Melody pressed her nose to the glass, the cold surface sending a snake of a shiver down her spine but she ignored it. Everything was so bright and colorful, the greens of the seaweed, the blue of the water, the meriads of fish streaking through the water like rainbows.

Her eyes couldn’t seem to take in everything that she wanted them to, all the beauty that surrounded her only kept away by the t...

“Come on trooper! We’re not outta the woods yet!”

The voice is forceful as well as encouraging notwithstanding the severe gash in my left greave and consequently my leg, the red staining the metal. My brother slides up to my elbow and leaves a trail of dust with his boots that I almost feel a need to correct him about.

“Brett? You ok?”

I nod through the smoke and dust encrusting my lungs and ...

“_Red is such a ghastly color,_” I think as I look upon the scene before me, crimson flooding every corner of the room. The brightly painted walls even make the flickering candlight bleed with the shade, almost as badly as the woman strewn across the bed. Her prone form saturates the room with the stench of death in a way that even I as a soldier cannot seem to get used to. “No one should have to ...