My Little Collection

Original Prompt: They all perished in the war nothing left but a ruined battlefield and mountains of corpses. However one being still walks among this place, an immortal who came to give the last honors to all who died and give them a proper burial.

She walked with quiet steps, her grief worn like a heavy shroud as the old shovel nearly dragged the blood-watered ground. Somehow, the dry, near rotting wood had yet to break. Not that it mattered if it did, the dirt under her nails and engraved into the lines of her hands spoke to her determination from before she had stumbled across the dilapidated tool.

Sad eyes took in the carnage. It was silent. The sort of silence that steals all sound you may dare to make. There were many silences in the world, but none that hung so thick and suffocating as this: The silence of horror, of the aftermath of the greed and folly of man, carried on the backs of youth that had been but fodder for the glory of others.

Her steps were stilled as she reached the first corpse of this battlefield, kneeling to gently remove the helmet, brushing dark hair that had escaped its bun out of the girl's face. After a moment, she carefully lifted her by the shoulders, standing to pull the girl back a little, the first to mark the neat line of bodies to come.

She had never been a particularly strong woman, yet she felt the strain and struggle almost as echoes of memories as she methodically pulled each body from the carnage. Each placed carefully in a neat, long row until she deemed it long enough. The shovel pierced the sullied ground. The rectangles were rough, but still would suffice. Her thoughts somehow never strayed from her work, the repetitive motion a near instinctive drive.

Each mar upon the earth soon sat waiting above each of the soldiers lined up and ready for their final role call.  She knew she was tired, but she had been tired since the war had begun. Long had she ceased feeling the need to sleep or eat. Longer still had it been since she ceased movement. From the day the news had come of how the futile war had driven them to madness and bloodlust beyond redemption, she had never ceased walking, searching.

The first week she had slept and eaten, she was sure...then she had found the first battlefield. Her goal was pushed aside the moment she had seen the first body, the first victim of this pointless carnage. Upon removing his helmet, his cropped hair held gentle curls, golden strands dulled by blood and dirt. His cheeks still held the softness of youth.

She found she couldn't leave him. Not like this, not alone and cold.

Her fingers dug into the soil that had been softened by blood, a single-mindedness consuming her as she opened the earth. Finally, it was done, and she pulled the boy into his grave.

He had only been a boy.

She had set his clothing to rights, her fingers gingerly brushing aside golden waves to place a soft kiss upon his forehead before working once more. With an odd sense of peace, she placed the displaced earth back in it's place, packing it over the boy with the care one takes to tuck in a child to their bed. Once it was completed, she had laid his helmet upon the slight mound, his tags laid gently atop it as she bid him goodnight.

Once that was done, she had caught sight of the next body, his once-bright eyes of hazel dim. It mattered not what uniform he wore as her hands found the soil yielding under her grasp once more.

It was around the tenth grave, her muscles shaking from fatigue, that a quiet thought came to her.

Why? Why for them when they are not the son you seek? When they bear the uniform of those who killed him? Why?

'Because they are someone's child.' The answering thought came easily. 'Their mothers cannot come, so I will tuck them in one last time in their staid. They deserved a mother's love one last time. Another would do so for my boy, so I shall for theirs.'

You are weary, weak. You may collapse like this and join their burial mounds.

'I will rest once the children are all in bed.' she leaned down, placing another soft kiss upon a cold brow. As she began to tuck the earth around him, the shaking of her limbs slowly ceased with each gentle handful.

This was now the fifth battlefield since that odd moment. Each body, young or old, man or woman, was treated the same. A single grave, a final kiss goodnight, and their name spoken softly.

Time passed her by, countless fields of death and destruction, of lives ended carelessly and far too soon stretching on in her memory. Eyes never failing through darkness or light. Feet ever moving, hands ever working, lips ever bestowing a final blessing to the children who had been dearly loved.

When finally she found him, he was the last. Her child, her baby. He who she had birthed and carried, kissed and cried for, laid cold in her arms. His ever-smiling lips now dry and cracked, laid still and slack as his unseeing green eyes she had always adored gazed up at her. She wept, then. An action unknown to her for so long. She used her tears to bathe his face, removing the gore of war and gently coaxing the blood from his sandy brown hair, careful to part it in the way that kept that cowlick of his from shooting straight up, knowing he disliked it.

Soon, his grave was ready, and he was placed inside, much the way she had wrestled the overactive boy into bed when he was a child. Once he was tidied, she kissed his forehead before tucking him in one last time, her hands lingering on his tags before releasing them onto his helmet.

A weariness descended on her, then. The one that had simply been a mantle for so long now draped about her as she heard that odd little thought once more, after all this time.

It is time to take your rest, your children all sleep.

She looked to her side, seeing a deep bed of her own waiting alongside her son's, and felt a great contentment as she laid within, the soft soil cradling her head and neck as the long-weary muscles all finally relaxed. As her eyes closed, she felt a feather-light kiss on her forehead before she slept, breathing her last as the earth closed above her, Time having finally released her to Death's tender care.

Sleep well, Mother.