“I can sleep when I’m dead.”
“You are dead!”
I reflect back on the years we spent side-by-side, fighting someone else’s war. In fact, we fought thousands and thousands of wars, none of them our own.
The memories pull me to one of laughter, as we were tucked away in a bunker preparing for battle. She was working, always working, when I asked her to come to bed.
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” She murmured to me, entranced by the maps strewn across her desk, “For now, I must work. I must save the village.”
“You are dead,” I whisper as the memories release me, letting me float back to the present and to the marble headstone before me, “You’re gone.”
In Search of a Story 