. I make it out uninjured and embark on my journey with a heavy spirit. I am so fatigued by war.

Even if that was Olivier that I saw on the battlefield, he is probably gone now, lying exactly where I saw him because he wasn't paying attention to what was going on around him to instead watch me. Knowing how brutal that battle was, it is likely that every person I saw will end up on a mastersheet of the dead by the time we're done in Borodino, Olivier included. He has had fortune for his entire life, but on the battlefield, no one is more special than anyone else. Our hearts function the same, no matter rich or poor, and an injury to them is fatal in any case. I shouldn't have to worry about a dead man coming back to find me. I knew, even when he told me that he would return for the first time when he was about to leave for France, that the chances were too low for him to be saying that truthfully. I accepted the prospect, not the promise. Having detached Olivier from my current goals, I continue my trek through the wilderness.

I have only lived in Saint Petersburg and have only stayed there, so I had never seen any other part of Russia in my life before joining the army, but it doesn't mean that I know it well. I have no idea where Borodino is situated on a map, nor Saint Petersburg for that matter, so I am terribly lost. All that is left to do is wander until I find something.

That's exactly what I do, and I'm doing it for over an hour before I stumble across a small cottage with no neighbors anywhere in sight, the perfect place to harbor a soldier.

I approach and knock on the door, and knowing that any common citizen would be freaked out by the blush of blood and dirt drying on my face, I notice the moment when the door opens and immediately say, "Excuse me, madam."

The door was only open for a few seconds, but I glimpsed the woman's face who lives behind it. She's a short lady in simple clothing which includes an apron for cooking. She's obviously old, judging from her wrinkles, but some of those wrinkles are particular to frequent smiling, so I deduce that she must be a kind lady that may let me in eventually and is just spooked by how awful I look, so I plan to persist.

I step closer to the door so that she can hear me. "Please, madame, I am a Russian soldier coming from the town of Borodino, and I need a place to stay. I am not wounded, and I will not steal anything from you, I swear on my honor. All I ask is that you let me in."

A pause lasting several seconds, and within it, a debate from the mind of the lady enclosed within her house. Then cautiously, the door is nudged open, and her wide and fearful eyes behold me from behind it. She utters no words, only nods and further broadens the doorway into her home to invite me inside.

The interior of the house is just as I suspected that it would be -- exactly the same size and material as the exterior. She lives in a wooden cottage, but she has made it her own somehow, cuter and more welcoming. Blankets that I assume she knitted herself lounge over the bend in her sofa and the two chairs beside it. She points to the sofa and to one of the blankets to signal that this is where I will sleep tonight, and I offer a thank you in response, to which she nods again -- it is my guess that she is relatively quiet when she doesn't need to employ the usage of words, but she can communicate clearly enough without them. Maybe she's just scared of me.

The woman procures a cloth from one of her cabinets and dips it in a bucket of water that she has lying around for multiple purposes. Advancing towards me, she suggests with her hands that I sit down in a chair. I comply, and she begins her work of wiping away the paint of our beloved earth and its humans' DNA. With each stroke, I am cleansed from my sins a bit more, but certain burdens still carry with me deeper inside my body. It feels like my mother all over again, back from the dead with a few more years added on that she lost after dying. The woman's touch is gentle, as if she is handling a child. I can't help but wonder if she has a son herself who is on the battlefield right now, fighting until his last breath to not be taken over by the French.

"It's bad out there, isn't it?" she asks, the first words that I have heard her speak, hushed and concerned.

My mind chooses some images to display in my head of the wretched scene, of men dying left and right, of Anatole speaking his last words, of Olivier with that deer in the headlights expression, sheer terror staining the atmosphere a wild color. "Absolutely horrifying."

"You know, you boys are too young to die."

I think back to Anatole and how much potential he had, and nod solemnly.

The woman's cloth finds its way to around my right ear, where she discovers a steady stream of blood dried in place. "Your hearing, my dear, is it alright?"

"There was ringing in my left ear, which has now stopped, but my right ear is completely flat. I can't hear anything from it."

She frowns as she wipes up the rest of the crimson flakes. "It could be worse, I suppose."

That's right. I could be dead on the battlefield with my guts spread out before me with the sole question of "where have my legs gone?" I could be Anatole. But instead, I'm alive and in good care. How did I get so lucky, and why should I be? I fear that this question will haunt me to the end of my days.

~~~~~

A/N: i like this woman

this was kind of an easy chapter to write and it's surprisingly long for how little happens

~Duckota