Work Text:
Wet earth and filth churns underfoot in the march, splashes up almost to your knees as you weave between puddles and the dead. You stay at the rear and let yourself be guided by someone more seasoned, relegated to keeping watch from behind.
Water runs down your visor in lazy, brackish tracks. It patters down on you from above, from where you’re almost certain is called sky. The falling water has a word, too, some specific and equally trivial term that you have either forgotten or never even learned. As far as you’ve seen, humans make up an obscene number of new names for stuff that can already be explained. Your weapon has a name – other than just firearm or gun – that designates it and other weapons which are the exact same model. It’s needless. Who cares what it’s called if it works as intended? Humans, apparently.
You drag the water from your visor and flick it off your hand.
Come night-time, in puddles you watch reflections of the tar-dark expanse. You step in one, then another and another, disturbing the still sky and scattering droplets of murky water. There was supposed to be something up above, you’re certain, but all you can see is the roiling grey smoke.
Whatever. For now, the world can stay as little as people tell you.