Under the Starry Sky

Nikolai’s mother and fiancée were murdered by insurrectionists in retribution for Nikolai’s own killings. After he visited his fiancée’s funeral, Nikolai decided to cope with alcohol. He found himself collapsed in a ditch, drunk, with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and his fiancée’s engagement ring in the other.

Bleak, blue eyes scanned the misty horizon in perfect moonlight for answers. A shiftless fog hung over the slowly dying fields and the rolling hills. The moon was full and it shown brightly over the fruited hills next to a sky full of twinkling stars. The moonlight creeped through the fog, giving it an eerie glean over the whole valley.

High above the dense fog rested an ancient steep, towered over the valley and the crumbled highway below. It was here that the drunken set of eyes were focused on a distant, lonely set of headlights making their way down the moonlit mountain towards the misty valley below.

On the edge of that aged highway laid Nikolai. Wearing a tuxedo and black shoes from his fiancée’s funeral, he sported jet black hair and lonely, blue eyes. He took out his fiancée’s engagement ring and tears streamed from his face as he read the handcrafted inscription on the underside. It was Latin for “My whole world begins and ends with you.” The distant headlights got closer with every jerking tear and every stinging sip of bourbon.

The farther the tears went down his wet cheeks the darker and more terrifying his thoughts grew. Nikolai pondered his bleak future and reasons for life. He decided that they were doomed to failure and took action. Slowly and dizzily he stood up and stumbled into the center of the nearly vacant highway. The wanderer held out both of his arms to his sides and prepared to die as the headlights grew brighter through the low-visibility fog.

The driver didn’t see the drunkard till it was too late. The man in the middle of the road was dressed in black and the moonlight barely made it through the thick fog. When he did see Nikolai he gasped, slammed on the brakes and swerved, nearly running off the highway.

His heart was still thundering when the truck came to a halt. He took a brief moment to catch his breath, analyzing what just happened, and then jumped out of his warthog and scurried towards the man, who was lying down on his back.

The Driver called out, “Are you ok?” The body lay motionless for a few moments.

Nikolai answered weakly, “My legs hurt like hell.”

The Driver exhaled heavily and then asked curiously “I’m sorry I didn’t swerve in time. Why were you standing in the middle of the road?”

Nikolai answered with weak and slurred speech. “I wanted to die… Life has lost all meaning. Even if I survive and continue to live on, I will die alone and depressed.”  Nikolai looked the Driver directly in those worrisome eyes and proclaimed “Even you will die alone and unwanted.”

The Driver calmly responded, “I’m going out twenty-one guns blazing fighting for something bigger than myself.”  The Driver stepped through the fog and the moonlight lit his shiny uniform ablaze with light. He smiled widely, stretched out his hand to help Nikolai up and continued, “If that’s something you would be interested in then I’ll help you in the Warthog.”

Nikolai thought about what the soldier had said for a bit, this time thinking about what his fiancée and mother would have wanted instead of what he wanted, and then clasped the soldier’s hand.