｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 ) chapter eight — STARS IN HER EYES
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─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️ PLATOON. 1966 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
STELLA'S STILL RIGHT AS RAIN AFTER THAT FATEFUL DAY, in spite of everything. Paddy even begins to wonder what's gotten into her, because she's acting all wistful like she's high on heroin even when she's not. She's been withdrawn and irritable since they left Bangkok and arrived at 25th Infantry's Base Camp, and now something's charmed her out of that. Or someone.
It's a fine Vietnamese Sunday and Shelley has been summoned to the OR to shadow Keene whilst he completes a fifty-two-piece shrapnel removal from Sergeant East of Alpha Company. Paddy's too busy over at the camp's chapel to spend the morning with her, so she joins Elias whilst he's on watch at the entrance of the hutch. They sit side-by-side beneath the sunken veranda that peeks out from the ground, like lookouts in a bunker.
But instead of actually looking-out, Stella admires the clouds as they roll by overhead and works on her short-timers calendar since she doesn't have much better to do on her day off. She has drawn an 𝓢 and has divided it into sixty squares, one to colour in after each day; a two months countdown until she's rotated back to the world. Shelley convinced her to do it because she didn't want to be the only one, and she'd complied just to be nice, even though the thought of actually arriving home in Mobile after spending so long in active combat fills her with dread.
She's been quietly colouring in the squares with a black marker pen, but her hand twitches a couple of times and she ends up diverging from the lines. Twenty-nine and counting. There are thirty-one gaps left for her to fill in; thirty-one days left in a place that's simultaneously both her own personal Heaven and her own personal Hell.
Her capital 'S' drawing catches his eye and he half smiles over her shoulder. "That's nice."
"Thanks," Stella responds as she caps the marker, amused. She turns inwards to face him, angling the short-timers calendar so he can take a better look. She jokes, "I'm gonna be an artist when I get out of here. You'll do well to remember my name."
"Twenty-nine days down, huh?"
"Yeah. Looks like I've only got thirty-one days 'til I make it out to the other side," she tells him in a tone that makes her almost seem disheartened by the notion. "It's funny — I really had no idea what I was getting herself into when I arrived at Tan Son Nhut's Air Base eleven months ago. They reported me to the 178th Replacement Company at Camp Alpha. After that it was six months in Saigon with the USAMC, then a week of Bangkok, and now here, in the 8076th."
"You gotta job waiting for you back home?"
She makes a face like she's sucking on something sour and then shakes her head. There's nothing waiting for me back home. "You?"
