[DRB]: Little Soldier
Filly had never gone to Sisika prison alone before.
She wasn’t really intending to go that day in the first place.
For as much time as she'd spent roaming the county and picking herbs for her new job, her hands had inevitably found the devil’s work again. Locals at the end of her revolver, and a slew of unlocked doors in her wake. Friends with her every step of the way.
Filly had picked up a knack for such things, but her nerves and her tongue still always betrayed her.
It hadn’t helped who had been there to confront them. The tone in his voice as he asked her to tell the truth had crumpled her resolve like wet paper. She bolted to save herself the lie, but didn’t make it far.
She wasn’t upset for being the only one caught – there was every solace to knowing the other two had made it out. Still, it hadn’t lessened the sting to his disappointment in her, nor did it take the edge off her fear arriving to the yard without anyone to have her back.
His words rolled themselves over in her mind the entire time she’d been in Sisika, keeping her head down to avoid attention from any of the other inmates. Talks of a different life. Of the way hardship changes people. There was still time to walk away before it changed her too.
"These people,” he’d said. “Your friends. They’re going to get you killed someday.”
A particularly rough bump in the road jostled her back to herself in the present. The wagon beneath her was a rickety thing—barely more than a heap of wood on wheels. Its sides were covered in patched over bullet-holes, and it stank of cheap spirits and cigarette smoke.
Her legs dangled off the back of the cart, elbows braced against her thighs and watching the world roll past. She was back with friends. One shoulder to shoulder with her and the other two up front, driving and watching out for dangers.
In her idle musing, she’d taken out a notebook and begun to doodle. It was only now that she’d come back to herself that she realized what she’d drawn: An open field dotted with flowers. Farm animals grazing, and an eager puppy bounding through the grass. A girl in a flowy dress, face obscured by curly hair.
There were smudges on the page where her own dirty gloves had stained the paper.
Filly couldn’t help the frown that pulled at her lips, but at least could be thankful that her bandana obscured it.
Someone asked if she was alright. She said she was. They teased her for the hunch to her shoulders, the pensive look in her eyes. Grizzled little soldier, which war did you fight in? It’d been the running joke for weeks now. She took it in good humor, or tried to.
Filly was no hardened criminal, no veteran of any war. Not by a long shot. She imagined the joke was only funny because it was so ridiculous to picture it. They laughed together at the thought of her riding in a war wagon, manning the gun.
All the same, she couldn’t shake that creeping feeling-- the knowledge that someone had… bent something in her. A long time ago now. The kind of bend that she could try to set right, but it would never be quite perfect again. Choices that would always lead her right back to the ones who had taken her in. Little soldier, they teased. What happened to the rest of your platoon?
Her thoughts wandered. To a ghost. To her father. To the girl in the drawing.
Filly ran her thumb over the page one last time before folding the notebook closed and stuffing it into her pocket. She leaned back and hooked an arm over the side of the wagon, drumming her fingers to the offkey rhythm of the clanking bottles behind her.
“Lost,” she said, playfully dramatized-- though her wistful tone was only half faked. “All of them, lost to the war.”