Desert winds

Walking to my building felt like walking in the middle of the desert. It's good that I don't have a whole ass lot to cover. In the sun, it feels like the air is burning my cheeks. I can feel the hot sand beneath my feet. I can feel the rope I'm holding, and feel the camel behind me breathing into the heat. I can feel all alone, with just desert, all desert around. 

But oddly enough, I don't feel that I'm truly alone. I'm just in the midst of it.

***

This is a short entry but I heard the master corporal criticizing Esme and I don't like it.

Esme, no, she's not military... she's not, when she'll be in a regiment she'll find out...

I'm afraid it will break her, I said.

I mean it. Esme hides behind armour, but she's genuinely tender. She's all about doing it her way, sometimes straight up barking in the face of authority, will absolutely skip swimming during the physical condition exams because she's scared of being underwater nevermind that it costs her points for the grades, not very much care for the collective and just... be her independent self. 

That would do her good, Dionysus replied. 

I doubt he means wrong, he's former military personnel after all. Former first class master corporal. I found out by looking up his file. Quit four years ago. 

I'm not sure, I said.

What I didn't say is, honestly, what kind of breaking would do anyone any good? I'm just concerned she may end up traumatized. And with the temperament she has, she will a hundred percent stuff it down until it breaks her much later down the line. 

Yeah, no, she's not gonna last, she'll find out what truly being in the military is, the master corporal continued. 

I'm not sure this is verbatim what she said but all that was inside of me was, I don't want Esme's spirit to break.

I want her to remain herself.

Even as I don't always understand her, and something in her feels so annoyingly remote and isolated. Even as she beats around the bush a whole ass period of time just to be right or to have the last word. And you don't always know whether she's joking or not because she's so deadpan. Even also as she is capable of saying complete bullshit like "if I take a warm shower in a heatwave it won't change my body temperature because it will match it" and holding onto it. 

She used to have a friend in the service. A girl only a year older than her, who was transferred last summer. Major Alderamin says the friend was haughty, thought she knew better than everyone, and was, in her words, a "little brat". I didn't know said girl, just knew she looked very young and that she's now a corporal. Now I don't know whether at the time it made Esme different or not, but... either way, it sometimes feels like when she isn't in the room, people don't like her nearly as much.

I bet they probably talk behind my back, too. Probably say how sensitive I am or something. No way I'll know. And perhaps I don't need to. I just know that Capella wouldn't complain about me. Confirmed by Hera and others, she always speaks positively of me. I don't think Passiflora would, either. 

***

Master corporal goes to Djibouti in a couple days. Or tomorrow. I think it's tomorrow afternoon that she flies there for four months. Well, glad not to see her anymore. 

I just feel like it's such a waste of potential, given... Polynesia.

But alas.

This attitude just makes her uglier than she already looks to my eye. One can be physically unattractive and yet so nice that it makes up for it.

Her? It just makes her look worse.

The voice of a young girl, the energy of an immature 20 something on a 38 year old body with a crooked face and an undercut, goddamn I hate undercuts.

Yeah, godspeed. I don't wish you to crash but have fun in Africa.

***

By the way. I forgot to mention. I have Skype at work now as I don't have a phone anymore, and I made a contact list with my former colleagues, with Cepheus' team, and with my own. 

Hopoe is not the only one on leave, there is also Jolene I reckon, of course there is Oria... but he did not mention them.

He only mentioned the one on sick leave, and Hopoe.

Did he do this on purpose?