Story Bazaar

"The Story Is All Muddle"

I must speak or history will be wrong...

~~~

She didn't let me explain...

She wouldn't have believed me anyway...

Why did they do it?

Why make it impossible to rectify the situation?

Why do I even care?

~~~

There was a gap in the communication with Headquarters and it was my job to find a way to close that gap.

I decided that horse-riders would be the fastest under the circumstances---a bit less noise than trucks, much faster than bikes.

The gap, after a number of attempts, was not closed---we were on our own, with six less horses, plus their riders...

~~~

The months that went by before we ran out of food were stark and dangerous.

We hunkered down---low profile---tried to disappear.

Our senses of self took major hits---we began to merge into some vague group of indistinct nonentities...

~~~

As we ate our last meal of rations, she showed up---messenger from Headquarters.

She tried to rally us to action---we wondered what could be all that important...

She left with the angry, "You'll all be court-martialed then shot like the cowards you are!"

~~~

We, of course, did hunt food; but, there was little of it in our war-ravaged area.

Eventually, each of us either took their own life or wandered off...

I'm still wandering.........

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This story was prompted by this quote:

"I learned that the story has no beginning, and no story has an end. That the story is all muddle, all middle. That the story is never true, but that the lie is indeed a child of silence."

from: The Matter of Seggri in The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin

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