Warriorlog #5. Someone Else's Tragedy

An anonymous individual writes down her thoughts —fantasy setting.

I like my place at the top of things, even if the roof leaks and it gets extra cold at night. I like it because it’s silent and I have a great view. Now, I know there’s an extra disadvantage I had never counted on.

Someone yelled near midnight. It was not a normal yell. It was the screaming I have heard women make in the most painful stages of childbirth but in reverse. I felt her pain like I feel the rain that one day in the year when it comes: on me, inside me, all over me. Her pain made me fall on my knees and pray the way I’ve watched the desert walkers do when one of their own is sick.

The woman screaming cursed someone and accused this person of killing her son. The yelling went on for a long time, the shadow cast by the moon had already switched twice by the time she became silent. She was all there was to hear. For all I knew, she could be alone, yelling at no one, yelling at a memory that had appeared before her in her sleep like a hungry ghost.

That woman must have been many houses away. If I lived close to the ground, like normal people do, I would have never known of this woman’s pain. But I am a Wag watcher, some might say a Wag worshiper, and I like heights. Unfortunately, sad songs and angry screams travel toward the heavens, as I do, and sometimes we must coexist.

I can’t get her screaming out of my head, I can’t get the speculations of what, who, and how out of my mind. I might never sleep again.