The shadow ran across the grove of walnuts like the moon through stars. It attracted the darkness it passed, by this, somehow making it brighter, un-avoidable. Weaving, a thin translucent string, between the branches, around rocks, tying up the silence that follow every drop of the foot, every brush of a leaf, every ripple in the mud. All shapes were changing, uncertain, only formed by sound and memory, shadow and doubt. The sound rattles away from the shadows, seemingly to be in five or ten different places at once. Now in front, now behind, circling the old man crouching behind a rock in the middle of a small clearing. The heat rising of the top his head like a dampened flame swirling in a few sparse rays of moonlight breaking through the shapes the clouds make, like witches, like armies of horses kicking up the dust. The smell of salt and magnesium rose from the darkness as his the sweat flows down his nose into his black powder horn. Eyeing the tip of the musket, reflecting a waning crescent of steel against the firefly glow. His wrinkled hands shook hastily the power down the barrel, even more on the ground, over his bare fingers, grit on the surface of his teeth, bitter, jaws clinch, eyes darting the edge of the trees, waiting for the war to begin.
The old man shivered when he spoke, twisting like a small tornado, tearing up the grass beneath him, and kicking up the dust. Speaking, even though he had no notion of what to say, or who he was speaking to. He wiped his black palms off on the blue of his coat, the color there to remind him what cause lingered to be fighting for, no other colors had painted the field for the longest time, but the browns and greens of the grass, the reds speckled on the rocks, the blue of day and the gray shadows of night. No other men were left standing to free the rights of the confederation. The bodies that once littered the ground had turned to bone, mixing into the brew of mud. Yet the war remained out there, somewhere there was no other explanation, the powerful feeling of being chained to the duty of the nation had not lifted, but rather had become heavier, more real. The dream had become the life, and his past life the prize to capture for surviving the dream now real. To defend this borderland from the powers of injustice, the slavery of colonialism, from the home of a tyrant king. But when would he know? What sign would appear, in what form. The old man was sure that when it was over he would know. It would come as a twinge in his heart, a flush in his cheeks, a warmth flowing up from the center of his soul, he would know without anyone needing to tell him, which is exactly what he had to do. A branch cracked behind him, the gray hair swung as he spun around to confront the invisible threat. His rifle held stiffly against his shoulder, finger lightly touching the trigger guard in fear. "Who are you?" the words cracked as he yelled. "The color of my eyes are blue, join me or die!" maybe it was a small laugh to break or heighten the tension, or the wind through the needles heading heedlessly down the mountain, on second guess it was impossible to tell, all had again become quiet. Maybe the sharp cry of an bird, or a flutter of a beetle, or just the wheeze leaking out from the excitement in his short breath. Moving his lips to speak without actually making a sound, wanting to say as forcefully as his vocal chords could stand, to release if only a few pounds of pressure "What the hell is going on, what kind of hell is coming?"
