｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ( 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚 ) chapter seven — THE STELLA SPELL
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─ 🧳🕸📺📀🦟🌪🎞⌛️ PLATOON. 1966 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
STELLA'S GOT SUN IN HER EYES. It hasn't rained for weeks, and though that puts pressure on the humanitarian rations around camp, it makes the girl glow like stardust. Though struggling through every day feeling queazy and severely delusional from withdrawal, she's somehow keeping well and if anything, the good mood only makes her more desirable.
The heat that day is the spectacular kind. The humidity is relentless and all-consuming. Where Stella's content but can't strike up the energy to move more than five feet, Elias cuts into the clods of arid dirt with a shovel as the platoon set out to deepen their foxholes on company orders. Sweat gives his bare torso a sheen, and his cross bumps against his chest as he works. Some others are dashed around; King — who, admittedly, she's never actually met, but has learnt his name through Paddy's storytelling — is cleaning his M-16 with a flannelette and accident-prone Lerner wears a bandana and a ring in his ear that day, and there's a green recruit there too, with black hair and birds and snakes tattooed across his naked chest, and around his neck hangs a skull and crossbones emblem.
King's face contends with a great catlike smile that takes up half of it. She remembers the burns on his hands that it was Shelley who'd treated him. "Been let out of the meat factory for five mikes and decided to give your ol' buddies in 2nd a visit, Nursey? 'Ey, Romano," the man with the skull and crossbones looks up, "Try this one for size. Stella. She's here honorarily 'cos she chewed out the bonehead lieutenant. She's got a bruise from Chief Wardmaster to show for it. Come t'give us a helping hand?"
"I was hoping you could give me one, actually," Stella responds through her cigarette. The sun is so astonishingly hot it's making her head throb with another migraine, but it's not too bothersome. The workload hasn't been too strenuous as they're still awaiting the return of Alpha Company's 3rd Platoon from their patrol. "I was wonderin' if you'd help me with that letter of apology for Wolfe. I need to have it done by this afternoon."
Elias squints. The sun is positioned behind the brunette in such a way that he's dazzled when he glances up at her. "Why'dya need me?"
"You gotta typewriter somewhere, don't you?" she bites down on her thumbnail. "Besides, I could use some of that hospitality you spoke about. I've got Loving breathin' down my neck at every given moment, looking for a reason to have me dishonorably discharged for gross misconduct of duty."
"That stinks, man," says Lerner, shovelling some dust over his shoulder. Stella's only seen him around over the last couple of months, a gorgeous and youthful boy of nineteen who seems to know the backstories and native states of each officer in 25th. He's done his research, some say. "Loving's one of them first-class jerks. He's from Florida. I'm tellin' you, nothing good never came outta Florida, 'cept the chicks. Everyone knows nurses work twice as hard as the doctors do, that Colonel Mildred Clark said so, the Chief of the Nurse Corps."
