Through My Eyes

• Jessica Elliott, Grade 12, Wangaratta High School
• Short Story
• 2008

1st in the 'Empowered 2008' competition

A tense silence grips the field as light reaches tentative fingers over the horizon, making the frosted earth sparkle with deceptive beauty. Not the natural silence before dawn – the silence of a thousand small lives awaiting the warmth and light of a new day – this is a man made silence, heavy; thick; palpable on still air.
A bead of ice warms, melts, and snakes down the man’s forehead, gaining speed in its descent. Clinging momentarily to the tip of his nose, it falls soundlessly to the ground. His eyes – warm and brown as the frost around is cold and white – are wide open, and staring at the sun, blazing red in its youth. But it is a blank stare. Without focus. Without purpose. Without life.
He does not stare alone. His gaze is mirrored by the man at his side. Their bodies intertwine, united in death. Both pairs of eyes, brown and blue, watch the rising sun edge hesitantly over distant mountains then break free into the sky, a solitary sphere continuing its eternal journey, unabashed by the horrors it lays bare.
Irregular figures on the ground, beauteous in their crystal encasement, are slowly melted by the gathering heat to reveal a mass of bodies, twisted obscenely, riddled with bullets, encrusted with dried blood. Yet still the men stare.
Heat intensifies, shadows shorten. Empty eyes watch the sun stare at the battlefield from above. The air is stagnant – heavy silence replaced by the buzzing of a million flies hovering greedily over festering wounds. Young men. Old men. Dead men. Individuals become mere numbers. War takes the meaning from their deaths. War makes their lives a waste.
If the dead could wonder, they would wonder at this conflict’s all consuming futility. But the dead are silent.
A cool hush descends over the field as the dimming sphere edges its way towards the flat horizon, shadows stretching luxuriously. The closeness of the two men makes their shadow seem that of one. Stretching into the distance, it cloaks faces upturned. It is the shadow of their lives, insubstantial, a mere outline. It is the shadow of their deaths, united by a fate robbed of meaning. It is the shadow of mankind, huge, dominating, cutting out light as it does life.
A delicate pink and yellow sunset bathes their backs in golden light, dipping them in radiant warmth. Then, all too soon, it is gone, and the sky fades into deepest black as a cold night begins. But the men do not feel the chill. They do not feel the dew slowly gather and freeze over their bodies, encapsulating them in a blanket of ice that becomes a cloak of diamonds under the starlight. They reflect the heavens. They reflect hell.
Together the men stare. Four eyes. Not brown, not blue: they are colourless in the darkness, just eyes. And together they await a new dawn.