A brother returns home from war

  So this was just supposed to be for an English assignment but I got a bit carried away.

  Hudson Cross, Kingsdale, Kingdom of Kannd

  8 Sithgull 1919, 7 MM (CUT+0)

  As I turned towards the sunset, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I stiffened at the touch, instinctively bracing myself—old habits from the trenches die hard—but the pressure was familiar, steady. Turning my head, I found my brother, Alistair, standing beside me. His face was half-lit by the fading light.

  “It’s been a while,” he said quietly.

  Fighting back the tightness in my throat, I managed a nod.

  Alistair’s gaze drifted toward the horizon where the sun bled into the ruins of the city, casting long shadows over broken rooftops and crumbling chimneys.

  “Train ride wasn’t too bad, I hope?” he tried to ask conversationally.

  I gave a half-shrug. “Didn’t notice much.”

  Alistair’s hand dropped from my shoulder. The wind tugged at our coats as we stood there a moment longer. The ptform was nearly empty now, an old woman in the distance hugged her son tightly as he returned from another part of the front. A group of men, one without a leg, another without an arm, quietly lugged their bags and tried to stand taller than their injuries.

  The station too, like the rest of the city, had been touched by the Continuation War. A rge chunk of the canopy had been blown away, leaving a gaping wound, and the walls bore cracks jagged like veins.

  “You didn’t have to come,” I said finally.

  His lips curled into a faint, tired smile. “Course I did.”

  I noticed only now how prominent the dark circles under his eyes were, how the clean-shaven face I remembered had become gaunt, the lines around his mouth deepening.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Alistair...” don't know if I can face father, don't know if I can face mother, don't know if I can face the house.

  None of it felt like home anymore. There was no spark. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to walk back through the door, to see the remnants of a life I had left behind.

  Alistair gave me a sad nod, as if he understood what I meant without me needing to say any more. “You can,” he said in a softer voice. “Let's get you home, Ed.”

  The motor car ride home was quieter than I’d expected. Outside the window, the streets of Kingsdale passing by in eerie silence. Many buildings were still standing, but the signs of destruction were gring. Burned-out shells, cracked windows, streets littered with debris. It was hard to believe this had been our home.

  “I'm getting married,” Alistair stated out of the blue as the motor carriage turned into a roundabout.

  I blinked and turned to him. “Married? When?”

  “Next month,” he replied, his voice strangely distant. “Everything's been... complicated, but we made it work.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “You—” My voice faltered. “You never mentioned her before. Who is she?”

  Alistair’s lips pressed together in a thin line. He had always been private, even more so since the war had pulled us all apart. “Her name's Cra. From Marketshire. She served in the Medical Corps. We met before you left, just after you enlisted...” he trailed off.

  I tried to nod in an absent fashion, but I couldn't help the bitter ugh that escaped my lips.

  “Of course you found someone,” I muttered, barely hearing myself. “A reason to keep going. A reason to smile, to live... and me?” My voice caught, but I pushed through it. “What do I have left? Father works himself into an early grave, Cordy is dead, and I... I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore.”

  Alistair didn't respond, but I could see his hands tighten around the steering wheel.

  The silence was intolerable. The hum of the engine felt like an intrusion on my thoughts. It reminded me that the world would keep turning, even as my life stood still. I couldn’t stop thinking about Cordelia—how I’d never get to hear her ugh again, how I would never be able to see her exasperated face as I give her the next most insulting gift for Yulefest. My chest tightened once again.

  I hadn’t been there to protect her.

  The thought hit me like a sledgehammer. She should've been safe. Why was it I, a soldier on the front, that had been spared, while she was snatched from us by the bombs of airships?

  What providence was it that kept me alive? Why was I the one who returned, while she was gone?

  “You're still you, Ed,” Alistair’s voice broke through my spiralling thoughts. He was looking straight ahead, but I could tell his jaw had been clenched. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re still you.”

  “You think I can just forget?” I shot back, my frustration bubbling up. “Forget that I was the one who left? That I didn’t die with them? That I...” I felt helpless, stuck in the trenches of a foreign country, hundreds of kilometres from home, as the Twadamians ripped through us? I wanted to continue. But the words were too heavy to leave my lips.

  Alistair's grip on the wheel tightened again. “Ed...” he said. His voice was rougher now. “I know you're angry. I know you're lost, but don't think for a second that you're the only one who's felt this. We all have. But Cordy... Cordy wouldn’t want you to drown in this. She wouldn’t want you to waste away in grief.”

  His words felt like a bucket of ice-cold water. Still, they didn’t stop the torrent inside me.

  “How can you even say that?” I hissed. “How can you move on like that? Cordy is—was our sister. Did you even care?”

  I knew the instant I said it that I had gone too far. His eyes briefly flickered to me before they returned to the road ahead.

