Spear Bearer

Prompt: This story must involve a spear in the beginning.

Source:

Response:

Stabbing, hot blood flowing. Looking so much like a waterfall, flowing down his chest. And tears, searing, painful tears clouding everything as her aching hands grasped the spear’s shaft, driving it home again and again into his chest.

Hera woke with a start. The room was dark around her, and cold with the heavy, wet air of the night. The familiar, wet air of her homeland. She closed her eyes, drinking in the cool breeze. She had been in the wilderness plains for too long – had been in the desert, on the dry, forlorn battlefields for too many months.

She settled into her mattress and tried to go back to sleep, reminding herself that she was home. The war had been won, it was over. The weapons had been returned to their resting places and their allies were safe. All was as it should be.

Her eyes flicked open again in the dark and she sighed, her throat feeling thick with tears. She could see the image – the memory – from her dream so clearly; she remembered every sensation of the event. The soldier had been so young, looking terrified in his battle armor, his sword too big for his body. And she had slaughtered him. Because he was her enemy. The child, who looked like her brother Mackii, had been her enemy. The bleeding soldier, crying out in his strange native tongue, had been her enemy.

Hera turned to her side, feeling the discomfort of her strained, wounded hands. Hands that had born a spear for too long without rest. Her hands clutched at each other, mingling their individual pain, and a single tear slid down Hera’s cheek.