Upon the ridge, beneath the gloaming sky,
the hunters sit,
the rushing gale caressing hard-earned scars.
Their robes are drenched
from wind-blown spray
that surges past their solemn perch,
thrust up from Gaia's realm.
Too long away from all they knew,
to track and kill that quarry
they were trained to hunt.
Across the seas
to half the dawning world they went,
to lands of strangers
and the empires of angry kings.
There are no smiles upon their lips,
no lines of joy
creased deep upon their skin.
Their minds sees nothing
but the carnage of those years
of blood and death,
and pyres made of those
who were their friends.
The worst was taking life without regret,
like plucking apples off a tree.
Those acts that haunt their days
and fill their dreams
with wailing ghosts
who ask them "Why?"
There is no answer
to those phantoms' pleas,
they are all that they would ever be,
hunters hunting whom they're told,
sent off into the warring world
for reasons they would never know.