If you fall, I'll catch you

Chapter 2

This girl was weird, Alexandra thought. As the early rays of the sun peeked through the clouds like a meek shrew testing the air for predators as it climbed out its burrow. She stretched, and yawned, and shifted to sit from the position she slept in. Her hands still behind her head, just rested higher up against the wall of the trench. The whole of last night was weird, in fact. Did she just ask to be friends with someone? Yeah, basically. Did the other act out a whole Shakespearean saga before her with just her face? Yeah, basically.

Had she been too blunt? Well, it wasn't many times someone comes up to you, compliments your ability to stay alive, and asks to be friends.

Turning her head, she glanced at the girl sleeping next to her. Curled up like a rabbit, crossing her arms across her chest and her helmet pressed low. She chuckled to herself, but not sure for what. She pulled the jacket onto herself properly now, but still leaving it unbuttoned.

...

Usually there wasn't much to see or notice or care about on the journeys, just watching the road pass by, stretches upon stretches of terrain, some littered with the ruins of rocks that told a tale of a once upon village; others of ash carpeted land with holes in the ground, spoke of previous battles, with some as recent as the fires still burning in some corner, the rot still visible here and there. If they were lucky they'd pass by a farm, of plowed black soil and a still house of a farmer in the distant, maybe a cow or two fenced up. Anything other than a litany of passing tundra, she'd take it.

Mostly though, it was squat distant bushes, shriveled and crumpled and grey the farther they were; there was moss on the ground but dirt where the many trucks had carved a path through the wilderness, the wilderness that fought to take back control. The tires trudged over hardened land, dragging clumps of dirt between the crevices and all the sound in miles were the grunting of the clogged engine. No one spoke. There was nothing to speak about, and this silence was crushing Alexandra more than the battles.

The car bumped up and down a little as it traversed over a creek, a spruce shaded torrent that was still half encased in the frost of winter. The land around it was still shot with icicles, and it crunched as rows and rows of wheels passed over it. The people on board swayed in unison, the layers of clothing some of them had managed to find - and keep - flapped in the wind that battered at their faces.

Her brunette locks intruded her vision, though she'd long given up trying to tuck it behind her ears. Perhaps if she could find a piece of cloth to tie it up, she could stop having her sergeant yelling at her for her hair and to save herself some irritation as well. Nikola certainly wouldn't have that issue though, her curt hair easily stayed out of her face, with the helmet containing it further. The fabric cap on her own head kept it warm though, and she didn't have to worry about banging her head every time she leaned against something. So she didn't bother to nick a helmet for herself.

Everyone else on board seemed to comply, their hair short and jagged, cut by an untrained hand with the idea of quantity over quality in mind. Understandably, she remembered when she was first drafted, remembered the person who was in charge of being the hairdresser with the combat knife in hand and the meek look on their face unsure of what was going to come out of their charge. End result, some looked like the shrubs passing by them; some looked like the ragged ends of a burned curtain; some looked like the reaped wheat stacks in the autumn; others looked like moss on a rock. Well, until they held her down and forced her hair to be cut, she wouldn't do so voluntarily.

A distant cawing of a crow. Or a vulture. Or a buzzard. More rumbling underneath, more wispy clouds upon clouds. Another face in the pile of faces seated, another pupil as grey as the view.

The solitude was pressing down at her chest again, like a scream threatening at her throat and the need for a deep breath in and out. Alexandra poked Nikola, who still looked like a ragdoll half encased in slumber.