The thick red line
02 Feb 2022RYNO****
As I sat in the common room chair the dust motes whirling slowly around the room following their path from extraction to suction, I became aware of the constant and background tick of my flight watch, tick, tick, tick, each second a universe worth of calm in between the excitement and chaos of the call to war, and the constant state of fear and excitement that had become everyday life in the Nova HQ, I recalled the time before Christmas eve when life followed a different path, the search for direction and enrichment that we all loved, a time when days just slipped by in pleasurable ease of drinks, companionship and the occasional bar fight that was the way of the Nova crew, that all changed on Christmas eve with the first rumblings of what was to follow, and the now rush from CZ to CZ, each one a test of the man you always wanted to be and feared you would fail to accomplish, then the moment was gone as Grey walked through the room with his normal air of indifferent calm "YOH" and then he was gone in a puff of smoke, the dust caught in his trail now and for a brief moment free of its benile path from one vent to the other.