Pacifist

The battle repulsed me. I exited the buggy as my teammates passed through a small fishing village on the way to a hotzone further north. The friendly tanks rumbled past, an inane inevitability. Instead of sprinting the fastest possible route to my certain death, as they did, I took to the hills above the village shacks. Ambling up surfaces shallow enough to climb, I eventually found myself skirting a river that ran across the combat zone. The air was alive with the sound of wildlife, although there were no obvious sources for the sound. Lofty trees stretched upwards in clumps amongst the dull grass, sparce, forlorn in the dense fog that lingered over the water's deep stillness. It stretched seemingly forever in all directions, save for the skewed angle that looked like a ship wreck.

Artillery growled far away, I lay in the tropical mud, blissfully aware of destruction I was no longer a part of.