  Only the sound of the engine and the occasional honks outside filled the silence between us. I regretted my words almost as soon as they left my mouth. They hung in the air like smoke, a bitterness I hadn’t meant to unleash.

  I could hear Alistair suck in a slow steady breath.

  “Alistair, I a—”

  “How dare you,” Alistair cut me off. His voice was frigid. The motor carriage swerved slightly as his knuckles turned pale. “You really think you're the only one who’s lost something, Edmund? I’m here every day. I’m the one who had to pick up the pieces when she died.”

  I swallowed hard, I did not dare look at him. He had stayed, while I had run—gone off to fight for a country that had turned its back on us, leaving him and Father to bear everything.

  “You think it’s easy for me?” Alistair continued harshly. “Do you think I don’t feel her loss every single day? I lost her too. I lost her the same way you did. But I had to keep going, Ed. I didn’t have the luxury of just sinking into it. I had to keep going, and I’ll keep going, even if it kills me. So don't you dare tell me I don’t care, because we are both grieving—in our own ways I suppose. And if you can't see that, then I don't know what to tell you.”

  I sat in silence. The weight of his outpour pressing against me. Suffocating. The motor car continued rolling slowly through the streets, the buildings here were cleaner and less damaged than the ones closer to the centre. I wanted to say something, anything, to take back my words... but the words wouldn't come. The lump in my throat grew heavier, and my gaze shifted to the window, watching the streetlights blur by in muted yellows. I wanted to take it all back, to stop this conversation before it ever started. Alistair’s words repyed in my head and I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes.

  Finally, I spoke. “I'm sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  Alistair didn't reply immediately, but I could see his shoulders rex. He remained silent for a few moments before his voice came, quieter now.

  “I know, Ed. I know you didn't.” His grip on the wheel loosened. “It's been hard for all of us. And I don’t know how to help you, but I want to. I really do.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything else.

  The motor car turned down Bury Road, and I felt Alistair slow the vehicle. The old trees that once lined the path in my childhood had been thinned out, some reduced to broken stumps.

  And just ahead, I saw it.

  Our house. Or what was left of it.

  The front gate hung off its hinges and the garden had been left untended and wild. The house itself stood, but a section of the roof had caved in while most of the windows I could see were shattered. Scaffolding clung to its side where repairs had begun but remained unfinished.

  I grimaced. Reading about it was one thing, but seeing it was another.

  Alistair parked the car. “Repairment has been slow.” He admitted. “Father… well, it would be better if you could see for yourself.”

  I gave a nod, not knowing what there was to say.

  Our boots crunched against gravel as we stepped out of the motor car. The air smelled of damp earth.

  As I ascended the steps to the porch, Alistair spoke from behind me. “I go to see her every week.”

  I turned to him in confusion and he nodded towards a side path, the one that led to the family cemetery.

  Of course. Cordelia’s grave.

  “It’s not far,” he continued. “You don’t have to come, but...”

  “I'll come,” I said without hesitation.

  He gave a slight nod as though he'd expected that answer, and without a word, we turned away from the house and followed the narrow, uneven path through the garden.

  The cemetery was small. Surprisingly intact as well. I hadn’t been here in years, and yet, it was exactly as I remembered. Save—of course—for the new headstone standing solemnly among the others.

  Cordelia Rosemary Caithrill

  1898 – 1915

  Beloved Daughter and Sister

  The simple engraving struck me like a physical blow and I felt an ache in my chest that I hadn’t known was still there.

  I knelt before the headstone, fingers tracing the carved letters. The cold stone was unforgiving beneath my touch, as unyielding as the reality it represented. My little sister was gone, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

  Alistair stood a step behind me in silence. He had made his peace. But for me, this was the first time I had truly faced it. Cordelia had been id here long before I ever set foot on home soil again.

  I closed my eyes.

  I should have been here.

  The words were bitter on my tongue, but I did not say them aloud. What good would they do now?

  Instead, I exhaled shakily and let the silence linger.

  I thought of Cordelia as she was before the war, the way she always managed to talk her way out of trouble, the way she ughed with a sparkle in her eyes. I could hear it now, echoing in my mind, just out of reach.

  I would never hear it again.

  But she wouldn’t want me to stay here, frozen in grief. Alistair is right. She wouldn’t want me to waste away like this.

  I opened my eyes and let out a slow breath.

  I will keep going.

  I didn’t know what that meant yet, or how I would do it. But I would.

  For Cordy.

  For Alistair.

  For myself.

  I rose to my feet, brushing the dirt from my trousers. Alistair met my eyes and nodded in understanding. No words were needed.

  The sun had already slipped below the horizon, leaving the world cloaked in shadow.

  But tomorrow, the sun would rise again.